"Tales of Adam" by Daniel Quinn

I recently reread a book, almost done, called "Tales of Adam", by Daniel Quinn (the same author who wrote "Ishmael"). It is a short book, probably can be read within an hour or two. Do not let the title fool you, nor the name of the two main characters, Adam and his son Abel, because those names conjure up certain meanings with certain implications in our modern society. This is not a "religious" book, at least not in the conventional sense, the way we Westerners in our modern society with a Christian background might tend to associate it, anyway. This book has nothing at all to do with that and, in fact, does not so much criticize the Christian perspective or way as much as offer another viewpoint, different priorities and experiences.. Surely, though, many religious minded people would dismiss this work as sacrilegious (although again, maybe not quite in the way that the popular Western imagination of the modern era might associate it with).

No, this is not a Christian, or religious, book. In fact, it is not a conventional book in any sense of the word, and it seems to me to be the first real scholarly attempt (if that is the right way of describing it) at describing the way "savages", whether Native Americans, or tribal peoples in Africa or Asia or Australia or the Americas, lived and, hopefully if even in small numbers, still live. It is a different kind of a book than probably anything that you have read. I mentioned that it was by the same author of "Ishmael" and, in fact, was written with the design of being a part of that book, in one of it's many different manifestations. It did not make the cut, so to speak, and yet, it works quite well as a miniature kind of work on it's own. Again, it is short, and hardly really long enough to be a "book" of it's own. Yet, it works, when you combine it with the artwork. Surely, it serves to further illustrate many of Daniel Quinn's points regarding humanity's relation to the wilderness, to nature, and to debunk the myth that we are somehow separate or "free" from it.

It is also a unique book, in many respects, teaching something entirely different than almost any other book I know, taking a radically different vantage point. Some might view it as harsh, others surely would dismiss it as weird, and so on and so forth. Yet, I think it might be as close to being able to see the world and our real relation to it as we can probably get, other than maybe reading the words of Native Americans (which I have enjoyed doing as well, especially one book in particular, called "Touch the Earth" - highly recommended!). I am not sure that after reading it, you are ready to abandon everything and go out and live in the wilderness and think that you might actually survive, yet it takes a very different vantage point than almost any other work that I know of, and when it comes to being able to see the subtle signs of other creatures that passed by the particular tract of land that we are currently traversing (imagine we are on another walk in the woods here), it seems that Quinn nails it. A unique work! He has quite a few of them, after all.