Letters to the Editor
-
No shame in being more sham than shaman
Carlos Casteneda deserves credit for being a superb storyteller. And one can't blame him for exploiting this gift in the environment in which his books took root.
I first got to know his books when I was in college, in the early 1970's. My then-husband, a modern Walter Mitty who was one of those people who was strongly suggestible and prefered fiction to reality, introduced me. That's one indicator of Castaneda's appeal.
Another is the time and its inhabitants. Publishers looking for a score. College professors preaching to the turned-on generation. My first experience with pot had been a gift of my history professor, who was fond of getting high with the most pretentiously intellectual of his students. I wasn't "pretentiously" intellectual. But, as he pointed out, I was certainly smart....and I had great legs.
In those days, the intellectual "establishment" was looking for ways to be "with it" in an exclusive way that set them apart from, and above the merely cognisant. Castaneda fit the bill. He could be popularized, and still be intellectualized.
By way of further exposition...it was the same group that pronounced Jerzy Kosinski's work "literature".
In other words, it's great because we say so...and you just don't "get it."
As much as I believe (and to my credit, believed at the time) that Carlos Castaneda was most definitely fiction, I nontheless enjoyed his imaginative explorations, his suggestions of inner reality, and his writing.
The fact that people were debating then, and are still investigating acceptance of his books as nonfiction is just absurd. It's a good read, and a thoughtful journey to be taken with a glass of wine and wandering mind. Then again, when I cleaned my library out and decided what books were worth keeping, his went to the local library sale, their relevance expired, and their places taken by works exposing the run-up to Iraq...again...fiction advertised as reality.
-
i have to agree with Christopher1988
to me it's an expose that's a further hoax. too much like manson. true, happened once, could happen twice. but copying *is* easier. occam's razor.
-
I'd all but forgotten about Castaneda
In the 70s, Castaneda's work fueled many late night bull sessions while stoned. I tried to read his stuff, but like most "cosmic conciousness", I couldn't get through it. Much like "Lord of the Rings" (also popular at the time and readable, to me, only in parody form as "Bored of the Rings"), it was part of a withdrawal into fantasy in the aftermath of the assasinations of King, RFK, etc.It doesn't surpise me that he ran a cult full of arbitrary attachments and general mindfucking. That sort of thing was popular at the time. Now those characters would be selling subprime mortgages and shooting infomercials, but the process is the same. It's sad what happened to the witches, but the moral of the story seesm to be that the well-off and well-educated are often the easist marks and no one wants to admit that they bought into something that so obviously was bullshit.
-
Astonishing....
Hard to believe that decades after this guy was revealed to be a complete fraud there are still people writing letters here defending his "Search for the truth," declaring "Prove to me that nothing exists" - as if this is somehow a declaration of anything other than their own irrationality - or passing this off as "a thoughtful journey to be taken with a glass of wine."
When a con man is revealed, it isn't an attack on anyone's spriituality. Nor is it a declaration that "nothing exists" or an attempt to ruin anyone's thoughtful journey. It is an attempt to prevent others from making the tragic mistake of following a con man down the road to ruin. The fact that anyone would feel threatened by this reveals more about their inability to accept the reality of their own foolishness than it does anything else.
The thing about con men like this guy is that they prove that Goebbels' theory of "the big lie" was, if anything, understated. Because if you say something enough times, not only will others believe it, but you will too. And so David Koresh began to believe that he was the Lamb of God and Castaneda probably began to believe his own raft of shit. Having converted themselves, their dogma becomes much more dangerous, since their devoted followers sense their dedication and become willing to do literally anything to make certain that they will receive their final reward.
This is how compounds end up in flames, people end up in nike sneakers on a bed or lying dead and decaying in the desert. So please spare me the self-indugent ramblings of ex-hippies who don't like to see one their heros de-mystified. The man was a fraud and (directly or indirectly) responsible for the death of others. Deal with it and get on with your life.
-
Thanks, Harrington...
For stealing everything I planned to say, and saying it better.
-
Is truth stranger than fiction?
It's hard to read the titles of Castaneda's books and not recognize that they were about an evolving journey, distinctive to the writer, as well as the individual reader. Consequently, one should be careful not to generalize their particular conclusions to his larger readership. Perhaps too much weight is placed on the "non-fiction" designation, considering that our ability to define reality is blurred at best. Flip the coin and think about all those works that are defined as "fiction". How many of us have found the truth lurking there? As for the aftermath of the sixties and early seventies - non of us are immune, perhaps least of all, Castaneda. If he was corrupted by the large scale impact of his ideas, it doesn't necessarily mean that the kernel of what he was saying was wrong. His personal story is not mine. But some of what he had to say holds meaning for all of us. One only need look at the hedonistic here and now and the threadbare nature of our ecology to realize that truth is stranger than fiction and that our death does stalk us. We would all do well to live impeccably, even if Castaneda did not.