Having first covered Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael in extensive fashion, then The Story of B in a mega-post, it was basically inevitable that I would finish the loose trilogy and offer a treatment of My Ishmael.

This third book in the series connects much more closely with the first book than did “B”—both in time and space. It follows the relationship between Ishmael, the wise gorilla teacher, and a precocious teenager named Julie who studies under Ishmael in overlap with an oblivious Alan Lomax (narrator/pupil from the first book).

As Ishmael customizes lessons to individual students, we see that Julie’s education is complementary to Alan’s—conveniently justifying a whole different book providing a new set of provocative insights.

Format

The book is arranged into 36 short, chronological chapters. Headings below reflect chapter titles and starting page numbers in parentheses (1998 printing). As I did for the other books, I mainly stay away from narrative elements—focusing instead on lessons. The exception in this case is in the setup. Part of my rationale is to encourage folks to read the original, treating this post as highlights of the “boring” portions—ideal for a refresher after having read the book.

All the chapter titles and page numbers are represented until the end of lessons, when the book shifts to more of a traditional novel. Note that the 20th Century Daniel Quinn often uses “man” to mean “humans” more broadly. As in the other treatments, I attempt to confine my own slant to [square brackets].

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Oh No. Is Do the Math about to get hijacked for another long series about a Daniel Quinn book, like it was for Ishmael?

How about just a really long post?

The Story of B is the second in a series of three books associated with the wise gorilla, Ishmael, and his teachings. Some report “B” as a more powerful book than the first (Ishmael). For me, they sort-of run together, and I have trouble remembering which book focused on which point. That’s part of why I started the project of capturing the Ishmael content, and here do something similar for The Story of B. I figure if it helps me keep the books straight, it will help others, too.

In this post, I sketch the content of the book. I am not tracing much in the way of story elements. I’m not even fully fleshing out the key arguments, but making more of a map so that I or others can more quickly revisit key parts, or get a quick refresher on the entire book’s flow and content. For those who have not read the book, I hope it serves as encouragement to do so.

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This is part of a series of posts representing ideas from the book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. I view the ideas explored in Ishmael to be so important to the world that it seems everyone should have a chance to be exposed. I hope this treatment inspires you to read the original.

In Chapter TWELVE, Alan uncovers the Leaver Premise and wraps up discussions with Ishmael about what it means and where we go from here. This chapter is presented in 12 numbered subsections, beginning on page 231 of the original printing and page 249 of the 25th anniversary printing. The sections below mirror this arrangement in the book. See the launch post for notes on conventions I have adopted for this series.

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This is part of a series of posts representing ideas from the book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. I view the ideas explored in Ishmael to be so important to the world that it seems everyone should have a chance to be exposed. I hope this treatment inspires you to read the original.

Chapter ELEVEN contains my favorite section (#4) of the book, exposing Taker biases on Leaver life: a huge hurdle in knocking loose Taker mythology. This chapter is presented in six numbered subsections, beginning on page 209 of the original printing and page 225 of the 25th anniversary printing. The sections below mirror this arrangement in the book. Section 4 is packed with incredible content, so receives a bit more attention. See the launch post for notes on conventions I have adopted for this series.

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This is part of a series of posts representing ideas from the book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. I view the ideas explored in Ishmael to be so important to the world that it seems everyone should have a chance to be exposed. I hope this treatment inspires you to read the original.

In the Foreword to the 25th anniversary printing, starting on page xxiv, Daniel Quinn offers seven pages of additional material that he suggests could be appended to what is already the longest chapter in the book. The audiobook I listened to rolls right into this material at the end of Chapter 9 without pausing to indicate that it was not in the original.

Rather than making the Chapter 9 post even longer than it already is, I decided to make a separate entry for this material (also inserted into the schedule so-as not to disrupt the normal cadence of two “real” chapters per week).

Unlike the original content, this addendum is not split into numbered sections. I create section headings all the same just to break things up a bit.

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