Letters to the Editor
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Deconstructing Castaneda
As we all know, there may not have been an actual Moses or David but evidently someone wrote the words "Thou shalt not kill," and "Though I walk through the valley in the shadow of death I shall fear no evil," and they do exist in the physical realm. Even if written by Shlomo Bernstien in 213 BC they remain powerful.
Similarly, despite the widespread acclaim for Casteneda's books, the writing was repetitive, weak and like watered down Hemingway — but only the exposition. The quoted material, from the supposed Don Juan and Don Genero characters, was generally brilliant, concise, on point, hysterically funny and as enlightened an analysis of mystical theory as exists from Buddha through Huxley.
If Castenada was a mere novelist and plagerist how did he switch so effortlessly from plodding prose to scintillating succinct insight — either he was a great novelist hiding behind a hack or he got some words of wisdom somewhere.
#2. While his first four books are rather dynamic and coherent in construction, his later eight or whatever, often degenerate into outright insantiy — except for the fact that portions seem to depict modern physics and string theory, again with surprising precision.
Some times things are not A or B but both AB. Castenada may have had a Yaqui informant who he then ginned up.
Doniphan Blair
doniphan@amedianysf.com