Letters to the Editor
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What Someone on the Cusp of Generations X and Y Sees in Castaneda
I am 28, and it is interesting to read the other letters about Castaneda and see the generation-grounded or culture-grounded criticisms thrown back and forth. I read Castaneda in college and, while it doesn't surprise me, it never occurred to me that his books were symbols of hippies or counter-culture. The drug use and sexual "rituals" described in the books make that a reasonable assumption in the context of the 60s.
Univ. of Virginia Prof. Roy Wagner taught a course in the school's anthropology department on the Castaneda books, and I knew Professor Wagner's reputation as an interesting mind in anthropology and an eccentric personality. Prof. Wagner taught the course--perhaps hugely tongue-in-cheek--in a very earnest manner. However, this earnest (or maybe just dead-pan) method was not applied so much as to anthropoligic elements, but to storytelling in general, and even some of the mystical phenomena in particular. Wagner first instructed us to skip the entire first section of the first book--to discard Castaneda's own "earnest" anthropolical writing and analysis of culture, ritual, etc. The real storytelling began in the second half of the first book, and continued from there, uninterrupted by any more "serious" anthropology.
At times, Wagner would even state that he had experienced the mystical phenomena discussed in the books, or at least attested to their "reality." But, perhaps because I began the course with a mindset combining jovial adventurism and passive skepticism, it didn't matter to me what Wagner said about the phenomena. I think what Prof. Wagner intended to impart--and certainly what I took--was the more metaphorical meaning of storytelling, using the specific episodes as disguised lessons concerning particular points of broad human philosophical arguments. The books are filled with obvious parallels to the issues tackled by Plato, Neitzche, Heidegger, and the deconstructionists. In a way, I see these books as taking more sophisticated and opaque tacks towards philosophy as recent pop-culture movies like The Matrix, or any Charlie Kaufman work.
For these reasons, I found Castaneda's books to be both illuminating - if only fables - and hellaciously fun reads to boot. Perhaps I give him (and Prof. Wagner) too much credit in assuming that the motives were more sophisticated and intentionnally metaphorical. But that's sort of the point-we take out what we put in, we often see meaning differently, and at the same time, the same symbols may also function universally.
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Semtex
To take a simple example: Would you agree with the idea that it might be fruitful to recognize our own mortality so as to inform the necessity to act as opposed to behaving as though we had all the time in the world? Let me try to relate it to something you may have seen on a T-shirt or in a movie: Carpe Diem - Seize the Day. It's not a big idea or novel idea, but perhaps one you are familiar with and would agree is good advice - a useful concept - perhaps you'd even go so far as to say it's "true."
Castanada's early books contain a similar concept: using death as an advisor. But let us suppose that the chapter on death as an advisor is pure fiction - Don Juan never uttered words about this subject to Carlos. And let's further imagine that Carlos instead got the idea from a book in the library or seeing an early draft of the screenplay for Dead Poets Society. Does any of that effect the usefulness of the concept of seizing the day? Does any of it make the concept "untrue?"
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personal experience of cc
As an anthropology major at UCLA in 1969, I studied ethnomethodology with Carlos Casteneda-who had just published his doctoral dissertation as," The Teachings of Don Juan." I found him credible, professional, and personally intriguing. As he argued, whether one choose to "believe" his reality or not was entirely irrelevant to his reality. That, in fact, was the point, and it proved the zeitgeist for what came to be known as "The Sixties." (And, one might argue, the seminal political events that followed.)
I followed his progress peripherally throughout the seventies, eighties and early nineties as I made my way through the Byzantine social circles of Los Angeles intelligencia/sybaritica. As Casteneda's studies, then teachings, became more and more popularized (commercially successful,) they were necessarily diluted by successive circles of acolytes and wannabes who tried to interpret and translate them to others. Finally he was perceived as a cult figure.
To anyone who doubts his essential message, may I suggest you withhold your commentary until you've spent a summer eating mushrooms in the Sonoran desert then transcribing your notes into a cohesive account of your experience.
For what it's worth, I spent a year in the early seventies cultivating a peyote plant which ultimately furnished me with three decent-sized buttons. Eagerly anticipating their consumption, I set them out on my balcony in the sun to dry. When I looked out an hour or so later, a crow was making off with the last of them.
That is all.
ahansen
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Hear, hear, Harrington!
It was painful to find out that Ray Bradbury, whose books I'd loved when I was young, is a total jerk. But I got over it and discovered other writers to love. I never "bought" Castaneda. It was the age-old story: White guy discovers a Native American Teacher who, instead of imparting widsdom to the young of his own tribe, decides that White Guy is a "Chosen One". A Lakota boyfriend told me that thanks to Castaneda white folks were constantly coming to the reservation and bugging the old folks for "knowledge". The younger Indians would have fun with this--tell the visitors to walk thru town in drag to get in touch with their "Other Side", that kind of thing, until the older folks told them to stop. If Castaneda led people to greater learnings, fine--but keep things in perspective. This guy was a minor L. Ron Hubbard and ought be rlegated to the dustbin of history.
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Who will believe you now, Salon?
After creating a new genre, assholish ignorant takedowns of perceived liberal/left cultural icons with crappy, sensationalistic lead paragraphs to beef up your New Republic bona fides, who will believe you anymore? Not me.
Seriously. You've long ago shot your credibility wad.