Editing Joseph Campbell (section)

===The Great Depression===
With the arrival of the [[Great Depression]], Campbell spent the next five years (1929–1934) living in a rented shack in [[Woodstock, New York]].<ref>{{cite web|last=Faulkner|first=Larry R.|title=Excerpts of remarks made at a dinner honoring new Phi Beta Kappa members|url=http://www.utexas.edu/president/past/faulkner/speeches/phibetakappa_050299.html|website=Office of the President website|publisher=The University of Texas at Austin|access-date=August 13, 2012|date=May 2, 1999}} Citing a conversation between Campbell and [[Bill Moyers]]. "There was a wonderful old man up in Woodstock, New York, who had a piece of property he would rent out for twenty dollars a year or so to any young person he thought might have a future in the arts. There was no running water, only here and there a well and a pump. ... That is where I did most of my basic reading and work."</ref> There, he [[contemplate]]d the next course of his life<ref>Larsen and Larsen, 2002, p. 160</ref> while engaged in intensive and rigorous independent study. He later said that he "would divide the day into four three-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the three-hour periods, and free one of them&nbsp;... I would get nine hours of sheer reading done a day. And this went on for five years straight."{{sfn|Campbell|2003|pp=52–53}}

Campbell traveled to California for a year (1931–1932), continuing his independent studies and becoming a close friend of the budding writer [[John Steinbeck]] and his wife Carol. Campbell had met Carol's sister, Idell, on a Honolulu cruise and she introduced him to the Steinbecks. Campbell had an affair with Carol.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Souder|first=William|title=Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|year=2020|isbn=978-0-393-29226-8|edition=1st|location=New York|page=120|oclc=1137813905}}</ref>{{sfnm |1a1=Campbell |1y=2003 |1p=52 |2a1=Larsen |2a2=Larsen |2y=2002 |2pp=156, 165}} On the [[Monterey Peninsula]], Campbell, like John Steinbeck, fell under the spell of the [[marine biologist]] [[Ed Ricketts]] (the model for "Doc" in Steinbeck's novel ''[[Cannery Row (novel)|Cannery Row]]'' as well as central characters in several other novels).<ref>Larsen and Larsen, 2002, chapters 8 and 9.</ref> Campbell lived for a while next door to Ricketts, participated in professional and social activities at his neighbor's, and accompanied him, along with [[Xenia Kashevaroff|Xenia]] and Sasha Kashevaroff, on a 1932 journey to [[Juneau]], Alaska on the ''Grampus''.<ref name=Straley>{{cite conference|first = John| last = Straley| author-link = John Straley| title = Sitka's ''Cannery Row'' Connection and the Birth of Ecological Thinking| book-title = 2011 Sitka WhaleFest Symposium: stories of our changing seas| publisher = Sitka WhaleFest  | date = November 13, 2011| location = Sitka, Alaska}}</ref> Campbell began writing a novel centered on Ricketts as a hero but, unlike Steinbeck, did not complete his book.<ref>Tamm, Eric Enno (2005) [http://www.seaaroundus.org/OtherWebsites/2005/Of_myths_and_men_in_Monterey.pdf ''Of Myths and Men in Monterey: "Ed Heads" See Doc Ricketts as a Cult Figure''], seaaroundus.org; accessed August 27, 2016.</ref>

Bruce Robison writes that

{{blockquote|Campbell would refer to those days as a time when everything in his life was taking shape.&nbsp;... Campbell, the great chronicler of the "hero's journey" in [[mythology]], recognized patterns that paralleled his own thinking in one of Ricketts's unpublished [[philosophical]] essays. Echoes of [[Carl Jung]], [[Robinson Jeffers]] and [[James Joyce]] can be found in the work of Steinbeck and Ricketts as well as Campbell.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Robison |first=Bruce uwquieH. |year=2004 |title=Mavericks on Cannery Row |url=http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/mavericks-on-cannery-row |magazine=American Scientist |volume=92 |issue=6 |publisher=Sigma Xi |pages=568–569 |issn=0003-0996 |jstor=27858490 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150810022036/http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/mavericks-on-cannery-row |archive-date=August 10, 2015 |access-date=September 2, 2018}}</ref>}}

Campbell continued his independent reading while teaching for a year in 1933 at the [[Canterbury School (Connecticut)|Canterbury School]] in [[Connecticut]], during which time he also attempted to publish works of fiction. While teaching at the Canterbury School, Campbell sold his first short story ''Strictly Platonic'' to ''Liberty'' magazine.<ref>[[Stephen Larsen|Larsen]] and Larsen, 2002, p. 214; [http://www.online.pacifica.edu/cgl/Campbellchronology Pacifica Graduate Institute | Joseph Campbell & Marija Gimbutas Library | Joseph Campbell – Chronology] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081227072637/http://www.online.pacifica.edu/cgl/Campbellchronology |date=December 27, 2008 }}</ref>{{sfn|Campbell|2004|p=291}}