Drove home, turned in the van, picked up my car, and went back to the apartment. It was empty in a new way, with a new degree of emptiness.
There was a telephone there on an end table, connecting me to a whole world of life and activity, but who could I call?
Oddly enough, I thought of someone, looked up a number, and dialed it. After three rings, a low, firm voice answered:
“Mrs. Sokolow’s residence.”
“Is this Mr. Partridge?”
“Yes, this is Mr. Partridge.”
I said, “This is the guy who visited you a couple weeks ago, trying to locate Rachel Sokolow.”
Partridge waited.
I said, “Ishmael is dead.”
After a pause: “I’m very sorry to hear it.”
“We could have saved him.”
Partridge thought about that for a while. “Are you sure he would have let us?”
I wasn’t sure, and said so.
4
It wasn’t till I got Ishmael’s poster to the framing shop that I discovered there were messages on both sides. I had it framed so that both can be seen. The message on one side is the one Ishmael displayed on the wall of his den:
WITH MAN GONE,
WILL THERE
BE HOPE
FOR GORILLA?
The message on the other side reads:
WITH GORILLA GONE,
WILL THERE
BE HOPE
FOR MAN?
Contact other readers of Daniel Quinn’s books (Ishmael, The Story of B, My Ishmael, Providence, and Beyond Civilization) at www.ishmael.org
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Quinn, the author of Ishmael, was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1935, studied at St. Louis University, the University of Vienna in Austria, and Loyola University of Chicago. In 1975 he abandoned a long career in publishing to become a freelance writer.
The first version of the book that ultimately became Ishmael, his award-winning novel, was written in 1977 and was followed by six others before finding its final form, as a novel, in 1990. Quinn went on to explore the spiritual and experiential origins of Ishmael in a work of innovative autobiography, Providence: The Story of a Fifty Year Vision Quest.
Of his latest novel, Quinn writes: “For years I worried that I might never equal (much less surpass) what I achieved in Ishmael. This worry has been erased for me by The Story of B. Ishmael would definitely approve of this book.” The Story of B is now available from Bantam Books.
Contact other readers of ISHMAEL at
www.ishmael.com
MY
ISHMAEL
Unbeknownst to the narrator of Ishmael, he wasn’t the only person around with “an earnest desire to save the world.” In My Ishmael, we learn that another person answered Ishmael’s ad—a twelve-year-old girl! Though initially reluctant to accept such a student, Ishmael is finally compelled to confer upon her an extraordinary compliment: “You have a character very like my own.” Hers is a character that makes not only for a fascinating new journey but for an ending to the Ishmael saga that will astonish and delight fans all over the world.
Available now
FB 14 12/98
ISHMAEL
A Bantam/Turner Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition published February 1992
Bantam trade paperback edition/June 1995
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1992 by Daniel Quinn
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-25441
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
eISBN: 978-0-307-57480-0
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, New York, New York.
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