Ishmael

[darren_stranger]

On the weekend i sought out a copy of Daniel Quinn's 'Ishmael', as recommended by patchworkkid .

It's definitely an interesting read, not quite what i was expecting (though i can't recall now exactly what i was expecting).

 

Some thoughts, probable spoilers:

 

At times i found it quite frustrating, both in the 'student' being so deliberately dense it made me want to punch him (or the author, for writing him that way) and also in the amount of time spent exposing myths that to my mind are already known to be myths or building arguments on the foundation of premises that i didn't quite accept as proven (the characters seem to just mutually agree on a lot of things that didn't necessarily add up for me).  But, these props aside, the basic thrust of the tale did seem to hold water, at least as another way of looking at things if not a self-evident truth.

 

If nothing else, it made me think.  For every time i thought 'i don't buy that', there was another moment of 'hmm, never looked at it that way'.  There were also moments where i was reminded that some of the 'myths' that i thought of as self evident are still being dogmatically preached and enforced by the people running this show.  Even the ideas that made me decidedly uncomfortable, like the half-spoken implications of giving up on the idea of trying to decide who should live and who should die, were valuable for making me think about why i was uncomfortable or didn't agree.

 

At the end of the day, while i don't really think it made good on its threat of making you never look at things the same way, it certainly provided food for thought and a few new ideas as pieces of the puzzle.


i'll have to read it again, perhaps in a month or two when i've forgotten most of it, just to re-chew the ideas and see what i think second time around.

Meanwhile, i have to second the recommendation.  Put it on the list.

Comments

Re: more Ishmael ponderings...Part the second.

[morgan303.livejournal.com]

Before I reply to this properly, which might take a while with my second-day-with-no-sleep fried brain, I urge you to hire a movie called Instinct (mid-90s drama starring Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding), and watch it, and see how much you recognise....:)

Re: more Ishmael ponderings...Part the second.

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

i'm reading a sci-fi book from the '60s at the moment, in which they've just discovered a gateway to a parallel, barely inhabited Earth. Within a day, a presidential candidate has announced a colonisation programme to relieve population problems here, while the CEO of the company that discovered it is jetting about the new world he considers his property, looking at all the virgin forest and landscape, drooling at all the timber and mining resources they represent. Meanwhile, the discovery of a small civilisation there has mambers of the campaign team pondering genocide, since we 'need' the space at any cost.

Sounds familiar somehow..

Re: more Ishmael ponderings...Part the second.

[morgan303.livejournal.com]

heh heh. Those 60s-70s sci-fi novels are still some of the best articulations of what are now our most profound fears for the future. I wonder how modern sci-fi writing will stand the test of time?