Jan Harold Brunvand Biography 

Born March 23, 1933, in Cadillac, MI; son of Harold N. (a civil engineer) and Ruth (Jorgensen) Brunvand; married Judith Darlene Ast (a librarian), June 10, 1956; children: Erik, Amy, Dana, Karen.

Education: 

Michigan State University, B.A., 1955, M.A., 1957; attended University of Oslo, 1956-57; Indiana University, Ph.D., 1961.

Career: 

University of Idaho, Moscow, assistant professor of English, 1961-65; Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, associate professor of English, 1965-66; University of Utah, Salt Lake City, associate professor, 1966-71, professor of English and folklore, 1971--. Visiting assistant professor at Indiana University, summer, 1965. Member of Utah Folk Arts Advisory Panel, 1976--. Has appeared on morning programs and talk shows, including Late Night with David Letterman. Military service: U.S. Army, Signal Corps, 1962- 63.

Memberships: 

American Association of University Professors, American Folklore Society (fellow; president, 1985), California Folklore Society, International Society for Contemporary Legend Research.

Sidelights: 

Jan Harold Brunvand, professor of English and folklore at the University of Utah, has written five books to date on what he calls the "urban legend." Urban legends, though often sworn to be true by their tellers, are largely unsubstantiated modern-day stories which criss-cross the globe mainly by word of mouth. Stories include the woman tourist in Mexico who, upon finding a cute little dog, sneaked the dog back to the States only to be told by her veterinarian that the dog was actually a sewer rat. Another legend involves a cat who exploded after being placed in the microwave oven as a means of drying it off. According to Brunvand, some of these legends are grounded in the past and they often take slightly different forms as they move from region to region, but no matter what their origin or form, they are pure fiction. However, it is not uncommon for these stories to be picked up by the media and printed or reported as truth, making them seem all the more valid.

Brunvand's books relate many known urban legends, providing some explanation as to what they mean and why they arose. In a conversation with U.S. News and World Report contributor Alvin P. Sanoff, Brunvand maintained that "urban legends fill a need people have to tell each other stories, to know the latest that's going on. . . . These stories are the folklore of the mostly educated, white middle class. . . . In an urbanized society, these stories provide a common bond. They are a means by which strangers can easily communicate with one another." Additionally, in a Time review, Donald Morrison observes: "Why do such stories survive, even flourish, in an age of science and cynicism? Many of them, says Brunvand, serve as cautionary tales, sermonettes on the evils of, say, parking in deserted lanes or buying cheap imported goods. Others are inspired by suspicion of change--of microwave ovens or fast-food restaurants. Writes Brunvand: `Whatever is new and puzzling or scary, but which eventually becomes familiar, may turn up in modern folklore.'" Some of these legends are even viewed as part of ongoing racial or cultural stereotyping, like stories involving Southeast Asian immigrants to the United States capturing and eating people's pets.

Although Times Literary Supplement critic Mark Abley feels that Brunvand's first collection on urban legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings, is weak in terms of explaining the implications and the significance of urban legends, New York Times reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt claims Brunvand's third collection, The Mexican Pet: More "New" Urban Legends and Some Old Favorites, "offers enough material to suggest a number of conclusions." According to Lehmann-Haupt, in The Mexican Pet "Brunvand includes new versions of beliefs and stories discussed in his earlier books, so that we may judge for ourselves how apocryphal stories evolve. He also attempts here to establish the provenance of several legends, particularly those that have been circulated by the media. . . . The Mexican Pet is enlightening in several respects. By seeing new permutations of old stories, we become convinced that what we once took as gospel is indeed nothing more than plausible fabrication." New York Times Book Review's Gahan Wilson, in a review of The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends, cautions against dismissing these stories completely, arguing that the purpose of these stories is to "remind us that life is wonderful and mysterious after all." Wilson concludes, however, that Brunvand is "a bona fide scholar" on a "sincere, if slightly wacky, educational mission."

(Biographical information from barnesandnoble.com)