The Book Everyone Should Read

Returning to a particularly formative piece of media can be daunting. You always fear that it may not be as good as you remember. Perhaps you outgrew it. Perhaps you simply look back on yourself at the time you consumed that media with some warm nostalgia; you may not miss it, you could just miss who you were when you first came across it. I've never really had this be the case with me. As I alluded to in my Youtube addiction post, I have very little issue revisiting things I have seen in the past, and while there is often some bitterness associated with remembering the simplicity of life when I first saw or read it, I'm generally able to experience nothing but mindless joy. However, none of the things I watch on a day to day basis are as formative to me as the book I am going to discuss in this essay.

Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, was the first book I was frightened to reread. Not only was I afraid of it for the reasons I just described, but there was the added bonus: What if I've been deluded into thinking this work to be a masterpiece when in reality it should be cast into the junkyard of literature? What if it's just bad? I remembered reading Ishmael for the first time and being stunned after every subsection of every chapter. Would it still hold the same rare magic for me once more? Could I bear it if it didn't?

Well, I just finished my second read-through of the book and I can say definitively: It lived up to the memory I had. In fact, I would go as far as to say that if you can only read one book in 2023, make it Ishmael. It can be the launching point for a fantastic literary journey.

For those unfamiliar, Ishmael is a philosophical novel depicting the relationship between a teacher and a student. The latter, a former activist and writer who became jaded with the ineffectiveness of the social revolution. The teacher, the old and wise Ishmael, has developed a story which he believes will save the world. The story is that of humanity, and over the course of thirteen chapters Ishamel relays a profound alternate take on human history, beginning with the departure of agricultural proto-human societies from their hunter-gatherer counterparts and finishing with the tenuous fate of modern society.

I won't spoil the entire journey of Ishmael because I remember how impactful it was for me when I first read it, but to give you an idea of the type of cultural dissection Quinn details in this book, we need look no further than his interpretation of Cain and Abel.

As it stands in the Bible, the story of Cain and Abel runs as follows: Cain and Abel, the first and second born sons of Adam and Eve, are bent to tasks of the land. Cain tills soil as a farmer while Abel herds his flocks. They both make sacrifices to God, yet for some reason God prefers the sacrifice of Abel. In an act of enraged cruelty, Cain murders his brother Abel. When God learns of this crime, he condemns Abel to a life of "restless wandering".

The first lesson seems to be apparent: Murder is bad. The second lesson: To commit a crime in the kingdom of God will always be punished. Most people, myself included, treat the story of Cain and Abel as they do much of the rest of Genesis: as a fairy-tale designed to teach such lessons. If we take it literally, we deny base-level science which many of us simply cannot do without coming across as deluded fundamentalists. So we take the stories as metaphors on how to act and, in this case, what not to do.

Ishmael teaches us a different interpretation of this old story. His first action is to put us in historical context. He frames the events of Genesis as the events preceding and including the agricultural revolution in the Fertile Crescent. The first agricultural societies are rapidly expanding, and in the Arabian Peninsula, nomadic herders live their lives. He asks his student why the events of Genesis before the birth of Cain and Abel are referred to as The Fall. If these were words written by those people who touted God as being all-loving, as His persona develops in The New Testament, then the entire story of The Fall would be different. Instead of Adam and Eve living in bliss and then consuming forbidden fruit and "falling" to become agriculturalists, it should be worded as the two of them rising, or ascending, to new enlightenment after eating the fruit, coming into new realms of God's love. The story of Cain and Abel should be that Cain's blessing was loved and Abel's was despised, for the early societies of humans were undergoing the agricultural revolution and, as humans tend to do, should have believed their lifestyle to be the best.

He then proceeds to take his student through a logical interpretation of the story of Cain and Abel. The people, not person, referred to as "Cain" are the farmers who are creating the first societies of people which would become "civilization". As such, they are rapidly expanding their territory into the Arabian Peninsula, slaughtering the tribes of herders which dwell there. These tribes of herders are Abel. The story of Cain and Abel does not simply portray one man killing another man. The people of Abel - the herders, tell the story to try and articulate the slaughtering of their kind at the hands of the farming peoples of the north. Ishmael describes it as "war propaganda" because the nomadic herders are saying to their children that God loves them, their way of life, their sacrifice, returns love, but he condemns and loathes those murderous agriculturalists who keep killing us to make more room for their farms.

Not only did that shatter my fragile mind when I first read it at the age of seventeen, it was just as impactful to me when I read it most recently. After all, if I were writing a book which was designed to tell people that my God was the best and that His decrees were to be followed as law, would I not show God as loving? Would I not depict Him as condoning my lifestyle, whatever that happened to be?

To put it in modern terms and continue that train of thought, let's say I was indeed writing such a Testament. Through it, I want to convey the power and grace of my God and show that what I do earns God's approval and love and that it defines the right way to live. So I describe the events of my life as a great ascension of the human condition. While I have some positive traits as well, this Testament would also sanctify my negative habits. It would say that we should all spend a bit too much money, obsess over small details, take way too much time on our phones, and procrastinate. Now, what if it were written by a person who embodies a different lifestyle, perhaps one to which I should strive but don't. It would not say that I have attained some great enlightenment. It would not say I have ascended. It would say that this creature, myself, has Fallen from grace. In addition, if my lifestyle were actively destroying this person's lifestyle, it would write that I am committing a great crime in the eyes of God - that I am murdering my brother.

In the limited time and space that I have in this essay I cannot do full justice to Ishmael's dismantling of the story of Cain and Abel, which takes about half a chapter in the book. To make this novel more enticing, if possible, this alternate viewpoint represents just one piece of a massive puzzle Ishmael and his student set out to solve at the start of the book. The ending, though I will not spoil it, was as poignant as it was profound. On my copy of Ishmael, worn and weathered by years of students in Ms. Parsons' English class, Jim Britell of Whole Earth Review states, "From now on I will divide the books I have read into two categories - the ones I read before Ishmael and those read after." I can wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. Ishmael is one of those rare books that changes your entire outlook on life, history, and humanity. It does all of this without the need for complicated philosophical jargon, long extended sermons, or a minute look at the psychology of mankind. Everything packs into a nice, easy display and in such a fashion that anyone can grasp the concepts. It changed my view on the future of humankind and our potential to be a sustainable species, and if I could recommend one book in 2023 for anyone to read, it would be this one.