The Story of B [Paperback]

Daniel Quinn (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 3, 1997

The Story of B combines Daniel Quinn's provocative and visionary ideas with a masterfully plotted story of adventure and suspense in this stunning, resonant novel that is sure to stay with readers long after they have finished the last page. Father Jared Osborne--bound by a centuries-old mandate held by his order to know before all others that the Antichrist is among us--is sent to Europe on a mission to find a peripatetic preacher whose radical message is attracting a growing circle of followers. The target of Osborne's investigation is an American known only as B. He isn't teaching New Age platitudes or building a fanatical following; instead, he is quietly uncovering the hidden history of our planet, redefining the fall of man, and retracing a path of human spirituality that extends millions of years into the past. From the beginning, Fr. Osborne is stunned, outraged, and awed by the simplicity and profundity of B's teachings. Is B merely a heretic--or is he the Antichrist sent to seduce humanity not with wickedness, but with ideas more alluring than those of traditional religion? With surprising twists and fascinating characters, The Story of B answers this question as it sends readers on an intellectual journey that will forever change the way they view spirituality, human history, and, indeed, the state of our present world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Quinn returns to fiction after a five-year hiatus with a sequel of sorts to Ishmael, winner of the Turner Tomorrow Award in 1991. Like its controversial predecessor, this book is not really a novel, but an extended Socratic dialogue that promulgates the same animist solutions to global problems that the author recorded last year in his spiritual autobiography, Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest. The narrator, Jared Osborne, is a priest of the Laurentians, a fictional Roman Catholic order under an ancient, covert mandate to stand watch against the coming of the Antichrist. Although skeptical, Jared is enjoined by his superior to investigate Charles Atterley, an expatriate American preacher known to his followers as "B." Allowing Jared into his inner circle in Munich, B soon dispels both the concern that he is the Antichrist and the shivery intimations of apocalypse that make the opening chapters darkly intriguing. Through long, often numbingly repetitive parables and speeches, B instructs Jared in the solutions to overpopulation, ecological despoliation, cultural intolerance and other ills that have dogged civilization since the time of "the Great Forgetting" 10,000 years ago. B's smug pontificating and his disciples' unquestioning devotion reduces them to interchangeable mouthpieces for Quinn's philosophies. As a result, Jared's spiritual conversion away from Roman Catholicism and toward Quinn-ism, intended to be the book's dramatic high point, falls painfully flat.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Quinn, author of the best-selling cult classic Ishmael (LJ 12/91), returns with another quasispiritual tale about a priest who awaits the arrival of the Antichrist.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (November 3, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553379011
• ISBN-13: 978-0553379013
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.9 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (169 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #46,026 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and studied at St. Louis University, the University of Vienna, and Loyola University of Chicago. I worked in Chicago-area publishing for twenty years before beginning work on the book for which I'm best known, Ishmael. This book was chosen from among some 2500 international entrants to win the half-million dollar 1991 Turner Tomorrow competition for a novel offering "creative and positive solutions to global problems." The novel has subsequently sold more than a million copies in English, is available in some thirty languages, and has been used in high schools and colleges worldwide in courses as varied as philosophy, geography, ecology, archaeology, history, biology, zoology, anthropology, political science, economics, and sociology. Subsequent works include Providence, The Story of B, My Ishmael: A Sequel, Beyond Civilization, After Dachau, The Holy, and most recently At Woomeroo, a collection of short stories. I can be found on Facebook, and my Web site, ishmael.org, is enormous, offering news and announcements from readers, suggested readings, speeches and essays available nowhere else, detailed answers to more than 500 questions asked by readers over the years, and a Guestbook with thousands of entries. I and my wife, Rennie, have lived in Chicago, Santa Fe and Madrid, New Mexico, and Austin, Texas. We currently live in Houston.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 85 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An important book April 26, 2000

By J. Buxton

Format:Paperback

This is, at the very least, an interesting book to read whether you end up loving or hating it, agreeing or disagreeing with the arguments. After reading some of the other reviews, I have a few comments. First, it is a work of fiction and not a historical narrative. Quinn doesn't use too much data to support his assertions, but as a work of fiction the story is just as effective in my opinion. I thought the two most interesting ideas the book offered were (1) the realities of the population explosion and how our culture is prepared (or not prepared) to deal with it and (2) the notion that the "fall" depicted in the Bible corresponds directly in time with the use of totalitarian agriculture. Some have interpreted the book as very anti-Christian, but I think his point is that "dogmatic" or "doctrinal" Christianity has contributed to our cultural problems. Quinn is not really criticizing the Spirit of Jesus' message (or the message of any other founder of the world's major religions), but rather the institutions that have been formed that don't permit a vision of any other way of life. Also, I don't think the book paints a picture of doomed planet as some have suggested, but rather a doomed CULTURE. There is still hope for humanity through changed minds (not, as Quinn points out, through more programs perpetuated by the same culture already in place).

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A thousand piece jigsaw puzzle before your eyes February 19, 2001

By Thomas Lapins

Format:Paperback

Quinn put a thousand scattered pieces I had in my head and put them into one incredible horrific jigsaw puzzle. The story is ok. It's the "public teachings" that are at the core of both this story and his purpose. We can't face the truth about ourselves. We have to believe that we are God's chosen, that which is removed and above nature. We wrote the history books, the bibles, the science books, the culture of human beings. It's all slanted in our favor and honor. Of course it is. How can we speak the truth without self-destructing as individuals and a culture? Too bad we can't face our place in the universe and upon the Earth. We're not so bad. Just full of ourselves. This book will shake you to your foundation. It will leave you a bit lost and empty. But what is lost and empty can be found and filled again. Intuitively I knew the truth before I read the book. A great thank you for putting it together so profoundly and so clearly.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If you read Ishmael you must read this! November 28, 1999

By Bill MacDonald

Format:Paperback

This is the followup to Ishmael and if you've read Ishmael, you must continue with this. This is the story of a Laurentain priest who is assigned to investigate a man known only as B, who is spreading the word. The Laurentains have a special mandate: to identify and suppress the Antichrist. The story is fine but is secondary to the message of saving the world. What was revealed in Ishmael is brought into blinding clarity here. We're in big trouble folks. We may not realize it but I can guarantee after reading this you too will realize things must change regarding population growth or we will extinct ourselves. The increasing rates of population doubling over the past 10,000 years stunned me. Please please read this and pass it on to others. This is the most important novel you will read.