by Ernest Hogan
I can’t ignore Carlos Castaneda. Not only was he a bestselling author from the Latinoid Continuum, a big influence on pop culture (the Force in Star Wars is based on power), and a lot of scifiistas. He also encroaches on my territory. So when I heard about Ru Marshall’s American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda, I knew I had to read and review it.
It’s a thick one and it took me a while, mostly because it kept giving me a lot to think about. I’d read a little, and have to stop and let my brain chew on the chunks of weird shit.
And what weird shit . . .
Telling women his semen would instantly give them shamanistic power. Having another man impregnate his wife so he could have a blond son (he was el Negro of his family). His “I am in Peru or Mexico" gag. Immortality. Travel to other dimensions . . .
I had always thought Hunter S. Thompson summed him up in a letter to Oscar Zeta Acosta: “Very weird. The old man really fucked the kid around, eh?” Only now it looks like don Juan didn’t exist. Just who was doing the fucking around here? I have to reconsider my thinking.
It’s that kind of book.
It triggers memories of the world since the Sixties. As the Father of Chicano Science Fiction, I have a unique perspective. Yeah, he wasn’t quite a Chicano in the sense of a Mexican choosing a non-Anglo identity. He was from Peru, but told people he was Brazilian–how do you think people saw him in SoCal? He was cut off (though largely by his own choice) from his family/tribal/ancestral roots, living between cultures, creating his own identity–that’s Chicano.
Also immigrants who can’t fully assimilate tend to become Chicanos.
I read his first two books back in the Seventies largely because they were unavoidable. They were entertaining. I didn’t consider them fiction.
Since I find the idea of a know-it-all telling everyone what to do a turn-off, I went no further. Besides gurus were–and still are–crawling out of the woodwork.
I don’t believe in gurus.
Thank Tezcatlipoca for my built-in bullshit detector!
Also every Yaqui I’ve met who’s heard of him thought he was full of shit.
Sometimes his name comes up when people try to describe my work, though I’m probably closer to Oscar Acosta, but that’s still misleading.
Sometimes it’s easier to let people have their misconceptions of me than to explain my Chicano-is-a-sci-fi-state-of-being reality. It’s not really lying. What do you do when they don’t seem to be capable of seeing the truth?
Maybe I am un poco like him.
Unlike him, I am not a pathological liar. Apparently, he lied constantly. Ru Marshall did an amazing twenty-year job of sorting through this man’s work and utterances, cross referencing it with interviews with people who knew and encountered him and coming up with an epic biography that is, in my humble opinion, more interesting and fantastic than Castaneda's books.
He lived writing fiction in his head all the time. So do I. I am painfully aware of where my real life ends and the sci-fi begins. I have no interest in making others live in my fantasies.
It is impressive that he got anthropologists at UCLA to give him a doctorate for a novel, though the fact that he was a rich, bestselling author probably breached the experiment. It’s not surprising that Simon & Schuster didn’t care any more than his readers did. Fiction? Nonfiction? They only care if the books sell. I’ve heard that there are people who read all his books then start over. They fill a need that I don't have.
I think.
This is all amusing, up until you get to the mysterious deaths and disappearances following his death, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see successful media adaptations. The chapter about the fucking around with Fellini alone would make a wild and crazy movie. In all, it’s a bizarre soap opera dealing with the Great American/Latinoid Spiritual Crisis.
The peoples of the United States of America have a strong lust for spirituality. It’s a product they keep trying to buy. It makes them prey to the manipulations of narcissistic sociopaths. We need to learn to recognize and resist them.
And stop electing them.
Be careful out there.
Ernest Hogan’s New, Improved Ancient Chicano Sci-Fi Wisdom is not a cult. When he finds himself sounding like a guru, he laughs. Or is that the laughter of Tezcatlipoca?
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