The Man Who Grew Young

This is a book that really takes your mind and reprograms it in a more pleasant way. Just when you feel your starting to "get things" and the answers are of grim feelings a book like this comes along and raises your sprints and gives hope. It makes me wonder were we always this dissatisfied with life or do we loose happiness the further we get from our real life source "nature". A very interesting ride in the mind of a true imaginative genius. Also makes you really wonder what are you doing today that may evolve into something else on a much larger scale in the right or wrong direction.....

Daniel Quinn's latest book is the one he calls his favorite. Like many of his books, it's an impossible one to write, meaning it's an impossible story to tell in book form (much like his work ISHMAEL was for so many years, and which he finally DID manage to write in a way that worked). His latest is The Man Who Grew Young, and thanks to the brilliant efforts of artist Tim Eldred, Daniel was finally able to tell his story of a man suspended in time while the entire universe moved backward around him. Imagine a world in which you're born by coming out of the ground, old, and in which you grow younger as your life progresses until the day comes when you return to the womb. Imagine one man who for some strange reason lives outside of this process, and who spends his thousands of years searching for the clue to the mystery that he is. The only way this story could be well told is in graphic novel form, and because it's a graphic novel, it can be easily read in less than an hour. But like most well-written graphic novels, doing so would be doing the story a grave injustice, for this one must be read carefully, and its ideas slowly considered and carefully digested. Daniel lays out a scenario of man's place in the universe, and such a story is NOT to be brushed aside lightly.Eldred's work is fantastic, and Quinn's story an engaging and inspiring mystery. The man who only grows young when he unravels the mystery of his being could be any of us, searching for our origins and finding it in the only place it could be...where all humanity comes from and where all humanity resides. I found this to be a great read.

THE MAN WHO GREW YOUNG - is a phenomenal and powerful book that illustrates the world moving in a different direction. Aside from the beautiful artwork - which in itself makes this book a great addition to any collection - the story itself borders on revolutionary and visionary. Challenging all levels and concepts of history and humanity, the story takes you on a truly amazing journey through time. While this book is a must buy for any Quinn fan, it is also a superb introduction to his work and a new way of thinking for those new to his writing.Do yourself a favor and add this book to your collection. Usually when you read a review of a Daniel Quinn book you'll find that the reviews fall into two categories. The first sort of come from either loyal readers whose lives have been changed through reading Quinn's work, or from people who are intrigued with Quinn's concepts and ideas on how to save the world. The second type of review comes from those who are hostile towards his work and his readers because it scares them. Quinn writes with painful honesty about this modern world that we live in. His novels don't beat you over the head with ideology, but rather tell clever stories with important messages. Strangely, there are those that find these messages threatening as Quinn's writings ask the reader to challenge the conventional outlook on the world and "civilized" culture.****WARNING!!!****THE MAN WHO GREW YOUNG will make your mind move in directions you never thought possible. . .

THE MAN WHO GREW YOUNG has been in work for many years. It was conceived a decade ago, written first as a prose narrative, then as a screenplay, and finally as a graphic novel, the magnificent art taking several years to prepare. The result is a book that has a special place in my heart, the tale of a great cosmic adventure, mysterious and inspiring.Someone once told me he didn't want to read ISHMAEL because he "couldn't stand hearing any more bad news." Of course, readers of that book know it's not a bringer of bad news but of enlightenment and hope. Even so, some readers did finish it feeling depressed and hopeless. No one, however, will be able to finish THE MAN WHO GREW YOUNG feeling anything but exalted and joyous. Even I, having read it dozens of time, have never closed it without tears in my eyes. It's almost as if this is not so much a book that I wrote as a book that wrote me.

Quinn continues to amaze me with the quality of his thought and his continual creativity at coming at the problem of the destructiveness of civilization in new ways. In this book, time is running backwards, and so the air is becoming cleaner as factories convert pollution back into natural materials, oil is pumped back into the ground, and so on. On a personal scale, characters live backwards, too, growing young and eventually rejoining with their mothers. All relationships run backwards. It's an extraordinary way to get us to look at our relationships to each other, and to the planet. And it's a damn good book. I cared deeply about the characters, and kept turning pages to find out what happened to them. Then when I finished the book, I immediately went back to the beginning. When I finished it again, back I went to read it a third time. The illustrations are also extraordinary. I'm not normally a huge fan of graphic novels, but this one is great.