Ishmael
   Daniel Quinn
  1995 A Bantam/Turner Book NY USA
   ISBN: 0553375407


A man answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla, nibbling on a slender branch, who tells him he is the teacher.

Oh boy, what a Pandora's Box I opened with the first pages of this surprising, little book. It rivetted me & I had to turn on my husband & anyone else who would listen, to this amazing, enlightening read.

As can be attested by the scribbles, hi-liting & exclamation marks we both added to our copy, Daniel Quinn's Ishmael is a stunner!

Ishmael is a creature of placid wisdom & does he have a story to tell! One no human has heard before. About the span of the life of this planet from its birth to a future there is still time to save. Well, that's all accurate, however, I enjoyed Ishmael's company a whole lot more than listening at the feet of a Wise One while being informed of my next odyssey. Perhaps here's the difference between the male & female purposes in life - the spiritual rather than material life. Ishmael's concerns, however, are very much in the material realm.

Like all great male teachers, Ishmael doesn't make the lessons easy & while the narrater wheedles & hopes, Ishmael eventually demands that he find the final illumination from within himself. This books asks the very masculine question: Is it our species' destiny to rule the world? Or is a higher destiny possible for us - one more full of wonder than we can now imagine?

Fiction though Ishmael may be, it is filled with wonderful, dreadful & exacting ethics. It is the stuff of consciousness-raising. Worthy of a place on your shelf among your volumes of our species' deepest insights & philosophies - Pirsig's Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy, Callenbach's Ecotopia or Scarborough's Nothing Sacred.

Reading, nay gobbling, Daniel Quinn's ideas, was like drinking fresh morning water, awakening from a healing sleep or coming out of a forest on the top of a hill & seeing a whole new vista stretching out before.

More from Daniel Quinn: My Ishmael & Providence: The Story of a 50 Year Vision Quest
(06/12/99)

Rebecca