Sunday, February 24, 1974 14 THE MICHIGAN DAILY THE MICHIGAN DAILY Sunday, February 24, 1974" BOOKS ON THE ROAD MORE CASTANEDA Coping with mystical realities: An apprenticeship to Don Juan JOURNEY TO IXTAN: THE LESSONS OF DAN JUAN. By Carlos Castenada. New York:, Touchstone paperback. 315 pages, $2.95. By MARNIE HEYN C ARLOS CASTENADA is an an- thropologist who went to Mexico is 1961 in search of na-r tive folklore about the psych- tropic plants which some Indians use in religious ceremonies. Instead of folklore, he found don Juan Matus, a Yaqui sorcer- er - a 'man of knowledge," as he describes himself - and em- barked on a ten year journey as a sorcerer's appreatica that ul- timately altered his conception of reality, and of his life. Journey to Ixtlan: The lessons of Don Juan is Castenada's third book drawn from hsi experienc- es with don Juan, but it would be a mistake to assume that each work is simply a rehash of tha earlier narratives. Reading the three books sequentially and com- paring their style and content vs its own lesson in human growh and maturation. In his introduction, Castenada explains that his earlier interpre- tation of don Juan's reality is mistaken: while he thought den Juan was talking about drugs and associated states of twisted consciousness, don Juan was in fact teaching him a visionary method and the path of a war- rior. Therefore, Part I of Journ- ey to Ixtlan comprises his field notes on don Juan's lessons in "stopping the world," and Part II is Castenada's description of the events surrounding his awn visionary experience. " TOPPING TIE world" is f den Juan's name for the pro- cess of divesting ones' self of the descriptions and perceptions of ordinary reality which one is socialized to accept from birth, and which bind people together into societies. If one is to "see" - other perceptions and reali- ties - it is necessary to set aside, and possibly leave behind, the only reality that is accepted and understood. derstanding of the world, but goes beyond it into almost ar- cane conceptions. Don Juan's reality gradually emerges as one which is both thoroughly practical and ulti- mately apocalyptic: he can per- form daily chores wit almost heroic nonchalance, and he can consult his death as a friendly counselor and be ready to meet him at any time. He explains to .Castenada that this is becuase he "lives as a warrior," and instructs him in that manner: ". .. A warrior is an impecable hunter thit hunts power. If he succeeds in h i s hunting he can be a man of knowledge." THE TITLE Journey to Ixtlan comes from an anecdote and metaphor told to Castenada by don Genaro, a friend of don Juan and a fellow sorceaer wbo assisted him in Castenada'a in- struction. Don Genaro told of his first encounter with his ally (an initially hostile source of power who must be conquered and won over before one can become a man of knowledge), of his sub- sequent disorientation, of his at- tempt to return home to Ixtlan, and of his later travels and the beings he encountered. "I was still numb from my encounter with the ally. (iwanted to get mad at the ally or at the phantoms (people who are "no t real") but somehow I couldn't get angry like I used to, so I gave up trying. "Then I wanted to get sad but I couldn't, so Ig-ave up on that too. "Suddenly I realized that I had an ally and that there was noth- ing the phantoms could do to me. "There was no final outcome to my journey. There will never be any final outcome. I am still on my way to Ixtlan . . . I will never reach Ixtlan . . . Nothing is the same any longer." PERHAPS NONE of Casten- ada's realizations are .start- ingly new. Yet his writing is fresh and intense, and don Juan is an edifying companion. Jour- ney to Ixtlan is a hypnotic ex- perience, and a joyous and com- passionate expansion of human horizons. wake who kisses (for satisfaction) matters tonight. not alone hap py .com pan y says sure, let go. high and laughing inside saes let be. surely. but (ah...) tonight smiling you, absent still founding heart inemory, mhatter. satisfaction is never, never you 1n0W. letting go, letting be matter still kisses. but (ah . . .) you, absent still matter. -Cynthia Yockey Lonesome traveler: The short, KEROUAC: A BIOGRAPHY. By Ann Charters. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 417 pages. $7.95. By LAURA BERMAN J ACK KEROUAC enjoyed a brief period of fame after On the Road was published in 1957. From there, his reputation de- clined with the publication of every book that followed. Then, suddenly, in the mid-Sixties, a full Kerouac revival got under- way. Everyone in high school and college was reading him; he became a symbol for a decade. Prophet, seer and an original hippie, Kerouac's exuberant vis- ion of America was in harmony with the idealism of a nation's youth out to change the world. He wasn't a great writer - that was obvious - but when he wrote you knew he hadn't lost his sense of wonder nor his belief that man can triumph against all odds. It was Kerouac who came charging down the mountain in the Dharma Bums at breakneck speed, Kerouac who yelled in his hurtling descent that y o u can't fall off a mountain. And if a mountain can't beat vou, what can? On the Road inspired a lot of hitchikers to make their o w n search for America. If you read the novel, it wasn't easy to for- get the image of Dean Moriar-- ty burning up the hignway in a borrowed Cadillac. Kerouac's characters weren't farticularly productive people - they didn't do much besides smoke dope, write poetry, make love and drive fast. But in those cross-aount-y driving marathons, Kerouac made us feel the sheer expanse and possibility of America. He expressed what Ann Charcers calls "the feeling that at some point something had been to- gether, that there was a spec'al vision we all shared, a romantic ideal that called on the road just ahead." In reality, Kerouac was f a r from the romantic figures of hi-3 novels. In Ann Charter's excel- lent biography, Kerouac emerges as a lonely, almost pathetic, fig- ure. We see him as the writer who failed to achieve lasting suc- sad journey of Jack Kerouac A THERAPIST'S ACCOUNT Psychiatry: A flippant, provocative tale The inclusion of a poem each week becomes a books page feature beginning to- day. We invite submissions from anyone in the local community. Entries, which become the property of The Daily, should be typed and cannot exceed 30 lines. They should be left in the books mailbox on the sec- ond floor of The Daily, 420 Maynard. In Part I, don Juan gives Cas- tenada detailed and graphic in- structions for cutting loose from ordinary interpretations and lo- gical reality. These are diffi- cult tasks for anyone (perhaps more so for Castenada, in spite of - or possibly because of -- his training as an anthropolo- gist), and Castenada gives a lucid and eloquent account of the fear, confusion, and annoy- ance that people often feel when encountering a conscious -ers that ,not only includes their own un- THE MAKING OF A PSY- CHIATRIST By David S. Viscott, M.D. New York: Fawcettl Crest paperback. 416 pages, $1.75. By DAN BORUS ON THE COVER of David Vis- cott's The Making of a Psychiatrist, the publisher has included a come-on which in- forms the reader that this book reads like a novel, a novel in which the author tells all. It does, and that is the event- ual failing of the book. Viscott cannot decide whether he's writ- ing a fictional or non-fictional account. As a result he incorpor- ates conventions of both forms and the eventual result is to make the book a bit confusing. It is not hard to understand why the book was written. Des- pite the correlation between one's education and one's inter- est in psychiatry, the popular BOWMAR CALC ULATORS The Bowmar Calculators ~ r.. . notion still holds that psychiatry is not really a science or an art, but a jargon which confuses rather than alleviates psycholog- ical problems. Opponents of the profession point to the inexactness of the diagnoses, the mecurial nature of the cure, and even the ad- hominem argument that psychia- trists were usually more neuro- tic than the patients they treat. EVEN SO, psychiatry is still heavily counted upon to per- form services for those in psy- chological need, as anyone who has spent a year or two in a college dorm will testify. But, as one psychiatrist point- ed out to. me, one can't shop around for a shrink the way one shops for a good pair of pants. It takes a good deal more subtlty since the patient may not initi- ally like or understand what he is 'buying', especially since the psychodynamics of any individ- ual are incredibly complex - and different. By the same token, one can't understand psychiatry by read- ing a book, although reading can help alleviate some forms of anxiety. Like its predecessor, the best- selling Fifty Minute Hour, which could have easily been subtitled 'True Romances in the Fertile Fields of Freud', The Making of a Psychiatrist operates on the sensational and the splashy to make its points. What emerges is a 416 page opus which is ex- tremely readable, but also ex- tremely flippant. VISCOTT EXPLAINS this flip- pancy by informing the read- er on the very first page that his sarcasm is a cover for his in- ability to be honest with his feel- ings. That's a truth, but it is an- extremely self-serving and shal- low truth. Despite his acknowledgement of this weakness; Viscott persists in drowning the reader with his own good wit and charm; an en- tertaining show-off. This tactic will do one of two things: either you'll agree that psychiatrists are human like the rest of us, or you'll believe that they aren't serious about pa- tients' problems behind their backs. Viscott's tendency to show off is evident throughout. A casual reading will give the impression that our learned essayist has cured almost everyone he met at Union Hospital. He's always hav- ing success, making gains where analysts fear to tread, and gen- erally endearing himself to all but the most extreme of castrat- ing women. Even his failures in the state hospital make him come out in a positive light. S0 WHAT Viscott is writing is not a memoir of the average psychiatrist, because the aver- age psychiatrist has had more failures than he nor an explana- tion of the craft, but rather a subtle self - aggrandizement. Psychiatry, while certainly not a hit-or-miss proposition, does not have a 100 per cent cure rate. Even though Viscott in- cludes a disclaimer, with the standard acknowledgement, that spontaneous remissions take place; and even though he dis- cusses his own insecurities and doubts, the reader is still capti- vated by his successes. Viscott's inability to capture his experiencesafictionally or non-fictionally means that the book is filled with stock heavies: the psychoanalytic student who is so rigid in his ideas he can't decide anything unless Freud has written about it (if not Freud, Karl Abraham will do in a pinch), the quack who simply cannot or will not handle pa- tients, and the doctors who fall cess in his lifetime, the Beat Gen- eration member who'seemed to be always on the periphery, the man whose confused felings about his sexuality led him through two short.marriages and a few meaningless affairs, but finally, always back to hi mth- er. BORN IN Lowell, Mass. in 1922, Jack Kerouac was the son of French-Canadien workning clas parents. Always a dreamer and a loner, Kerouac had an unevent- ful boyhood, went to Coiunib a and then to the Navy. Throug a girlfriend he met Allen Gins- berg, William Burroughs and oth- er local intellectuals who were experimenting with writing and drugs. Charters' thorough, always com- passionate, account of Kerouac's life also includes compelling por- traits of the other influentialfig- ures of the "beats": -William Burroughs, Harvard drop-out and heir to the office machine fortune. He fed Kerouac and friends the steak provided by his trust fund, wrote Naked Lunch, and accidentally killed his wife by shooting her in the head while playing William Tel. -Allen Ginsberg, one o Kerou- ac's closest friends, poet, radi- cal and Jewish Buddist. BUT KEROUAC was never a member of the "inner cir- cle" of the group. He liked to remain enigmatic, aloof and su- perior. "He was," Charters writ- es, "dedicated to the idea of being different and legendary even among his closest friends." Charters debunks a common myth about the book in her bio- graphy. Kerouac often said he wrote it in three weeks. Actual- ly, he worked on it and shelved it unfinished until an en'husias- tic, wildly-written letter f r o m Neal Cassady transformed Kero- nac's writing style. He discover- ed "spontaneous prose" Kerouac then sat down and rewrote On the Road in three weeks on one continuous roll of teletype paper. Finally, when his publisher re- fused the manuscript, Kerua worked on it another five years before it was finally published in 1957. When the novel' came out,, It received immediate eritcal ac- claim and the media seized upon Kerouac as a spokesman for the Beats. He hardly qualified. "He always looked like the serious t- shirted younger brother of -the others," said one beat poet; he was more traditional and con- servative than his friends. Al- though he was briefly interest- ed in Buddhism, he retiained a devout Catholic all his life. Gins- berg claimed Rimbaud and Bau- delaire as his spiritual fathets; Kerouac culled his majir :nflu- ences from the American main- stream: Hemingway, Wolfe and Saroyan. Even the sexnal adven- tures in his work were usuall! not his own; and until the end of his life, his attitude toward sex was confused and Catholic. In the later years of his life, Kerou- ac disowned the Ameican coun- ter-culture - politically, he hsd become a conservative. Y 1964, Charters says, Kerou- ac's prose had changed, los- ing its energy and muscle. He left his friends and returned to Lowell to live with his mother. Occasionally, young fans would seek him out and invarialv be disappointed by the sight of a cult hero turned dissipated, 45- year-old alcoholic. He died with- out fanfare in 1969. Charters' eulogy is simple: "The images he cast in his books were so dif- ferent from the reality of ,the man himself." have a new low price. Come on in and try them out. WHY YOU SHOULD BUY FROM THE CELLAR: 1. LOW PRICES 2. GREAT SELECTION 3. WARRANTY PROTECTION-If your calculator should need a warranty repair, the Cellar will handle the ship- ping and give you a loaner. the university cellar in the basement of the Michigan Union 769-7940 THE UNIVERSITY ACTIVITIES CENTER Which presently sponsors DAYSTAR CONCERTS FUTURE WORLDS CHARTER FLIGHTS MEDIATRICS FILMS MUSKET SOPH SHOW AND MANY OTHER ACTIVITIES is now receiving petitions for next year's Four Senior Officers: I a I asleep while a patient is talk- ing. But while The Making of a Psychiatrist is not Tender is the Night, it does have some valu- able points for the reader who is troubled and thinking of en- tering therapy, or for the reader who is simply curious as what therapy is like. His techniques section is re- warding because it is simple, but not simplistic. He dispells the jargon, which is usually a handicap, and dem- onstrates some of the tools of the profession. For those who have spent some time in therapy, with a competent therapist, the recognitions are instantaneous. In the last chapter, Viscott of- fers some "free" advice to pa- tientssinpsychotherapy, and it has a value for those concerned about the process. Some of his suggestions are valuable to the perplexed, but others, such as his suggestion that the patient tell all even when he doesn't feel like it, are foolish. The re- sistance to therapy that every patient has felt cannot be so easily rationalized. F IS that advice which forces one to conclude that "free" isn't all it's cracked up to be... Dan I3orus fancies himself "a student at the university", in ad- dition to his previous editorial responsibilities at The Daily. President Chief Financial Officer Co'rdinating Vice President Public Relations Vice President and next year's producer of Soph Show U "REPORT FROM BANGLADESH 1974" U ___________ WED. and THUR. Feb. 27 and 28 The hills are alive with- --as M l / I.rd )REz ....-- I qtt, 1, M1 S 1 Petitions may be picked up in the U.A.C. Offices, 2nd floor, Michigan Union, and must be returned by Monday, March 11. For further information, drop by the office or call 763-1107 --. THE SMUS 2j TRAVEL PRESENTS: EUROPE SUMMER yFLIGHTS 0 all flights round-trip from Detroit to Frankfurt, Germany S May 1-May 23. .. $254.00 May 22-June 20 .. $274.00* June 20-Aug. 15 . $274. 00' SUNDAY, FEB. 2477: 0 P.M. ECUMENICAL CAMPUS CENTER SPEAKER: WARREN DAY, Director of the Center for Peace, East Lansing. Mr. Day, formerly director of the International Volun- tary Service Program in Bangladesh, returned last week from a visit to Bangladesh. He will report on current conditions there, illustrating his presentation with sides. EVERYONE IS WELCOME! Sponsored by: The Ecumencal Campus Center Filing Open for Rackham Student Government Positions, POSITIONS OPEN: President, Vice President (must run as slate) 15 Executive Board representatives-2 from Biological and Health Sciences, 3 from Physical Sciences and Engineering, 3 from Social Sciences, 3 from Humanities, 4 from Education LENGTH OF TERM: One Year from Election ELIGIBLE: Any student now enrolled in Rackham School of Gradu- ate Studies. FILING DEADLINE: 4:00 P.M. Thursday, March 21, 1974. How to File: Simply write down your name, address, phone number, Department or Program, and the office for which you wish to run. Mail this information to: RSG, 2006 Rackham A.G.P. SPEED/EFFECTIVENESS READING COURSE (offered nationally) SPONSORED IN ANN ARBOR by LOGOS BOOKSTORE "Double Your Speed Or Your Money Refunded" 3 TWO-HOUR SESSIONS 7:00-9:00 p.m.-Feb.27, March 6, 11 COST $36.00 Registration Deadline Feb. 26 LOGOS BOOKSTORE 761-7177 1205 S. University . OF Winner of 4 Academy INCLUDING BEST PICTUI Financial Aid Applications FOR Spring-Summer Term I 11