[Castaneda's first] three volumes of field reports sold millions of copies coast to coast and around the world. That's unusual.

Don Juan, the mystical old Mexican Indian, was an imaginary person. That's extraordinary.

"Is it possible that these books are nonfiction?" exclaimed Joyce Carol Oates [see excerpt above]. Novelists Oates and William Kennedy and science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon were quick to recognize Castaneda as a fellow story teller.

Carlos (as I call the young anthropologist in the story told by Castaneda) goes to Arizona to learn how the Indians use peyote but to his utter amazement is chosen by the imperious don Juan … to become "a man of knowledge," which means he will after long and arduous training enter "a separate reality" and see the essence of the world as mystics do. Published during the psychedelic years, The Teachings of Don Juan and A Separate Reality recount...