A Yankee Way of Knowledge: Thoughts on Carlos Castaneda

As a student of Latin American Literature Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, was a little outside what I am used to, though I enjoy anything that talks about Mexico and the Southwest. I read it because any time I mention Magical Realism or the Marvellous Real someone seems to bring up Castaneda.  I’m not sure why this particular book has been read by so many people. They were right that I would like it, but wrong about why. The story is great, but it shouldn’t be compared to works by Juan Rulfo or Alejo Carpentier.

The book is unique in its perspective and fascinating in an ethno-fiction kind of way. It teaches a great deal about brujería with an almost scientific tongue. I can see how Castaneda’s detail and factual approach would make a newcomer to the dynamic world of altered realities more comfortable. It does not, however, fit in well with Latin American authors who use the fantastic, other worlds, or altered states in their writing. There are many differences, but two is sufficient for this casual review.

First, there is a kind of value judgment. The narrator commits to the teachings of Don Juan and experiences the extraordinary, but he remains grounded in a singular reality. Though the narrator becomes a part of something new and different his perspective is fairly static; you can almost feel an ethnographer’s presence.

Second, the doubt experienced by the reader is not used as you would expect in a fantastic work from the Latin American tradition. Your faith in the narrator’s perspective is not used against you in the end. You are fairly sure of what has actually happened, or at least sure that the narrator did not really turn into an animal. Rather than creating a new reality from two incongruent ones, you glimpse alternative ways of understanding the same experience.

This alternative understanding is one of Castaneda’s strengths. He gives us an intellectual dilemma and a philosophical debate rather than a vision to try and interpret or synthesize. If you rely on his ethnographic descriptions and understand his experiences only as hallucinations, you are missing the point. The real action occurs in the conversations he has with Don Juan. For this reason it would be more fruitful to compare Castaneda’s work in The Teachings of Don Juan to Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nacío la conciencia and other works dealing with testimony. El Hablador by Mario Vargas Llosa might even be a more appropriate comparison.

In short, I’ll definitely read another one of Castaneda’s wonderful books, but I won’t expect the same things from it.