Sunday, January 28, 2007

more Quinn

After reading Quinn's Ishmael trilogy, I was looking for more content. I put a hold on the rest of Quinn's work at the library. 2 items appeared right away, and of course I consumed them in short order.


The first was Tales of Adam, a series of short parables about a man in a hunter-gatherer tribe, teaching his son the lessons of life.


The second, entitled An Anamist Testament was a pair of cassette tapes of Quinn reading his work. The first tape was Tales of Adam. The second was The Book of the Damned.


It was interesting listening. They reflect many of the same ideas that appeared in Ishmael, but from a different perspective. Where Ishmael is written for someone civilized who is new to these ideas, these tapes seem more appropriate with someone who has already digested Ishmael.


Now that I have consumed 6 titles of Quinn's work, am I an expert? Far from it. I'm working hard to probe his ideas, and re-evaluate my thinking with this new perpective. It's slow going. Luckily, my wife has also read some of his work and is interested in talking through this stuff.


I hope to have a little time to blog about my thoughts.

1 comment:

alan.orth said...

Jay,

Good to see someone else consuming all of Quinn's stuff! I always considered myself a liberal or a progressive, but after reading Ishmael, The Story of B, My Ishmael, Tales of Adam, and Beyond Civilization, I'm not sure what to think anymore.

What now? I re-read Ishmael, and I've been looking for other intellectually stimulating content to read. I've read some of Richard Dawkins' books now and I'm thinking about moving on to Derrick Jensen, John Zerzan, and others...

I'm moving to Kenya soon for a two-year volunteer stint. Feel free to stop by my blog. Keep reading, man.

Alan
http://sarainkenya.org

 
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