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The Man Who Grew Young
Daniel Quinn strikes again with this full-color, illustrated novel. What’s going to happen when the universe comes to the end of its string? Like a cosmic yo-yo, it’s going to start traveling back UP the string, to its beginning—and every life that has ever been lived will be lived in reverse. The strangest adventure to be found in this backward-running universe is that of Adam Taylor, whose epic quest through time cannot end until he finds his way into the womb that gave birth to us all.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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471 people want to read
About the author
Daniel Quinn
53 books1,898 followersI had and did the usual things -- childhood, schools, universities (St. Louis, Vienna, Loyola of Chicago), then embarked on a career in publishing in Chicago. Within a few years I was the head of the Biography & Fine Arts Department of the American Peoples Encyclopedia; when that was subsumed by a larger outfit and moved to New York, I stayed behind and moved into educational publishing, beginning at Science Research Associates (a division of IBM) and ending as Editorial Director of The Society for Vision Education (a division of the Singer Corporation).
In 1977 I walked away from SVE and this very successful career when it became clear that I was not going to able to do there what I really wanted to do...which was not entirely clear. A few months later I set my feet on a path that would change my life completely. It was a path made up of books -- or rather versions of a book that, after twelve years, would turn out to be ISHMAEL.
The first version, written in 1977-78, called MAN AND ALIEN, didn't turn out to be quite what I wanted, so wrote a second, called THE GENESIS TRANSCRIPT. Like the first version, this didn't satisfy me, so I wrote a third with the same title. THE BOOK OF NAHASH, abandoned unfinished, was the fourth version.
When I started writing version five, THE BOOK OF THE DAMNED in 1981, I was sure I'd found the book I was born to write. The versions that came before had been like rainy days with moments of sunshine. THIS was a thunderstorm, and the lines crossed my pages like flashes of lightning. When, after a few thousand words I came to a clear climax, I said, "This MUST be seen," so I put Part One into print. Parts Two and Three followed, and I began searching for the switch that would turn on Part Four... but it just wasn't there. What I'd done was terrific -- and complete in its own way -- but at last I faced the fact that the whole thing just couldn't be done in lightning strikes.
And so, on to versions six and seven (both called ANOTHER STORY TO BE IN). I knew I was close, and version eight was it -- the first and only version to be a novel and the first and only version inhabited by a telepathic gorilla named Ishmael.
ISHMAEL was a life-changing book. It began by winning the Turner Tomorrow Award, the largest prize ever given to a single literary work. It would come to be read in some 25 languages and used in classrooms from mid-school to graduate school in courses as varied as history philosophy, geography, archaeology, religion, biology, zoology, ecology, anthropology, political science, economics, and sociology.
But in 1992, when ISHMAEL was published, I had no idea what I might do next. My readers decided this for me. In letters that arrived by the bushel they demanded to know where this strange book came from, what "made" me write it. To answer these questions I wrote PROVIDENCE: THE STORY OF A FIFTY-YEAR VISION QUEST (1995).
But there were even more urgently important questions to be answered, particularly this one: "With ISHMAEL you've undermined the religious beliefs of a lifetime. What am I supposed to replace them with?" I replied to this with THE STORY OF B (1996).
The questions (and books) kept coming: Why did Ishmael have to die? This gave rise to MY ISHMAEL: A SEQUEL (1997), in which it's revealed that Ishmael was not only far from being dead but far from being finished with his work as a teacher. The question "Where do we go from here?" was the inspiration for BEYOND CIVILIZATION: HUMANITY'S NEXT GREAT ADVENTURE (1999), a very different kind of book.
With these questions answered (and 500 more on my website), I felt I was fundamentally finished with what might be called my teachings and ready to move on.
I had always taken as my guiding principle these words from André Gide: "What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it, written as well as you, do not write it.
In 1977 I walked away from SVE and this very successful career when it became clear that I was not going to able to do there what I really wanted to do...which was not entirely clear. A few months later I set my feet on a path that would change my life completely. It was a path made up of books -- or rather versions of a book that, after twelve years, would turn out to be ISHMAEL.
The first version, written in 1977-78, called MAN AND ALIEN, didn't turn out to be quite what I wanted, so wrote a second, called THE GENESIS TRANSCRIPT. Like the first version, this didn't satisfy me, so I wrote a third with the same title. THE BOOK OF NAHASH, abandoned unfinished, was the fourth version.
When I started writing version five, THE BOOK OF THE DAMNED in 1981, I was sure I'd found the book I was born to write. The versions that came before had been like rainy days with moments of sunshine. THIS was a thunderstorm, and the lines crossed my pages like flashes of lightning. When, after a few thousand words I came to a clear climax, I said, "This MUST be seen," so I put Part One into print. Parts Two and Three followed, and I began searching for the switch that would turn on Part Four... but it just wasn't there. What I'd done was terrific -- and complete in its own way -- but at last I faced the fact that the whole thing just couldn't be done in lightning strikes.
And so, on to versions six and seven (both called ANOTHER STORY TO BE IN). I knew I was close, and version eight was it -- the first and only version to be a novel and the first and only version inhabited by a telepathic gorilla named Ishmael.
ISHMAEL was a life-changing book. It began by winning the Turner Tomorrow Award, the largest prize ever given to a single literary work. It would come to be read in some 25 languages and used in classrooms from mid-school to graduate school in courses as varied as history philosophy, geography, archaeology, religion, biology, zoology, ecology, anthropology, political science, economics, and sociology.
But in 1992, when ISHMAEL was published, I had no idea what I might do next. My readers decided this for me. In letters that arrived by the bushel they demanded to know where this strange book came from, what "made" me write it. To answer these questions I wrote PROVIDENCE: THE STORY OF A FIFTY-YEAR VISION QUEST (1995).
But there were even more urgently important questions to be answered, particularly this one: "With ISHMAEL you've undermined the religious beliefs of a lifetime. What am I supposed to replace them with?" I replied to this with THE STORY OF B (1996).
The questions (and books) kept coming: Why did Ishmael have to die? This gave rise to MY ISHMAEL: A SEQUEL (1997), in which it's revealed that Ishmael was not only far from being dead but far from being finished with his work as a teacher. The question "Where do we go from here?" was the inspiration for BEYOND CIVILIZATION: HUMANITY'S NEXT GREAT ADVENTURE (1999), a very different kind of book.
With these questions answered (and 500 more on my website), I felt I was fundamentally finished with what might be called my teachings and ready to move on.
I had always taken as my guiding principle these words from André Gide: "What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it, written as well as you, do not write it.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
September 9, 2024
Se me hizo muy interesante, y pude reconocer algunas de las ideas que trajo desde Tales of Adam.
January 24, 2018
This is Daniel Quinn putting out his basic message in a graphic novel. There's a new telling of his "fall" story (which he handles perfectly in "Ishmael" and touches on in "The Story of B"), which I enjoyed. It's a nice effort. It's not his best stuff, but it's neat that he tried to get out there in another format, so he gets an extra star for that.
January 27, 2024
Ive loved several of Quinn’s books, and I found this to be a really refreshing approach. I always appreciate an author (or any artist) who explores new ways to create and takes risks in pursuit of an idea. The illustrations throughout this graphic novel by Tim Eldred were spectacular.
May 1, 2022
it was entertaining. A very unique concept. This is the second graphic novel i have read this month and i am not sure it is my cup of tea
December 28, 2022
Amazing. Loved that it was presented in grafic novel form. It added so much to the story.
December 27, 2023
Interesting to say the least! I would expect no less form Daniel Quinn. A "creation" story, but there's more to it than that. I will have to think on it some more. ( A Graphic Novel)
December 16, 2016
What happens when the universe ends? Well, in The Man Who Grew Young by Daniel Quinn and Tim Eldred, the universe starts winding up like a giant yo-yo and everything that has ever lived and died lives again, but in reverse order. Basically, the history of the world begins at the end and moves towards what we know as the beginning. This is the basic concept of the graphic novel, but not nearly where it stops. Like in all Quinn books, the author dissects our culture and society like a surgeon with a scalpel, peeling back the layers of skin to reveal the veins and bones inside.
I was somewhat nervous when I first decided to read this graphic novel. For one thing, Quinn has written some of the best novels I’ve ever read, but sequential art is a different beast and not all prose writers are able to make the successful leap from writing to paint a picture to writing about a painted picture. Second, I wasn’t sure if he could come up with an interesting enough plot for a book that relies on visuals. Afterall, Quinn’s first novel Ishmael was on the surface a series of conversions between a man and an ape. Third, I had never heard of Tim Eldred, the man who did the art for the book. All of these worries plagued me as I sat down to read The Man Who Grew Young.
But Quinn quickly put my worries to rest with his opening scene, which introduced the protagonist, Adam Taylor, who, along with his son and a bunch of other people, are gathered in a cemetery. We normally associate cemeteries with death, sadness and mourning, but Quinn does an excellent job of reversing this experience. The use of superb dialogue helps reveal the jubilant mood of the scene.
“At the party somebody said we were “waking” my mom, is she awake already?” a young boy says to his grandmother. This is a beautiful use of language, because it puts such a unique twist on the concept of death: the dead can be woken.
With insightful, internal dialogue we are sucked into the story like lint into a vacuum. We soon learn that Adam Taylor is someone special as he travels back through the years without rejoining with his mother. We see him move back from the Manhattan project, through the discovery of America, back to the first native people of Africa.
Tim Eldred, who we learn in the introduction is from the PBS animated television show Dragon Tales, provides the art for the graphic novel. His art is functional and doesn’t hurt the story, which perhaps is highly suited to the subject matter in this graphic novel, because it makes the primary focus the story and allows it to shine through. I would have preferred more panels in some instances, because the panel to panel flow was really jumpy and he was asking the reader on some occasions to do too much work in between panels. Other than that, however, Eldred did a nice job and his full-page spreads were spectacular.
The Man who Grew Young is an imaginative, creative and poignant graphic novel that elevates sequential art to an all-time high and raises the bar for every other writer in the field. Quinn’s original concept is so simple it’s genius; it has you wondering, why didn’t I think of that? Most importantly, he doesn’t abandon the concept prematurely, but explores it thoroughly until the reader is exhilarated and left with the need to once again pass on Quinn’s inspirational message to others. Quinn is one of the most brilliant contemporary writers, and The Man Who Grew Young is a wondrous achievement that should win him great acclaim in the comic industry.
I was somewhat nervous when I first decided to read this graphic novel. For one thing, Quinn has written some of the best novels I’ve ever read, but sequential art is a different beast and not all prose writers are able to make the successful leap from writing to paint a picture to writing about a painted picture. Second, I wasn’t sure if he could come up with an interesting enough plot for a book that relies on visuals. Afterall, Quinn’s first novel Ishmael was on the surface a series of conversions between a man and an ape. Third, I had never heard of Tim Eldred, the man who did the art for the book. All of these worries plagued me as I sat down to read The Man Who Grew Young.
But Quinn quickly put my worries to rest with his opening scene, which introduced the protagonist, Adam Taylor, who, along with his son and a bunch of other people, are gathered in a cemetery. We normally associate cemeteries with death, sadness and mourning, but Quinn does an excellent job of reversing this experience. The use of superb dialogue helps reveal the jubilant mood of the scene.
“At the party somebody said we were “waking” my mom, is she awake already?” a young boy says to his grandmother. This is a beautiful use of language, because it puts such a unique twist on the concept of death: the dead can be woken.
With insightful, internal dialogue we are sucked into the story like lint into a vacuum. We soon learn that Adam Taylor is someone special as he travels back through the years without rejoining with his mother. We see him move back from the Manhattan project, through the discovery of America, back to the first native people of Africa.
Tim Eldred, who we learn in the introduction is from the PBS animated television show Dragon Tales, provides the art for the graphic novel. His art is functional and doesn’t hurt the story, which perhaps is highly suited to the subject matter in this graphic novel, because it makes the primary focus the story and allows it to shine through. I would have preferred more panels in some instances, because the panel to panel flow was really jumpy and he was asking the reader on some occasions to do too much work in between panels. Other than that, however, Eldred did a nice job and his full-page spreads were spectacular.
The Man who Grew Young is an imaginative, creative and poignant graphic novel that elevates sequential art to an all-time high and raises the bar for every other writer in the field. Quinn’s original concept is so simple it’s genius; it has you wondering, why didn’t I think of that? Most importantly, he doesn’t abandon the concept prematurely, but explores it thoroughly until the reader is exhilarated and left with the need to once again pass on Quinn’s inspirational message to others. Quinn is one of the most brilliant contemporary writers, and The Man Who Grew Young is a wondrous achievement that should win him great acclaim in the comic industry.
August 13, 2014
This is something of a conceptual graphic novel told in three parts. The first part was a beautifully rendered thought experiment. In this part, a man travels backward through time as the world moves from our future toward the Big Crunch. This part of the book was fascinating to me and I would have liked for that concept to be more fully explored and fleshed out. Unfortunately the book went through a second head-scratching section into a third part which was an odd sort of morality play. In that last section, we get a sort of eco-Genesis story with a punchline about how we are all children of Mother Earth. It was heavy-handed and a little bit odd. It would have felt very out of place if the second part had not already put my brain into a "huh" space. Bottom line, this was a disconnected book that was overly ambitious. The author actually warns the reader about the ambitions of the book in the introduction. I should have been prepared but somehow I was still disappointed.
November 19, 2015
This is an interesting story that is well told and drawn. Daniel Quinn has taken on the impossible task of having a man live backwards through time, which I think is a hard concept to grasp. Tim Eldred has done a wonderful job of bringing Mr. Quinn's words to life with the bold strokes of a pencil. The coloring is excellent.
I did enjoy the story and didn't have any idea how it would end. Not being a religious man myself, I was intrigued by the story of Adam as he ate the fruit from the tree of the Gods and became heady with the power he now had. All people can be corrupted with absolute power, and Adam proves this to be true. A balance must be found, and he finally finds that with both of his sons.
The final message . . .well, I cannot reveal that. But suffice it to say, it confused me at first. I had to read the ending three or four times before I got it. And I liked it. You may too.
I rated this book a 7 out of 10.
I did enjoy the story and didn't have any idea how it would end. Not being a religious man myself, I was intrigued by the story of Adam as he ate the fruit from the tree of the Gods and became heady with the power he now had. All people can be corrupted with absolute power, and Adam proves this to be true. A balance must be found, and he finally finds that with both of his sons.
The final message . . .well, I cannot reveal that. But suffice it to say, it confused me at first. I had to read the ending three or four times before I got it. And I liked it. You may too.
I rated this book a 7 out of 10.
July 9, 2010
An interesting premise, but in the end I've heard the argument before and disagree with it. For a completely closed-system, naturalist point of view, I can think of few as respectable and respecting as Quinn's, but in the end it's not enough. The "mother" in the end (in other words, the end of his quest) is wholly unsatisfactory and, in my opinion, such a viewpoint explains nothing about human need, yearning and quest, let alone other experiences we humans face through our lives.
February 16, 2012
The backward storyline got me disoriented for a bit when I had to take a break. Part of the story kind of tied in with Werner Herzog's latest documentary, "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" that I saw a couple of weeks before reading this. Of course it was a different take than what the scientists are saying about the cave drawings. I liked this graphic novel but the ending really could've been better.
January 30, 2008
kind of a children's book, with slightly cheesy art, but it's still Daniel Quinn.
April 24, 2009
I really like the concept of this and the execution. I kind of wish the ending had gone a different route.
September 28, 2009
The story is definitely interesting, but it's the illustrations that really make this book fantastic. Go, Tim!!!
Read
April 9, 2010Best graphic novel
May 2, 2011
i saw the ending of this book early on, still a nice hour's read
February 11, 2012
I was able to purchase one of the first printing of this with Quinn's signature. I love his work.
Want to read
December 15, 2012L.Reese
February 9, 2013
I bought the signed copy.
Hard cover comic book.
Hard cover comic book.
August 5, 2013
Disoriented to start with, it is a little unnerving to read a book "going backwards in life." Once that image is over it is another fine work by Quinn. Well worth the short read.
May 4, 2014
just purchased and read my own copy. brilliant.
Read
December 11, 2014Very very good and interesting book! This book would be for jr high students.
July 2, 2015
loved this concept! but the ending kinda threw me off... I wish it would have gone in a different direction.
August 29, 2015
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13562078
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13562078
May 6, 2013
The predecessor to Benjamin Button, and better!
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews