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significance—indeed, when Time did a cover piece on him (albeit with a smudged and unrecognizable portrait of him, since he refused to be photographed or drawn), they portrayed him, perhaps inadvertently, as a mystery man and tried in vain to pin down his exact identity, as if it mattered. By that time, there were false Castanedas appearing on campuses all over the country, like false czars in Russia, and Castaneda was being sighted in all sorts of improbable places by people who swore that he was tall or blue-eyed or a kind of hippie god, with long hair and fringed clothing. Nobody laughed harder at this deification than Castaneda himself—Carlitos, as he often referred to himself slyly, as if he were the modern equivalent of the sorcerer’s apprentice, which was not, in fact, too far from the truth and which explained a great deal of the literary appeal of his early books. On one level, at least, they formed a kind of bildungsroman in which Don Juan played the cunning sorcerer-teacher and Carlitos the bumbling, naive, and eternally hopeful apprentice. There was a side to Castaneda’s work that appealed to the same needs in young people as J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone. The elements were all there: adventure, sorcery, the hard path to knowledge on which a young man risks everything to learn wisdom from his teacher. Castaneda was a kind of real-life hobbit, following the path laid down by the mysterious sorcerer Gandalf, or, in another context, the young Arthur seeking the wisdom of Merlin. Perhaps without knowing what he was doing, Castaneda had touched upon a surefire theme for a best-seller, even without the peyote lore, which was to give his work an extra allure of the forbidden and dangerous.

That Castaneda was a real person and not, as some suspected, a literary invention was apparent the next morning, when I called the university and was connected directly to his office. The voice that greeted me was rich, modulated, and had a slight Hispanic accent. I expressed my enthusiasm for his book and my desire to meet him. He chuckled. “I would be happy to,” he said, “but first you ought to talk to my agent. You see, I am a pushover, but he is really fierce and mean, so I have to be careful not to anger him.” I asked who his agent was. To my surprise, it was Ned Brown, whom I knew. Brown was a diminutive man with a choleric red complexion and a white mustache who had modeled himself somewhat on Irving Lazar. No spring chicken himself, Brown had been an agent for decades and was one of the few in Los Angeles who handled book writers, as opposed to screenwriters. He was Jackie Collins’s agent at the time, and the fact that Castaneda had somehow found his way to Ned Brown seemed an indication that he was not as unworldly as his book made him out to be.

I contacted Brown immediately, who told me that his desk was piled sky-high with offers, but if I wanted to meet with his author, it was OK with him. He had already talked to Castaneda (who was either quick on the phone or possessed Don Juan’s telepathic powers), and I was to wait in the parking lot of my hotel at eight tonight. How would I recognize Castaneda? I asked. Brown gave a mirthless laugh. “Don’t worry,” he said. “He’ll recognize you.”

At the appointed time, I stood in the parking lot, scanning the people in arriving cars for anyone possibly resembling Castaneda. Most of the cars were limos, disgorging plump, middle-aged men escorting young starlets—hardly Castaneda’s style, I guessed. A neat Volvo pulled up in front of me, and the driver waved me in. He was a robust, broad-chested, muscular man, with a swarthy complexion, dark eyes, black, curly hair cut short, and a grin as merry as Friar Tuck’s, displaying perfect teeth. I got in, and we shook hands. He had a firm handshake. The hands, I noticed, were broad, strong, with blunt fingers, although the clothes proclaimed him to be an academic: a light brown tweed jacket, a neat shirt and tie, tan trousers, well-polished loafers. I asked him how he had recognized me.