My Ishmael
First edition
|
|
| Author | Daniel Quinn |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Claude Anderson |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
|
Publication date
|
December 1997 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 274 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 37401101 |
| 813/.54 21 | |
| LC Class | PS3567.U338 M9 1997 |
| Preceded by | Ishmael, The Story of B |
My Ishmael is a 1997 novel by Daniel Quinn: a followup to Ishmael. With its time frame largely simultaneous with Ishmael, its plot precedes the fictional events of its 1996 spiritual successor, The Story of B. Like Ishmael, My Ishmael largely revolves around a Socratic dialogue between the sapient gorilla, Ishmael, and a student, involving his philosophy regarding tribal society. Ishmael's pupil in My Ishmael, however, is a twelve-year-old female protagonist, Julie Gerchak, and the plot details not only her visits to Ishmael but also her journey to Africa in order to prepare Ishmael's return to the wilds of his homeland.
My Ishmael is presented as the final copy of a book published by Julie Gerchak, who has herself read Ishmael. At the time she begins writing, Julie is sixteen, though during the main plot of her story she is merely twelve years old: "a plucky, resourceful, near-genius with a wobbly home life." Like the narrator of Ishmael, Julie discovers a message in her city's newspaper, which advertises a teacher seeking someone who wishes to save the world. Julie arrives at Room 105 of the Fairfield Building to discover a gorilla, Ishmael, whom she is able to communicate with telepathically. When she asks Ishmael if he will teach her, he is initially ambivalent due to her very young age, though this frustrates Julie and her arguments convince Ishmael that she may indeed be open to his maieutic teaching style.
First, Ishmael asks Julie to reflect on why she came to him. She answers that it may be related to her fears about her society's destructive impact on itself and the environment. When urged to tell a story about what she expects to learn with Ishmael, Julie describes a daydream in which she is recruited to go on a space mission to visit other planets and thereby learn solutions around the galaxy for Earth's problems. Next, Ishmael launches into a discussion of "Mother Culture" (the personified notion of the influence of our cultural mythology), our civilization's delusion that our intelligence is a curse inherently propelling us toward making terrible decisions, and our culture's fallacy that all human societies (or, at least, all the "civilized" ones) developed out of a state of foraging to a superior state of farming, neglecting the tribes all over the world who continue the foraging lifestyle. Ishmael refers to humanity in terms of Takers (members of the single, world-dominating culture that destroys other peoples or forces them to assimilate) and Leavers (members of the countless cultures who lived or continue to live in tribal societies). He also examines evolutionary processes and how they tend to maintain behaviors that best sustain some particular gene pool and enforce a sort of equilibrium in which no single organism or group of organisms overwhelms the competition for natural resources. He claims that Takers depart from this self-sustaining balance in that they keep their resources, primarily food, under "lock and key." This, he claims, creates hierarchical social structures in which the cooperative ethos is lost, resulting in distress and conflict within the society, such as crime, suicide, poverty, famine, and senseless violence. He argues that although Taker societies flourish in terms of material wealth—such as technological advancement and greater scientific progress—they fail utterly with regard to what he believes to be actual wealth: the sense of belonging and security that hold together the fabric of human tribal societies. Julie ultimately learns that she does not need to travel around the galaxy to see ways that human societies can thrive successfully; she needs only to learn from the successes of tribal life.
...
Wikipedia