PARTISAN REVIEW
DON JUAN ON HIGH
PR:
Vincent Crapanzano's review of
the works of Carlos Castaneda
failed, in this reader's opinion, to
address itself to all but the most
superficial aspects of Castaneda's
relationship with the sorcerer, Juan
Matus. What Castaneda is about was
rendered still more obscure by the
omnibus discussion in the same re–
view of Turnbull's works on the
Pygmies and the Ik of Africa -–
"journeys without" -- alongside
Castaneda's
"journey
within."
These anthropological encounters
are as unlike one another as a de–
tailed case history by an outside
observer versus a personal diary of
psychoanalytic immersion, a grap–
pling with sometimes terrifying,
sometimes ecstatic perceptions in
the context of an ambiguous trans–
ference.
From a purely formal point of
view Crapanzano's criticism of
Castaneda's exploitation of the re–
lationship through repetitive report–
age extending soon into a fourth
volume is
well taken. That
Castaneda to this day has not com–
pleted the public processing of per–
sonal events experienced
in
the
world of don Juan is, however,
hardly surprising.
Of the sorcerer the reviewer com–
plains, "We know don Juan only as
Castaneda does -- not in fact, of
course, but in the retrospective con–
sciousness of a storyteller." This
assertion follows an extensive dis–
cussion of the trickster-transformer
qualities of don Juan (as well as his
colleague, don Genaro) and the
element of joke in Castaneda's pre–
dicament -- meaning, presumably,
the latter's dependence on don
161
Juan. But even without first-person
revelations by don Juan we do
know that he refused to accept
monetary payment for his tutelage
of Castaneda, and that Castaneda's
first experience with Mescalito
(peyote) was interpreted by the
sorcerer as a positive sign that
Castaneda should be introduced, as
don Juan's "divine" successor, into
general mysteries known only to
sorcerers and specific powers in his
personal command. In short, we
know that don Juan, an old man,
looked upon Castaneda as his
spiritual son and that he expended
enormous effort to transmit his
knowledge.
That don Juan even attempted to
help Castaneda "work through" -–
in psychoanalytic parlance
Castaneda's resistance to his own
father as an obstacle to his recep–
tivity to the sorcerer's teachings is
brillian tIy exemplified in a chapter
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