Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!NPRDC.ARPA!hartung From: hartung@NPRDC.ARPA (Jeff Hartung) Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: Carlos Castaneda Message-ID: <19880718041814.6.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: 18 Jul 88 04:18:00 GMT Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 39 Approved: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu To: comp-ai-digest@ucsd.edu Path: nprdc!hartung From: Jeff Hartung Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: Carlos Castaneda Date: Tue, 12 Jul 88 15:08 EDT References: <19880712045507.0.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Sender: news@nprdc.arpa Reply-To: Jeff Hartung Organization: Navy Personnel R&D Center, San Diego Lines: 26 In a previous article, James J. Lippard writes: > I would like to advise caution in reading these works, and recommend a few >books which are highly skeptical of Castaneda. These works present evidence >that Castaneda's "Don Juan" writings are neither autobiographical nor valid >ethnography. E.N. Anderson, then associate professor of anthropology at UCLA >(where Castaneda received his doctorate), wrote (in The Zetetic, Fall/Winter >1977, p. 122) that "de Mille exposed many inconsistencies that prove *either* >that Castaneda was a brilliant fraud *or* that he was an incredibly careless >and sloppy ethnographer in a disorganized department." (He believes the >latter.) >... I noticed that the most recent Casteneda book in the series, "The Fire From Within," was published as a work of fiction, unlike the previous six books. I took this to be a confession that the works were largely fictitous even prior to it. Furthermore, the later books state that what Casteneda believed to be a Yaqui philosophy initially was in fact a view belonging to a small cult of "sorcerers" and not to the Yaqui in general, even if you *do* believe the assertion that the first six books make of being non-fiction. --Jeff Hartung-- ARPA - hartung@nprdc.arpa hartung@sdics.ucsd.edu UUCP - !ucsd!nprdc!hartung !ucsd!sdics!hartung