TO MY ERASILLAN FaIEADS: In the past four months 1 have re-uritten and significantly revised ‘and upgraded the material originally to be presented ag lectures in Alo de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Basilia, and made the results part of « new sanusoript i an preparing for eventual publication, [t seemed to ms that ‘the versions T had originally gent were too self-iavolved and abstract to Conminieate succesefully with an auiience, evan one of anthrpologist. ‘Though T realize that tino is short, and tine for translation say nos be forthcoming, I value clear communieati-n above all, and an hereby have these chapters seannéd and sent to your 2. A Dodge City Full of wittgensteins (so) 3. Mother House at itla (Sao Paulo) 4, Revelations of a Daribi Land-Shanan (trasilia) The lecture Kinsbipor Ch iginslly planned for Florencie wii be presented, and the “The Ches. Of Kinship and the ie mo change in thet cass, Tam also including a short art: be used with photo-presentati one. Je "Lost horizons At Karimui,” vbich may with best wishes, Roy WagnerPrologue: Creation Of The Pseudo-Event ‘The tern "grifter" is American undervorld clang for the elite type of wrtists, Intuitively, at Jeast, it con conertist vio preys on other cone notes # suavely underdetersined form of graft via a shortening of the vovel sound, a2 one aight sey the tera "grip! is contracted fron "grope.* It ts, weutral, and ite best exenplification for perhaps obvious reasons, gende would be the Chicago undervorld maven Gabndorf, played ty Paul Newman oppo- site to Hobert Redford in the auerd winning fila The Stine. 'senal of the conartiat is the cree One of the greatest tricks in the tion of the peeudo-event, something that never happened in the way it seened ‘to happen because in the end it never even agemed to happen that wey. (You've got to think of this definition for a witle before St begins to make sense to ‘you, and by that tine 4¢'s too late; basically, that's what happens to the 8 very sinple: you distract the victim ty forcing tor ("atch the han: wetin, too) The procedure ‘them to pay an alintoo-cloge attention to the perpetz the or break-ineconténusty of hend 4s quicker then the eye"), cresting an ‘apa thelr menory (Wwstch the distraction, the distraction is quicker than the event"), so that in the end the victim 4s forced to £111 the inpasse in their mexory ith fentesy projections that are all the nore real for the fact thet other wise the tine in between vould be totally unaccounted for, fn almost infinite number of variations on this baste schene, There whieh even an ordinary con-person can sviftly and easily adapt to any occasion, Han jargon, "stooled to the rogue." One of provided they are, in the DickJ once knev vho, charged with the task of the best vas devised ty an invents 3 office conpensating for the slomese of the elevators in a nevily complete building, sizply instelled girrorg in the lobbies. People, he reasoned (corre Ay, it seme), vould much rather contenplate their ovn reflections in « nirror than vorry abeut being lete for an appointeent. In that vey the standard practice ("participant observation") of the enthree pological fleldvorker is wach nore like the role of Kobert Redford in The Sting ‘than nost anthropologists would care to think atout (Match the anthropologist, anaver their questions; the anthropologist {2 mich quicker than your nemories") but of course the staging of pseudomevents vorks both vays at once, and Lt 1s of- ‘ten the indigenous folk, vko vere after all born to this sort of thing, vho cone In nany vays the books of Carlos Castaneda, @ very shrend practioner out aheas binself who is nost often accused of being a fake, necessarily without stipulating exactly hov or vhy (a very generaiized sort of fake will do for nost readers; something very much like staring et your om nage in a aizrer) are the Jome us of the creation of pscudo-evente in anthropological reportage, This either because of or An spite of the fact that Castaneda, like most other anthro pologists, preferred to cist hinself in the role of victim rather than the con artist or perpetrator. For the record, hovever, he was the nost prosperous vic- tim dn the history of the discipline; in @ field where even the beat authors can expect @ run of only a feu thousend, a1) you have to do is sell aflitons, like Castaneda, to decane everybody's eneny. This does not gainsay the fect thet Castaneda's first two books, except for ‘the discussion of hugor in the second, vere tote? mlstakes. Despite their appealte the then-current and ever present enigas of hsllucinogente drug use, never Fesolved #s to its plusees and minuces, these books are explanatory disasters, Helying on thinly disguised “out of body® states and lative Auerican personi« fieatfons like Nescalito, Husito, and The Devil's Weod to £121 the menory exp in the creation of the preudo-event, The Teschings Of Dor Juan sr & Separate elit nerely foreshedor the prodigies disclosed in Journey to Ixtlan, strokes of the grifter's art that would be enough to curl Gi Af be didn't have any. wv readers of these books, and no eritice that Ian avare of, have very siven consideration to the fact that the actions described in the first two bocks fare goterainoug with those described in Joumey to Ixtlan. What this sesns, ‘among other things, 1s that don Juan's attenpt to explain husor as "controlled Folly" (pretending to care about thinge and pretending not te care as tho sides ‘the sane coin) in & Separete Reality, iv best understood as an atteupt to hhusor or patronize Carlos hinself, that 42, create @ paeudo-event out of hie obsession with hallucinogente "allies" and then force hin to project his om ores, The netivednogense fantasies into the Sapaece thus created 4p his jed as a £041 ("controlled folly") for the res) lessons of episodes vere Soumey To Ixtlan, those of pot-doing and stopping the world, exercises that raise the creation of pseudo-events to the level of an all-conprehending episten- ology, and vould sore than make the con-artist's day. Stopping the vorld means essentially that the vorid itself, or at least that microcosm of our experiences that counts as the vorld for most of us, is in itself both subjectively and ob- Jectively © peoudo-event,of perspective alone, and only sation, it tums out, fe a aati the very foolish veuld fail to see the hidden Joker in the deck, In the couree of Journey To Ixtlan don Suan soves Cerlos through & series of peeuto- inost Lnperceptably upon the insight, or "pover event event episodes, closing of stopping the vorld, In every case, the say in which don Juan calls attention to vhat 48 going on (Wvatch the hand, the hand 4s quicker than the eye") provides the filter for vist Carles (and the render) 1s alloved to perceive (*notice! vould be a better vord, since 1t is only vhat one notdces that sticks tn the nesory eftervards). The trick here is thet Uarlos is not really stupid (he 48 actually very bright); he 4s being atupifled. In the definitive instance, vhere "5 car disappear, they take don Juan and don Genaro claim they can make Carlos biz to the spot in the desert vhere he had left {t, parked and locked, but oy Ling attention to themselves-—naking weird and outlandish motions vith their hands and todies--the whole vay. They are confusing or "filtering" his aenory of the events Carlos almost certainly goes see the car exactly where he left it, ‘ut dons not allow binsedf to register the fact in his menory until mich later, hen he hes been persuaded that he Just found the car in « different place, Then he 4s obliged, by his om sense of order, to reproject for hieself » pseudo nenory of having driven the car back to the place where At alveys bad been, Memory, in other vords, is also @ form of hallucination, and since all ve have eft of an ovent after it happens--end even while dt 4s banpening--te the nesory, it follove thet the mesory of the event 1s easily reversed on itself afterward, ar for At. fand none the wiCastaneda as such as acknovledges this in hie om record of the event, tervard (Joumey Te Ixtlan, p. 239): In ay experience vith don Juan I hed noticed thet in such states one ie dn composed i0ng capable of keeping 8 consistent mental record of the rascege of tine, there hhad nover beon an enduring order, in matters of passage