SOURCE: "Desert Meditation, or Back Home to L.A.," in Christian Science Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 50, January 24, 1973, p. 13.

[In the following review of Journey to Ixtlan, Howes, an English professor at Northeastern University, states that the least satisfying part of this account is Castaneda's description of psychedelic experiences.]

What happens when an inquisitive student of anthropology named Carlos Castaneda meets a wise old Yaqui Indian sorcerer? What happens when an ardent scholar, a compulsive taker of notes, bumps into a true sage, an elderly vigorous man of power named don Juan, who lives alone on the edge of a desert somewhere in southwestern U.S.A.?

Answer: the young man becomes the sorcerer's apprentice. Journey to Ixtlan is the story of that apprenticeship.

Billed as anthropology, and subtitled The Lessons of Don Juan, Journey reads nevertheless like a novel. Its classic form is the tale of initiation—Huckleberry Finn...