Carlos Castaneda, Cons & Hoaxes

I've been excited to see The Hoax, the new film by Lasse Hallstrom on conman/writer Clifford Irving, who I was first exposed to through Orson Welles' fantastic fake of a documentary, F for Fake. In looking for information of the film, in wide release tomorrow, I ran across this article on Carlos Castaneda and his own series of literary hoaxes that have taken on a life of their own. To lead in my viewing of the movie this weekend (most likely), I will put up a short series of posts about some fairly modern hoaxes that are particularly good.

I can't really say anything about Castaneda that isn't detailed in the article, but I do find it interesting how the idea of using lies to get to a supposed "greater truth" keeps coming back. We've seen it recently with James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces, with Werner Herzog's idea of the "ecstatic truth" in his documentaries, most visibly Grizzly Man, and with our own government's excuses for Saddam Hussein's supposed involvment in 9/11. While I am not discussing the merits of said theory, I will say that, in all of the above cases, the true reasons for the lies are more about money, fame, and special interest than about greater truths. What interests me about Castaneda is not the validity of his books which, despite the fact that Simon & Schuster still classifies his work as non-fiction, are absurd, but the fact that you can still pay $100 and go to a seminar to learn to pass ethereal energy through your body led by a group of women called "The Witches" who disappeared nearly ten years ago but who attend every seminar. Can I see them? No I cannot. This is because they "want this dream to take wing" and they hang out backstage instead. Between the above aricle and the website of Cleargreen, the corporation that puts it all on, all that remains to be said is that if you can say something with enough conviction, you'll get people to pay you for it.