PARTISAN REVIEW
477
may well be basic to human society but not to man. Society itself may
be
a luxury. This vision could lead to a fascist interpretation. The fact is
that the Ik are a living aggregate of human beings who have been de–
humanized as have thousands of other human beings. They are a prod–
uct of society, of humanity - the game preserve! - and not an ex–
ception to humanity. To argue that their lack of virtue is a sign that
virtue does not necessarily originate in man is as fallacious as to argue,
on the basis of observing the psychotic, that man is not necessarily
possessed of reason. Both the Ik and the psychotic are products of a
pathology, social or individual as the case may be. They are not neces–
sarily without humanity. They have been deprived of their humanity.
Turnbull has inadvertently turned the valid argument on its head. He
has, in making the Ik an allegory for modern man, released modern man
from the responsibility that is his.
It is difficult to write about the Castaneda trilogy, for one is never
quite sure whether one is writing about what Castaneda has written
or about what has been said by critics, devotees, and countless un–
committed readers. Since
The Teachings of Don Juan
was first pub–
lished in 1968 by the University of California Press, Castaneda and his
Indian mentor, Juan Matus, have become cult figures. The books, at
first underground successes, are now on the best seller list.
The Teach–
ings
sells at the rate of 16,000 copies a week. Castaneda's works have
been extensively reviewed and translated. They have been parodied,
by Calvin Tomkins in
The New Yorker,
by Donald Barthelme in
The
New York Times Magazine.
Songs have been dedicated to "Carlos" by
obscure folksingers in basement cafes on the Upper West Side.
Time
has put Castaneda on its cover and attempted to create a Traven-like
mystique around him. Search parties of guru-hungry American youth
comb the province of Sonora in search of don Juan, who as becomes a
sorcerer, prefers total anonymity to the clowning anonymity of his appren–
tice's partial portraits. Doubt is cast on don Juan's very existence. Cas–
taneda has been compared to James Macpherson and don Juan to
Ossian. Critics who do not wish to commit themselves to another
Third
Eye
spoof refer to the trilogy as a novel.
Castaneda's trilogy, soon to be a quartet, has entered the discourse
of the American seventies. It suffers and will continue to suffer the fate
of all texts that enter that discourse. It will be worked up, exploited,
made into a movie, simplified beyond recognition -
Time
has already
summed it up as "how a European rationalist was initiated into the
practice of Indian sorcery" - driven into the ground, forgotten, and
