Smart, thoughtful — and all too timely ... It’s definitive, exhaustive — sometimes to a fault. We learn the names and pseudonyms of dozens of minor figures in Castaneda’s life, inconsequential dates, endless details of banal encounters; we go down too many digressive, speculative historical and philosophical rabbit holes ... Still, with an American president’s adherents so cultlike (and even pro-psychedelics!), American Trickster is illuminating and relevant.
American Trickster, at more than 600 pages, is at once more information about Castaneda than any reader needs, and not nearly enough ... Perhaps a book that couched Castaneda’s story more deeply in the context of the ’70s counterculture and the nature of cults past and present would make his story clearer. But perhaps not — his tale is inevitably something to wonder at, evidence of humans’ capacity to spin a yarn that flatters our egos and urge to understand our spiritual selves, and to buy into what’s spun.
Massive but well-worth-reading ... To write American Trickster, Marshall visited Cajamarca twice, interviewed hundreds of people, and referenced countless books and articles. Their writing style, with its plethora of colons and sentence fragments, sometimes irritated me, and one gets bogged down in details of phenomenology and the ever-shifting names of cult members ... But the book as a whole overwhelms and provokes in a good way.
Illuminates author Carlos Castaneda’s life and the controversy over the truthfulness of his books ... The persuasive biography of an archetypal confidence man—a quintessential American tale.
An extensive biography that seeks to elucidate the mind and work of a truly enigmatic figure ... Ru Marshall has done an outstanding job in exploring the man, the myth, and the tragic stories of those whose loyalty often clouded their better judgment.
Marshall combines a colorful account of Castaneda’s sly triumphs with shrewd analysis of the toxic psychodramas by which he overawed his followers ... In the portrait that emerges, Castaneda appears as captivating as Don Juan himself—a principal architect, for all his chicanery, of modern pop spirituality. This enthralls.
Marshall’s voice and presence is strong all the way through the book, particularly in the myriad David Foster Wallace-style footnotes ... A project of epic proportions, pulled off with remarkable élan.
