Scan barcode
A review by brannigan
The Teachings of Don Juan: Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda
3.0
Nobody likes listening to other peoples' dreams. What may seem vividly fascinating to the dreamer is, without fail, shitlessly boring to everyone else. Likewise, I hate dream sequences and narcotic trip accounts in my literature. To me, cryptic dream scenes are most often just lazy filler, hardly ever advance the plot, and surely an only ever appeal to your dickhead mate that you had when you were fourteen who had just discovered Kerouac and keeps half a bottle of SoCo under his bed.
So you can understand my initial aversion to this book, which on first appearances seems to be some sort of weird stoner-journal. But my mate read it and loved it and insisted I read it and love it too and kindly gifted me a copy.
I was pretty impressed with the quality of the writing, to be honest - yes, much of the content is made up either of first-person accounts of crazy trips, but Carlos' writing has this academic clarity that keeps these recounts fresh. This is carried over in his reconstructed dialogue with don Juan, which always seems to follow a calm Socratic question-and-answer structure quickly becomes hypnotic in itself.
But for all the trips and hallucinogen-hunting, the main point of this book is a meeting of worlds. This is a clash of civilisations in microcosm - Carlos' rational, curious and thoroughly Westernised worldview coming into (often frustating) contact with don Juan's world of Yaqui sorcery, with its own distinct metaphysics and internal logic.
But then, we come to the prickly issue of the book's veracity. I have subsequently read that it's probably that Castaneda made the whole thing up. To be fair, it doesn't read like any Master's thesis I've ever come across before. This bothered me at first, but on reflection, I realise it's pretty irrelevant. Look at it from a meta perspective: this is a book in which the main protagonist sets out on a journey of new knowledge that forces him to question the very meaning of truth itself. The reader goes through the same experience, with the book as a vector for new truths. So whether it is read as allegory, fiction, non-fiction, straight-up anthropological account - the message remains the same.
Bit weird, maybe a bit pretentious, but opens the eyes a few degrees wider. Three thumbs up.
So you can understand my initial aversion to this book, which on first appearances seems to be some sort of weird stoner-journal. But my mate read it and loved it and insisted I read it and love it too and kindly gifted me a copy.
I was pretty impressed with the quality of the writing, to be honest - yes, much of the content is made up either of first-person accounts of crazy trips, but Carlos' writing has this academic clarity that keeps these recounts fresh. This is carried over in his reconstructed dialogue with don Juan, which always seems to follow a calm Socratic question-and-answer structure quickly becomes hypnotic in itself.
But for all the trips and hallucinogen-hunting, the main point of this book is a meeting of worlds. This is a clash of civilisations in microcosm - Carlos' rational, curious and thoroughly Westernised worldview coming into (often frustating) contact with don Juan's world of Yaqui sorcery, with its own distinct metaphysics and internal logic.
But then, we come to the prickly issue of the book's veracity. I have subsequently read that it's probably that Castaneda made the whole thing up. To be fair, it doesn't read like any Master's thesis I've ever come across before. This bothered me at first, but on reflection, I realise it's pretty irrelevant. Look at it from a meta perspective: this is a book in which the main protagonist sets out on a journey of new knowledge that forces him to question the very meaning of truth itself. The reader goes through the same experience, with the book as a vector for new truths. So whether it is read as allegory, fiction, non-fiction, straight-up anthropological account - the message remains the same.
Bit weird, maybe a bit pretentious, but opens the eyes a few degrees wider. Three thumbs up.