Ishmael, Book Review I

Quinn, Daniel. Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. A Bantam / Turner Book, 1992. ISBN: 0553375407

Ishmael shares a genre with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; both alternate between 1) a symbolic narrative and 2) a series of straight-forward but allegedly mind-blowing lectures. I don’t know if this genre has a name.

The narrative: In Ishmael a teacher is looking for a student who wants to save the world. The narrator, Alan Lomax, is the student; the teacher, Ishmael, is a gorilla who communicates telepathically. (Yes, you read that right.) Ishmael lives in an office building, where he also conducts his classes with Mr. Lomax. Four-fifths of the way through the book he is evicted from the office building and sold to a carnival.

The lectures: Ishmael helps his student unearth the mythology / worldview / ideology of the civilized world, those he designates “takers,” and of those civilizations that “history left behind,” whom he calls “leavers.” For the takers, the gods made the world for man to rule, but man first must conquer it. When he finally conquers and rules, the world will be paradise. However, man has a tragic flaw that keeps him from fulfilling this mission. For the leavers, on the other hand, man belongs to the world. The world tends toward complexity, self-awareness, and intelligence. Man is first to achieve self-awareness, and his job is to keep the future open for other species to also advance in complexity, intelligence, and self-awareness. (Remember, this is a gorilla talking.) All can now see that human culture will crash within a few generations. From the leaver view, this is not the result of a tragic human flaw; it follows from acting out the taker mythology. Takers have not really transcended nature, but they have acted as though nature’s laws no longer apply to them. The result is a reduction in complexity and diversity of species, but also of actual and potential intelligence and self-awareness. Natural law will bring the taker experiment to a close, not, however, before the takers themselves have nearly destroyed the planet.

Ishmael, the gorilla, having taught the human all he has to teach, offering to be now his friend rather than his teacher, dies due to lack of good care in the carnival.