Critical Essay | Carl R. V. Brown

Carl R. V. Brown

SOURCE: "'Journey to Ixtlan': Inside the American Indian Oral Tradition," in The Arizona Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 2, Summer, 1976, pp. 138-45.

In the following essay, Brown assesses the embodiment of the Native American oral tradition in don Juan, the Indian sorcerer who figures prominently in Journey to Ixtlan and other books by Carlos Castaneda.

Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian from Sonora, is becoming the Siddhartha of our time. Just as millions read Herman Hesse's Siddhartha during the '50s and '60s and believe that they had found in it an enlightenment and charm lacking in their lives, millions are today fascinated with Carlos Castaneda's don Juan series (Teachings of Don Juan, 1969; A Separate Reality, 1971; Journey to Ixtlan, 1972; and now A Tale of Power, 1974). These books are supposedly the factual record of the apprenticeship of the author, an anthropologist at U.C.L.A., to don Juan, an aging...
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