Just thought I'd draw everyone's attention to Donald Barthelme's very funny send-up of this whole "don Juan" business that dates, if I'm not mistaken, from the late sixties: "The Teachings of Don B: A Yankee Way of Knowledge".

But, laughs aside: The point made above by kenkapkk, about the negligible difference between Castaneda's bullshit and Joseph Smith's prophecy, is well taken. Also his point about whether the historical Jesus ever existed being largely irrelevant, from the perspective of a particular kind of Christianity (my own, for instance). Still, none of this is to say that Castaneda's hoaxterism is somehow the equivalent of the more established religions. What sets the Judeo-Christian-Islamic triumvirate (and of course Hinduism, Buddhism, and other eastern religious traditions) apart from minor cults is precisely the fact that they managed to establish themselves historically, and by doing so, to build up a lively and diverse tradition in which entire societies are able to understand themselves and the world. The difference can be put down to an accident of history, of course, but that doesn't make it any less relevant.

To go back to J. Smith for a moment: If Mormonism looks kooky to a lot people right now, that's partly because it's relatively young and still in a very dogmatic and doctrinaire stage of its development. It's basically fundamentalist and literalist, in other words. If it survives for another few hundred years, there's at least a chance that it will enter the phase of self-questioning and self-reinterpretation that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (yes, Islam, too) all entered into long ago.

For the record, I'll say Castaneda's books are pretty laughable (although they certainly had me going, when I was fifteen or sixteen), but I also don't think the division between cult and religion can be drawn in sharp lines. As I said a moment ago, it generally takes a long time to say about these things. (But God help our great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren if this Scientology business starts getting taken seriously by people other than desperately self-obsessed Hollywood types....)

It's more than a bit ironic that, having read a very short interview with her, you feel justified in psychoanalyzing Druckerman ("obviously the author has suffered from an affair") while bashing her for thinking that she can come to some kind of understanding of anybody else by actually sitting down and talking to them. I haven't read her book, and obviously neither have you, but I didn't get the impression from what she said that she was either too stupid or too naive or both to understand that one is liable to encounter self-serving lies while conducting this kind of research. Since when did just asking a person to tell you their thoughts on something amount to guilelessly accepting everything they say as literal truth?

Frankly, Anonymous, you remind me of the folks I used to avoid at all costs when I'd find myself trapped at a department party in university--that is, the sort of person who desperately wants everybody to think he's the smartest guy in the room. Well, it might be a bit late in life for this advice to mean much to you anymore, but here goes anyway: If you're trying to convince people of something, anything, the best way to do it is usually NOT to begin by telling them that their stupidity is so hilarious to you that you can't help laughing out loud. It's a defensive guesture, and a pretty transparent one; the behavior of somebody who is secretly terrified that he'll be questioned and exposed. And yeah, I'm psychoanalyzing you.

And by the way: You're not the only one around here who's read Foucault. The Foucault I remember is someone who constantly questioned our assumptions about the world and engaged in countless discussions about his own understandings of things. Above all, he was somebody who was capable of changing his mind. Not a heroic talent, just the mark of a grown-up. In other words, he didn't just call people idiots for disagreeing with him, and he certainly never faulted anyone for trying to talk things through and explore new perspectives.

Just a quick note to say I liked the article, and hope to see more of the same in the future: Relevant, deeply thought-provoking, even-handed. Good job.

...And I'll bet James Frey is trembling with jealousy right now.

All jokes aside, though... It's been said before, but I'll join the chorus on this one: Anybody who can read this article and think the guy somehow got what was coming to him really needs to examine their sense of justice, not to mention work on their compassion. The two cops Kurth had tea with while waiting for his bus back to prison seemed to understand the absurdity of his situation (and of course expressed their sympathy in that characteristically understated British way), and if they also didn't seem especially outraged, then it was probably because they would know better than most what a person can expect from the British penal system.

I too have worked in the service industry, and I too have dealt with shamefully--in fact, astonishingly--rude people who clearly relish humiliating the people who serve them, but you get home and unless you are seriously crippled by self-pity, you shake it off. You've got to go back to work tomorrow, after all. On the other hand: Six weeks of abuse and relentless spiritual chiseling at the hands of psychopaths and sadists (and that's just the guards!)... Well, I'm thinking that's a bit harder to shake off. And yet Kurth has clearly come through this thing pretty much intact. I'll bet he'd make a heck of a good flight attendant.