Product Description

The narrator of this extraordinary tale is a man  in search for truth. He 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 who is nibbling  delicately on a slender branch. "You are the  teacher?" he asks incredulously. "I am  the teacher," the gorilla replies. Ishmael is  a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story  to tell, one that no other human being has ever  heard. It is a story that extends backward and  forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth  of time to a future there is still time save.  Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the  lesson easy; he demands the final illumination to  come from within ourselves. Is it man's destiny  to rule the world? Or is it a higher destiny  possible for him-- one more wonderful than he has ever  imagined?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #533 in Books
• Published on: 1995-07-01
• Released on: 1995-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Quinn ( Dreamer ) won the Turner Tomorrow Award's half-million-dollar first prize for this fascinating and odd book--not a novel by any conventional definition--which was written 13 years ago but could not find a publisher. The unnamed narrator is a disillusioned modern writer who answers a personal ad ("Teacher seeks pupil. . . . Apply in person.") and thereby meets a wise, learned gorilla named Ishmael that can communicate telepathically. The bulk of the book consists entirely of philosophical dialogues between gorilla and man, on the model of Plato's Republic. Through Ishmael, Quinn offers a wide-ranging if highly general examination of the history of our civilization, illuminating the assumptions and philosophies at the heart of many global problems. Despite some gross oversimplifications, Quinn's ideas are fairly convincing; it's hard not to agree that unrestrained population growth and an obsession with conquest and control of the environment are among the key issues of our times. Quinn also traces these problems back to the agricultural revolution and offers a provocative rereading of the biblical stories of Genesis. Though hardly any plot to speak of lies behind this long dialogue, Quinn's smooth style and his intriguing proposals should hold the attention of readers interested in the daunting dilemmas that beset our planet. 50,000 first printing; major ad/promo.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Winner of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, a literary competition intended to foster works of fiction that present positive solutions to global problems, this book offers proof that good ideas do not necessarily equal good literature. Ishmael, a gorilla rescued from a traveling show who has learned to reason and communicate, uses these skills to educate himself in human history and culture. Through a series of philosophical conversations with the unnamed narrator, a disillusioned Sixties idealist, Ishmael lays out a theory of what has gone wrong with human civilization and how to correct it, a theory based on the tenet that humanity belongs to the planet rather than vice versa. While the message is an important one, Quinn rarely goes beyond a didactic exposition of his argument, never quite succeeding in transforming idea into art. Despite this, heavy publicity should create demand. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/91.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Here's the novel that, out of 2500 submissions, won the ecological-minded Turner Tomorrow Award--and caused a mutiny among the judges when it was awarded the $500,000 first prize. Is it that good--or bad? No, but it's certainly unusual, even eccentric, enough to place Quinn (the paperback Dreamer, 1988) on the cult literary map.

What's most unusual is that this novel scarcely is one: beneath a thin narrative glaze, it's really a series of Socratic dialogues between man and ape, with the ape as Socrates. The nameless man, who narrates, answers a newspaper ad (``TEACHER seeks pupil...'') that takes him to a shabby office tenanted by a giant gorilla; lo! the ape begins to talk to him telepathically (Quinn's failure to explain this ability is typical of his approach: idea supersedes story). Over several days, the ape, Ishmael, as gruff as his Greek model, drags the man into a new understanding of humanity's place in the world. In a nutshell, Ishmael argues that humanity has evolved two ways of living: There are the ``Leavers,'' or hunter-gatherers (e.g., Bushmen), who live in harmony with the rest of life; and there are the ``Takers'' (our civilization), who arose with the agricultural revolution, aim to conquer the rest of life, and are destroying it in the process. Takers, Ishmael says, have woven a ``story'' to rationalize their conquest; central to this story is the idea that humanity is flawed--e.g., as told in the Bible. But not so, Ishmael proclaims; only the Taker way is flawed: Leavers offer a method for living well in the world ... A washout as a story, with zero emotional punch; but of substantial intellectual appeal as the extensive Q&A passages (despite their wild generalities and smug self-assurance) invariably challenge and provoke: both Socrates and King Kong might be pleased. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

This should be required reading.
This book changed my worldview, and I think someday, it will have changed my life. I've read it easily five or six times, and I always come back to it every few years or so. Thus far, I have yet to actually implement Quinn's ideas in my own life, but I can never look at the world and our culture (of which I now have a better perspective and understanding) in the same way. It's through the looking glass, it's Neo discovering the Matrix, it's looking up at the puppet show. I can see the strings now, and I can hear the whispers we've all lived with our entire lives, the ones that never quite sounded right, could never entirely make sense, and always seemed unsatisfying, inconsistent and contradictory. Even if I wanted to return to my old way of thinking, I don't think I could, now. And I'm glad of it. When the opportunity comes to embrace these new values and these new ideas, I'll be ready to make the leap, wholeheartedly.

Three stars - interesting ideas, very little storyline
The bulk of Ishmael is dialog, and while I do feel I learned from the book, much of it was boring and I found it difficult to finish. There was no real storyline to grab my attention and I thought a lot of the dialog was pretentious.

Go into this book to expand your knowledge - but don't expect "an adventure of the mind and spirit" as the title suggests. As another reviewer suggested, if you treat it as a work of non-fiction (in that you will be absorbing mostly straight history and philosophy) you will probably enjoy it more.

If you are looking for a good story that will change the way you look at life, I would recommend reading The Alchemist by Paul Coelho.

"To the Point"
I'm not going to tell you whats going on in the novel, as many other reviews from the book start.

Ishmael is a great book. I don't read, at all. But I have read this book with ease and found it hard to put it down. And it inspires me to read more books, and I will.

This book, teaches us somethings of life, but not everything, its does not give an exact explanation, of how to save the world. It does explain in ones own philosophy of 'how thing came to be the way the are' and it's marvelous.

Whether you like the book it or not, or even if you have not read it, chew on this.

I think Quinn knows that we can't just up and crawl into the wild. Basically, its to late to do anything like that, well, because there is to many of 'us'. Period. There is no room to put all the garbage that we have created. Those of you who fail to see, without using something other then a human to be the teacher, wouldn't have worked in the slightest bit, and gorillas are cool, you could have used anything other then a human, and who cares about figuring out WHY.

But instead of going back to a primitive life(crawling back into the wild), we need to advance for the better. We, all of us, black, white, indian, oriental... ALL of us have one thing in common, were all human, we all came from the same place. The religions of the world basically cancel each other out. Think about it, There is only ONE way we all got here correct. Ok good, then tell me how is it possible that there are so many different religions and theorys. Look at the big picture, only one can be right, if one is right at all. We are all blinded from ourselves, from our ancestors, from Human beings. What I am getting at is we have NOTHING to look back upon, because frankly no one is right. Until our culture, not America not China or Russia, or Europe, but Humans can understand where our origins came from, we follow a blind path.

I'm not against the 'characters' or philosophy's of the books that religions have written down, I just simply won't accept it. Because how do I know that it's right and the others or wrong. The same thing can be said from another point of view.

When you read Ishmael, instead of plunging your head into it and dissecting everything about it and its statements, sit back and look at the big picture, what has been discussed is our root problem. If something has gone bad at any point, what do you do? You go back to where things were working and find out where things went wrong then fix it. Were not able to go back and fix things because to be frank, its to late to do anything like that, well, because there is to many of 'us'. Period. There is no room to put all the garbage that we have created.

All we have, is to move forward. What we can do is put a wall up. From the time man starting destroying the world we can put a wall up, and in this day and age we can put a wall up. And everything after the wall now would be action's that we've learned from our mistakes. And everything in the middle of those walls, would be the mistake. Harsh, but true anyway you look at it. Get real. I by no means have the resources or brains to do such a thing, nor does anyone else on this earth. But we can all do it together, for we have conquered the earth and we have control over it, just due to our sheer size in numbers.


As far as reviewing Ishmael this is my review, this is a little something that I have chalked up in my head after reading it. Who cares about the grammar or the literature of Ishmael, the points that are not valid, if they aren't at all. If you feel you care about those things, then you are just falling in the hands of 'Mother Culture' or whatever you want to call it, and that is the problem, LIFE IS SIMPLE. We have just made it extremely hard on ourselves. These generations living now might not have, but, all were doing is passing on the tradition of what we know, because all we know is what we have been taught, I don't care who you are; that's a fact.

So if you have not read Ishmael, I recommend it. If you can agree with what I have laid on the table here then you know what to do, read it. If you don't agree, maybe you will after you read it. If if you don't agree then you're entitled to that opinion. I'm nobody, I'm just another 'Alan Lomax', that cares. These are some my thoughts and feelings, and they were before I read Ishmael, there just more clear to me now after I have read Ishmael.