Dear Daniel Quinn,
On Monday 20, 2019, I got a chance to read
your novel Ishmael, which impressed me in a lot of ways. First of all, I liked
your idea of opening this book with the narrator reading the newspaper and
finding himself both intrigued and disgruntled by an advertisement. This ad
indicates that a teacher is constantly looking for a student who is interested
in saving the world. When I read the book further, I got to realize that the
narrator has spent a big part of his life in searching for such a teacher. What
makes me feel confused is why the narrator of this book is angry that no one is
looking for him.
By the whole, the book is interesting except
certain parts that deem to be boring and a little out of context. I loved the
part in which the narrator was found to be sure that this advertisement was a
hoax. However, he reaches the given address and finds an empty office space
with a gorilla in a room. The gorilla looks at the narrator with strange eyes
and is able to speak with him telepathically. This is the point where I
concentrated more on the book because this gorilla was the teacher the narrator
had been looking for.
Dear Daniel, I understand that some people
would argue how a gorilla could be a teacher. However, the gorilla in your
story (Ishmael) has some extraordinarily special skills and capabilities. He
was found in an African jungle at a young age and had lived his life in
captivity for long. This gorilla spent some years of its life in the zoo, and
then end up traveling carnival before being bought by Walter Sokolow. With
Walter, the gorilla learned how to speak telepathically.
I was looking forward to having an answer to
the question that often comes across the minds of people who read your story:
how is it possible for a gorilla to speak telepathically. This made me sit up
and take notice, and I continued reading the book until I got an appropriate
answer. Through its telepathic connection, this gorilla was able to help Mr.
Sokolow get his books. The life of this gorilla in this city started in
captivity, but with time, it learned how to explore humanity and how to
transform the world through positive acts.
At a point, you write that “I could look at nothing else in the world
but his face, more hideous than any other in the animal kingdom because of its
similarity to our own, yet in its way more noble than any Greek ideal of
perfection" (Braddon 8). Here you have made the wise use of Freudian
concept of the uncanny, and this creates a cognitive dissonance that raises
certain questions in my mind and urges me to pay more attention to the story.
This concept made me understand that Ishmael has human-like features, and this
is what leaves a good impression on the narrator, who then begins calling
Ishmael a great and unique teacher.
The first question that comes to my mind is
that “Is gorilla the only living thing that can communicate with human beings
telepathically.” Another question that I have about the ideas discussed in this
book is “Should we train all animals to interact with human beings
telepathically.”
In the end, I would like to thank you for
writing and publishing such a wonderful book.
Sincerely,
XYZ
