Daniel Quinn
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- For the fictional writer, see City of Glass (Paul Auster book)
- For the Canadian Daniel Seamus Quinn, see Daniel Quinn (politician)
Overview
Daniel Quinn received an extensive education at three different universities: Saint Louis University, University of Vienna, Austria, and Loyola University.
In 1975, he abandoned a career as a publisher to become a freelance writer. Quinn is best known for his book Ishmael (1992), which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991. This fellowship was established to encourage authors to seek "creative and positive solutions to global problems". Ishmael is the first of a trilogy including The Story of B, and My Ishmael.
Ishmael and its sequels brought ever-increasing fame to Quinn throughout the 1990s, and he became a very well-known author to certain segments of the environmental movement, the simplicity movement, and anarchist and anarcho-primitivist movements. Quinn has traveled widely to lecture and discuss his books. As of 2006, he appears to be traveling less frequently, perhaps because of health issues.
While response to Ishmael was mostly very positive, Quinn inspired a great deal of controversy with his claim (most explicitly discussed in the appendix section of The Story of B) that since population growth is a function of food supply, food aid to impoverished nations merely puts off and dramatically worsens a massive population-environment crisis. Critics have charged that Quinn's position implies support for allowing starvation in poor nations, and that humans are not like other animals in that economic development lessens fertility rates and population growth among humans. Quinn has replied with a modified version of some of Thomas Malthus's arguments, suggesting that current population growth is unsustainable both for human beings and other species, and that apparently benevolent policies now will wreak havok when considered from a longer-term view. As evidence of this, he points to the extinction of 200 species a day currently being caused by human beings. Quinn has also suggested that the low fertility rates of developed nations are irrelevant as counter-evidence to his thesis, because the growing food production of developed nations is what is driving population growth in the Third World.
Quinn' book Tales of Adam was released in 2005 after a long bankruptcy scuffle with its initially scheduled publisher. It is designed to be a look through the animist's eyes in seven short tales. On his website, Quinn states that author Derrick Jensen, who was also involved with the same publisher, was in large part responsible for the difficulty of the bankruptcy proceedings (which delayed publication of Tales of Adam by about 2 years).
Across the United States and the world, dozens or even hundreds of local groups have formed to discuss Quinn's ideas. It is unclear how many of these groups are currently in active existence. A guide to these groups can be found on Quinn's website.
Related authors include Derrick Jensen, Jared Diamond, Jack Forbes, and Fredy Perlman.
Quinn currently lives in Houston, Texas with his wife Rennie.
Bibliography
- (1988) Dreamer
- (1992) Ishmael
- (1996) The Story of B
- (1997) My Ishmael
- (1996) [[Providence: The Story of a 50 Year Vision Quest]] (autobiography)
- (2000) Beyond Civilization
- (2001) The Man Who Grew Young (graphic novel)
- (2001) After Dachau
- (2002) The Holy
- (2005) Tales of Adam
Key concepts
External links
- [Ishmael.org] - The Ishmael community, Daniel Quinn's official website
- [The Friends of Ishmael Society]
- [Read Ishmael]
- [IshCon.org]
- [Ishmael and B Community]
- [Ishmael group in Austin]
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