Petrushevski Iliya
Castaneda by Cristophe Bourseiller,I (Castaneda, the truth about the lie /La Vérité du mensonge/, Éditions du Rocher ’06) Very interesting and intriguing book, but it seems that spiritual and metaphysical clues of Castaneda’s shamanic teaching remain beyond this kind of journalistic approach. The author at the begging of this book shortly informs as that he starts with an affirmative approach towards one slightly forgiven opus with impulse of renewing - as a kind of posthumous epistolary with an epitome that “there are still people who reads you...”. But it seems that this kind of approach has not quite clearly differentiated status and often in the book shows hesitation between open and row discrediting (methodical and factual as well) and between permanent fascination being present though all of the work. As genre it is biographical book with a strong presence of subgenre researching and documentary, which occasionally in flashes turns out in to a short polemic discourses, thus often leaning on some methodical approaches of the XX century and rarely with a personal evaluation are being revaluated some of the attitudes of Castaneda by many aspects unusual writing. According the author (C. B.) this is a fist full
biography of Carlos Castaneda’s creative and life way of whom there is a very vast literature, although that attitude is delicate by itself regarding the enormously big index of works about this fruitful author who in his time of creative work had awaken up avalanche of suspicions and polemics. The tile it self “....The truth abut the lie” is (or implies) ultra pretentiousness before all just because of the strictly oppositional and sharp
division of those two categories, which division might be taken only just as a abstract principle; it would have been quite different or (more flexible) if the title was “...the truth and the lie”, but as it is presented makes an impression that the truth is on one side and the lie is on the other side which in concrete life occasions can never be found because in reality those are not separated but are always both mixed.