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A message from Daniel Quinn
 "I heartily endorse the goals of Culture Change. Unless our
culture changes (and very dramatically), our kind faces a very brief future on
this planet (and will take down millions of other species with us). But
culture change is itself a result—of mind change. When minds change,
cultures change automatically. When minds don't change, however,
we're limited to passing ever harsher, ever more exacting new laws for people
with old minds to break. Changing minds is something we can all
collaborate on as we go about our daily lives, whether we're executives or
flunkies, teachers or students, judges or prison inmates, rock stars or bus
drivers, world leaders or homeless wanderers—and every mind counts (because
you never know what that mind will get up to!)."
Daniel Quinn
August, 2001
Author, Ishmael, The Story of B, My Ishmael, Beyond Civilization,
After Dachau, and The Holy
***
Book review: The
Holy by Daniel Quinn
Culture Change e-Letter
#9 December 2002
Review of Daniel Quinn's The Holy
Be Yourself, Spiritual Man!
by Jan Lundberg
The story in Daniel Quinn’s new book, The
Holy, concerns two main themes that hit me over the head: (1) independent
living, i.e., being yourself and following your best potential destiny, and
(2) modern humans in the consumer culture are unaware of the power of nature
and of the universe. The expression of the second theme takes the form of
spiritualism, paranormal phenomena, religion, and myth which are all essential
to the exciting plot.
Yet, even if one recoils from either new-age beliefs or older spiritual
traditions—as a choice of subjects for reading-material—it is marvelous to
follow Daniel Quinn’s literary odyssey in the form of another new, gripping
story.
Perception of the material world has limited our ability to experience life
more directly and intensely. We can be sure there are some events or
experiences that most people on any day might find hard to relate to. This
being the case, and given the power of dreaming, Daniel Quinn is thus allowed
much maneuvering room to weave a riveting tale that takes the reader into
uncharted territory.
A man in modern day Chicago is hired to investigate what happened to the gods
that the Israelites adopted and worshipped after they got to "the
promised land." The Israelites had turned their back on the True (Sky)
God that supposedly delivered them from Egypt. The new local gods were not
just another name for the god we have come to associate with the Israelites
and their spiritual offshoots the Christians and Muslims. The interim gods
were worshipped for hundreds of years, and were not thereafter called by the
Bible phony or nonexistent, but instead acknowledged as extant. Baal is one of
those old gods referred to, among others (as Daniel Quinn informs us), while
the book’s hero is posed the intriguing challenge that transcends theology.
Off we go onto a science-fiction type ride. Whoopee, I couldn’t put the book
down.
Our protagonist has the adventure of his life. In the telling of Howard the
private investigator’s assignment and pursuit of the real record, the
narration of the characters’ exploits and realizations provide ample
opportunity for Quinn to discuss some of his favorite topics. Those include
the history of civilization, religious thought, the sacredness of nature, and
the regimentation of lives caught in the dominant culture.
Many may gather a simplistic message that takes
The Holy literally, much as some take everything in the Bible
literally. And that would be that "we are not alone"; there are
spiritual or mystical beings around us who only appear to be human. This
literary device is questionable if people are really expected to believe that
some creature or "god" can appear outside your window with horns
sticking out of his head—I mean "for real," not a Halloween prank.
Nevertheless, if one can allow that some things can be imagined and thus
believed, or that this is just a story so let’s go along with the idea, then
we are entertained and educated. Personally, I am not fascinated with
people’s confusion over who and what their Devil is or is not. Yet, for the
intellectual interested in tracing our culture’s roots, Quinn delivers again
as he did with Ishmael in 1991.
Who am I to insist on more realism and depressing fact-telling regarding
today’s threatened and stressful world? So I just grit my teeth, as readers
get the message that the book says things can and will turn out all right in
the end—such as plenty of money and pleasurable excitement. The characters
end up with more friends, fun, wealth, and wisdom than the typical citizen is
likely to ever find even if he or she were more adventurous than some of the
characters in The Holy. They get in their cars and magic happens. Even
though I think cars are a terrible mistake to mass produce and depend on, I
know (as Daniel Quinn knows) the average American still thinks in terms of
cars offering freedom down an unknown road. The characters are lucky in their
otherwise industrial lot in life, except for a couple of casualties in this
spiritual and metaphysical yarn.
Meanwhile, The Holy’s characters and our real world face possible
holocaust of the nuclear kind. They also suffer from overpopulation. The
economic system keeps everyone in a humdrum world of depressing materialistic
pursuit that doesn’t quite pan out unless one is supremely fortunate or
blithely unethical. But all in all, we can be glad some people are better off
in a fictional happy ending of sorts, for our reading pleasure. And
curmudgeons like me can still get off on this book!
The above conclusion—of modest materialism working out okay—can be a major
message of the book to a new Quinn reader, and is still worth the risk of The
Holy. For the need of Joe or Jane Mainstream to be made to think about
humanity’s treatment of the Earth is worth whatever an author can bring to
bear, such as a talking gorilla in Ishmael. This time, the literary
device is going to be taken more literally, by a large audience perhaps—even
more so than reincarnation could be taken literally in Quinn’s After
Dachau (2000). But The Holy will still certainly get people further
along the way to enlightened comprehension than if they consumed only their
usual mass media exposure.
Hats off to a great story teller who allows us to see our common history and
fate more deeply and clearly: Daniel Quinn. I would recommend to a new Quinn
reader to read one of his other books before reading The Holy, to be
more sure of where the author is really coming from. (My favorite Quinn work
might be The Story of B.) I hope a huge audience will discover The
Holy and many more works from Daniel Quinn to come.
*****
For more information on Daniel Quinn visit
his web
site.
*****
Jan Lundberg is an editor with Culture
Change magazine, and president of Sustainable Energy Institute, in Arcata,
northern California. Contributing to this review's editing was Joseph
Shermis, who handles advertising and other duties for Culture Change.
Daniel Quinn helped inspire Culture Change, and
specifically Jan Lundberg's recent e-column Health Care Tribe which
features Howard (named after the protagonist of The Holy).
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