B all that you can B

Just finished: The Story of B by Daniel Quinn.

If any of Quinn's books were going to be adapted to a movie, this would be the one. It's the most dramatic, the most narrative of all the Ishamel books (I classify this as an Ishamel book even though Ishmael himself isn't actually in it -- it has the same format as the other books sans talking gorilla). Plot summary: Apparently, part of the Laurentian (they're like Jesuits, but different) mission is to be on the lookout for, and to identify before anyone else, the Antichrist. So, our hero, Father Jared Osbourne, a Laurentian priest, is sent on a mission to Germany to ascertain whether or not a travelling lecturer with a growing following is the Antichrist. He listens to the lectures, takes very detailed notes (as in, word-for-word, which is fortunate for the reader, eh?), and starts to re-evaluate how he views the world 'n such. Of course, if this is the first Daniel Quinn book you're reading, you'll probably be doing the same. At least, you should be. More craziness happens, but I won't go into it because I don't want to give away the crazy-ass plot twist at the end of the book. One of the nice features of the novel, though, is that he's included the full text of the speeches as appendices at the end of the book, referenced by footnotes when the hero hears them spoken. This kind of hypertextual deal is a really good idea, I think -- it gives you the choice to flip to the end and read the speeches as they happen (as I did) or to just keep on with the narrative. I think you could just read through the whole book without flipping to the back and still get the same ideas, but I was curious.

I've had a kind of rocky past with Daniel Quinn. When I read Ishamel, I had the same experience every first-time reader of Quinn has -- I was mind-boggled, blown-away, and then returned to my everyday existence without really doing anything different. Then I read the sequel, My Ishmael, which I've mentioned before. When I first read that book, I was pissed because he said some stuff about education that I thought was wrong. Then I learned about the Met, which is kind of a manifestation of what he was talking about, and that made me change my mind. Now I've read B, and I realized something really important about Daniel Quinn and his books.

Everybody needs go out and read them right now. Seriously. Go. Why are you still reading this?

I don't know if he's 100% right or 100% wrong or somewhere in between, but the worldview he espouses rings of enough truth that it needs to be looked at. If he's wrong, somebody please give me a counter-book to read so I can see why. If he's right, then everybody desparately needs to read his stuff, and right now. Either way, some serious discussion needs to be had on a large scale about the stuff this guy is saying. I said before that B would make a good movie. Well, I'm going to take that a step further -- it needs to be made into a movie. And I think now's the right time, seeing as how The Passion is raking in the dough. B will be like an anti-Passion. It'll be great. That is, if the screenplay is written by someone with more skill than me.

To repeat: Go out and get this book. Or do what I did and get somebody else to check it out from their school's library for you (thanks, Katie, by the way). Read. Discuss. Do something, dammit.

Update -- on a whim, I checked the imdb to see if any of Quinn's stuff had actually been turned into a movie without my noticing, and it turns out this is as close as it's come. It was "suggested by" Ishmael, which is not what I had in mind. I'm talking about a real, honest-to-goodness adaptation.