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edwardian_girl_next_door's review
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
I read this book as part of an environmental science class. I had heard of it before, and seen it on the bookshelf of someone I admire, so I had high hopes for this book. The premise was interesting, and I was ready to have my worldview questioned.
But my hopes were a little dashed. I'll try my best to explain. (I've discovered there is no way I can critique this book without sounding condescending, so I apologise if I come off like that! I just can't get around it).
1) OUTDATED -- The main problem I have with this book is it's just outdated. According to the author, he started working on the ideas for this novel in the 1970s and tried to publish it in the 1980s, and I think if it had been published then, it would have been pretty big. Even in the 1990s it made some waves. A lot of the book focuses on shifting an anthropogenic worldview, and recognising that maybe humans aren't in absolute control of everything. That makes sense when you put it in the context of the industrialised, technologically-focused world of the Cold War, with Operation Star Wars and whatnot. But now -- even if it's not chronologically that far away from those decades -- I feel that most people are familiar with the basic concepts and challenges to society it presents. It doesn't say anything new or groundbreaking (even if it presents it that way), and that was a little disappointing to me. After finishing the book, I talked extensively to my teacher about it, and he said that in his 30+ years of teaching environmental science, he's noticed a shift in about the last five. Students now don't need to be convinced that climate change is an issue, or be persuaded to care about the earth. They are more well-informed, motivated, and sometimes desperate to learn about ways they can actively participate in mitigating climate change. He said he was considering switching Ishmael out with something else that might be more impactful in the future.
2) THE "NOBLE SAVAGE" TROPE -- This book praised the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to the point where it could be called primitivist. Ishmael pointed to agriculture and civilisation as the moment when things started to go wrong on planet Earth, and used hunter-gatherer peoples many, many times as a shining example of how humans are supposed to be. I admit I received a pretty Western-centric history education, so I don't know too much about non-Western cultures, but I know that 1) not all indigenous societies were environmentally conscious, and 2) I know enough to be uncomfortable with this oversimplified glorification of literally thousands of different tribes and cultures. Ishmael doesn't make any overt statements about whether he believes humans to be inherently good or evil (a key part of the debate when it comes to the noble savage trope). But you would think that agricultural societies are inherently evil and hunter-gatherers are not. In fact, you could make a credible argument that this book blames Nazism on agriculture (indirectly, of course, but you could definitely write an English paper!).
3) WEIRD WRITING STRUCTURE -- The whole book is set up as a series of Socratic-esque dialogues between an omniscient gorilla (Ishmael) and the unnamed narrator, who is a disillusioned former hippy. While that might sound interesting, it quickly turns into a gorilla telepathically lecturing this man on how Western civilisation sucks. The dialogue gets old really fast because it gets in the way of telling the story. It adds an extra layer between us and the narrator, making it difficult to slog through reams of back and forth question and answer. On top of this, sometimes they jump back during their "lessons" to things they've covered already, which just adds to the disorganised confusion. I feel that the author should have either written full-blown fiction, or just gotten over himself and written a treatise, essay, or article. You can write really, really good fiction and still pack a punch -- Orwell, Bradbury, Dickens, or Chopin, to name a few in Western lit, did a really good job with poignant and withering social criticism while still making it a darned good story. And what about good essays? "A Room of One's Own", "Walden", "Self-Reliance", "In Defense of Poetry", "Common Sense"? Heck, I bet even the Unabomber's treatise is better organised. Perhaps the author was going for the Sherlock Holmes and Watson approach, helping the reader understand the ideas by having a character explain them as they go along, but Ishmael couldn't pull it off. It would have been so much less work to read something that lays its points out and defends them, cut and dry.
4) FICTION...? -- In my edition's forward, the author mentions that he is a journalist. Looking back, this makes a lot of sense because if definitely feels like he's one of those non-fiction writers who thinks: "I write all the time! Writing fiction must be the same thing as writing non-fiction. It'll be a breeze!" And then it flops. Now, there are similarities in writing both genres, but SO. MANY. TIMES. it's painfully obvious to me that someone doesn't know how to write fiction. I can't quite pinpoint what the "tells" are, but it's kind of like how you can tell someone isn't from your home country, even if they have no accent. It's something that just feels off but you can't explain it. That's how I felt about Ishmael. There is some backstory, but it only serves as a vehicle for propagating the book's argument rather than a character building device. Things like Ishmael's family are brought in and out of the narrative, sometimes not really adding anything to the story. In fact, we never meet ANY of the family, even though they are brought up several times. The characters are pretty 2D and only serve as puppets for the main points. So why put them in at all? Some people might argue, "well, the author didn't want to make the story about the characters, he wanted to make it about his argument of xyz". Well, then he should have written an essay or an article or whatever. Like the dialogue, the execution of this fiction seemed to cloud the subject rather than elucidate it.
Apart from a few other really nitpicky things, like representation of the Nazis and suggesting mass starvation of the poor as a means of population control, that's what I have to say. I'm glad it was a fairly quick read so that I didn't have to suffer more than necessary.
TL;DR: Ishmael is a little outdated and suffers from blanket-statement syndrome. Also has a funky thing going on with dialogue that makes it difficult to follow along.
But my hopes were a little dashed. I'll try my best to explain. (I've discovered there is no way I can critique this book without sounding condescending, so I apologise if I come off like that! I just can't get around it).
1) OUTDATED -- The main problem I have with this book is it's just outdated. According to the author, he started working on the ideas for this novel in the 1970s and tried to publish it in the 1980s, and I think if it had been published then, it would have been pretty big. Even in the 1990s it made some waves. A lot of the book focuses on shifting an anthropogenic worldview, and recognising that maybe humans aren't in absolute control of everything. That makes sense when you put it in the context of the industrialised, technologically-focused world of the Cold War, with Operation Star Wars and whatnot. But now -- even if it's not chronologically that far away from those decades -- I feel that most people are familiar with the basic concepts and challenges to society it presents. It doesn't say anything new or groundbreaking (even if it presents it that way), and that was a little disappointing to me. After finishing the book, I talked extensively to my teacher about it, and he said that in his 30+ years of teaching environmental science, he's noticed a shift in about the last five. Students now don't need to be convinced that climate change is an issue, or be persuaded to care about the earth. They are more well-informed, motivated, and sometimes desperate to learn about ways they can actively participate in mitigating climate change. He said he was considering switching Ishmael out with something else that might be more impactful in the future.
2) THE "NOBLE SAVAGE" TROPE -- This book praised the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to the point where it could be called primitivist. Ishmael pointed to agriculture and civilisation as the moment when things started to go wrong on planet Earth, and used hunter-gatherer peoples many, many times as a shining example of how humans are supposed to be. I admit I received a pretty Western-centric history education, so I don't know too much about non-Western cultures, but I know that 1) not all indigenous societies were environmentally conscious, and 2) I know enough to be uncomfortable with this oversimplified glorification of literally thousands of different tribes and cultures. Ishmael doesn't make any overt statements about whether he believes humans to be inherently good or evil (a key part of the debate when it comes to the noble savage trope). But you would think that agricultural societies are inherently evil and hunter-gatherers are not. In fact, you could make a credible argument that this book blames Nazism on agriculture (indirectly, of course, but you could definitely write an English paper!).
3) WEIRD WRITING STRUCTURE -- The whole book is set up as a series of Socratic-esque dialogues between an omniscient gorilla (Ishmael) and the unnamed narrator, who is a disillusioned former hippy. While that might sound interesting, it quickly turns into a gorilla telepathically lecturing this man on how Western civilisation sucks. The dialogue gets old really fast because it gets in the way of telling the story. It adds an extra layer between us and the narrator, making it difficult to slog through reams of back and forth question and answer. On top of this, sometimes they jump back during their "lessons" to things they've covered already, which just adds to the disorganised confusion. I feel that the author should have either written full-blown fiction, or just gotten over himself and written a treatise, essay, or article. You can write really, really good fiction and still pack a punch -- Orwell, Bradbury, Dickens, or Chopin, to name a few in Western lit, did a really good job with poignant and withering social criticism while still making it a darned good story. And what about good essays? "A Room of One's Own", "Walden", "Self-Reliance", "In Defense of Poetry", "Common Sense"? Heck, I bet even the Unabomber's treatise is better organised. Perhaps the author was going for the Sherlock Holmes and Watson approach, helping the reader understand the ideas by having a character explain them as they go along, but Ishmael couldn't pull it off. It would have been so much less work to read something that lays its points out and defends them, cut and dry.
4) FICTION...? -- In my edition's forward, the author mentions that he is a journalist. Looking back, this makes a lot of sense because if definitely feels like he's one of those non-fiction writers who thinks: "I write all the time! Writing fiction must be the same thing as writing non-fiction. It'll be a breeze!" And then it flops. Now, there are similarities in writing both genres, but SO. MANY. TIMES. it's painfully obvious to me that someone doesn't know how to write fiction. I can't quite pinpoint what the "tells" are, but it's kind of like how you can tell someone isn't from your home country, even if they have no accent. It's something that just feels off but you can't explain it. That's how I felt about Ishmael. There is some backstory, but it only serves as a vehicle for propagating the book's argument rather than a character building device. Things like Ishmael's family are brought in and out of the narrative, sometimes not really adding anything to the story. In fact, we never meet ANY of the family, even though they are brought up several times. The characters are pretty 2D and only serve as puppets for the main points. So why put them in at all? Some people might argue, "well, the author didn't want to make the story about the characters, he wanted to make it about his argument of xyz". Well, then he should have written an essay or an article or whatever. Like the dialogue, the execution of this fiction seemed to cloud the subject rather than elucidate it.
Apart from a few other really nitpicky things, like representation of the Nazis and suggesting mass starvation of the poor as a means of population control, that's what I have to say. I'm glad it was a fairly quick read so that I didn't have to suffer more than necessary.
TL;DR: Ishmael is a little outdated and suffers from blanket-statement syndrome. Also has a funky thing going on with dialogue that makes it difficult to follow along.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty and Animal death
Minor: Antisemitism and Cursing
More...