A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife: On the Other Side Known Commonly as "The Little Book" - Softcover

Quinn, Daniel

 
9780553379792: A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife: On the Other Side Known Commonly as "The Little Book"
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553379798 ISBN 13: 9780553379792
Verlag: Bantam, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

The guide of choice for anyone who plans to die someday--are YOU ready for the AFTERLIFE?

To find out, take this simple quiz:

1.  Like Earth, the Afterlife has celebrities, outcasts, deadheads, losers, and busybodies.  

True
False


2.  Is there an Afterlife after the Afterlife?

Yes
No


3.  When you first arrive on "the Other Side," you will be given:

a) a set of wings
b) a toaster
c) a copy of A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife


Don't worry if you're not sure how to respond. A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife has answers to these questions and more--and if you're lucky, some of them may turn out to be right!

An irreverent, one-of-a-kind compendium from the award-winning author of Ishmael, A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife can be read as a parable, an allegory, a work of fiction--or exactly what it claims to be: a helpful handbook for the recently deceased.  It is filled with uncommon wisdom, bizarre imaginings, uncanny perceptions, and unexpected humor.  Is it fantastic escapism or a seminal event in human history? Read it and find out....

Face it.  The Afterlife is the ultimate test.  You might as well study.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Daniel Quinn grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and studied at St. Louis University, the University of Vienna, and Loyola University of Chicago. He worked in Chicago-area publishing for twenty years before beginning work on the book for which he is best known, Ishmael. In 1991, this book was chosen from among some 2,500 international entrants in the Turner Tomorrow competition to win the half-million dollar prize for a novel offering “creative and positive solutions to global problems.” It 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, At Woomeroo, The Invisibility of Success, and The Teachings. Daniel Quinn died in 2018.

Aus dem Klappentext

The guide of choice for anyone who plans to die someday--are YOU ready for the AFTERLIFE?

To find out, take this simple quiz:

1. Like Earth, the Afterlife has celebrities, outcasts, deadheads, losers, and busybodies.

True
False


2. Is there an Afterlife after the Afterlife?

Yes
No


3. When you first arrive on "the Other Side," you will be given:

a) a set of wings
b) a toaster
c) a copy of A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife


Don't worry if you're not sure how to respond. A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife has answers to these questions and more--and if you're lucky, some of them may turn out to be right!

An irreverent, one-of-a-kind compendium from the award-winning author of Ishmael, A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife can be read as a parable, an allegory, a work of fiction--or exactly what it claims to be: a helpful handbook for the recently deceased. It is filled with uncommon wisdom, bizarre imaginings, uncanny perceptions, and unexpected humor. Is it fantastic escapism or a seminal event in human history? Read it and find out....

Face it. The Afterlife is the ultimate test. You might as well study.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Q. What am I doing here? I feel totally  disoriented and helpless.

A. This is normal for the newly dead and will  pass. Your circumstances have changed as drastically as it is possible for  circumstances to change. Every single one of us felt this way initially. Every  single one of us eventually learned the ropes and regained our sense of  balance and self-possession. The Little Book is designed to serve as a  ready first aid to this objective.


Q. What's wrong with my legs? It's as though they  were made of rubber.

A. You have what is popularly known as the staggers, which we all have when  we arrive in the Afterlife. You'll be back to  normal in a few days.


Q. Exactly where am I?

A. In life, it seemed to you that you inhabited  a universe of stars, galaxies, and so on, and you located yourself as an  individual on the planet Earth, on one of its continents or islands, perhaps  in one of its cities. In your stay in that universe, this seemed "normal." A  quick look round will convince you that you no longer inhabit that universe.  It's said that we inhabit "another dimension" or "a parallel universe," but  these phrases have no precise meaning. Basically, you're somewhere  else, and this somewhere else will soon seem completely normal to  you.


Q. But everything already looks completely  normal.

A. Our environment is locally psycho-reactive,  which is to say that it responds to our individual expectations in ways that  are not explainable in ordinary causal terms. If you are, let us say, an  American urbanite of the 1990s, your surroundings will almost certainly look  and function like a sort of idealized American city of that era. If, on the  other hand, you are a Kayapo Indian of the 1990s, your surroundings will look  and function like a rain forest in the interior of Brazil.


Q. Is this heaven then?

A. Some believe so. Some argue that it cannot  be, since no divine presence makes itself felt. Some believe it to be a  purgatory from which some or all of us will eventually be delivered. Even in  the Afterlife, questions remain.


Q. Why do people call this place Detroit [Nepal,  Havana, Beijing, Hong Kong, Sheffield, Nebraska]? It isn't at all the way I  remember it.

A. Place names in the Afterlife are not subject  to any objective standard. Several large French cities are named Paris, and  they are not all in the same general area (not, in other words, all in  "France"). Shades in your area (or at least some of them) have adopted the  habit of calling it Detroit (or whatever). It doesn't mean much of anything.  Humor them--or  call it whatever you please (maybe you'll start a new trend).


Q. Are maps available?

A. Yes, and they are delightful to look upon. Maps as small as your thumb,  maps as large as the landscape. Minutely detailed maps with names of  places you've never been. Glorious maps, filigreed, flagged, annotated,  and totally impractical.


Q. Why is it always overcast? Doesn't the sun ever shine?

A. It isn't "overcast," and there is no sun to shine. The light (and the  alternation of "day" and "night") is assumed to be our environment's  response to our expectations of it. Finicky speakers say that we  experience light (and the rest of the Afterlife), not that  light (or anything else in the Afterlife) exists. If you would  prefer to pass your time entirely in the "day," you will want to search  out one of the so-called Northern Cities, where "the sun shines  twenty-four hours a day."


Q. What is my body made of?

A. The nature of matter in this continuum (including the matter in your  body) is as mysterious as the nature of matter in the continuum we knew  when alive. Clearly our bodies are not as "substantial" as in life--not as  heavy or impermeable.


Q. I thought memory was a brain function, pure and simple. How can I have  memories if I don't have a brain?

A. You clearly do have a brain, just as you clearly have arms, legs,  eyes, nose, hair, and so on. All the organs are there, though their  function may or may not be.


Q. I don't have any feeling of hunger, but I've seen people eating. Will I  get hungry later?

A. Food is not a necessity in the Afterlife. "Eating" (it has to be  enclosed in quotation marks) is an experience quite unlike the one you  knew in life. Try it, and spare me the necessity of describing something  you will inevitably experience for yourself.


Q. What about sleep? Do people sleep here?

A. People rest, doze, tune out, power down, and, yes, sleep (though  neurologists insist that none of these states actually correspond to what  the living call sleep). Some find they have no need of it, some spend as  much time at it as they can. It continues to provide a handy means of  ending a tiresome visit: "I have to go home and sleep now, thank you.  Auf Wiedersehen!"


Q. What's the proper way to talk about things here? Do you call people  ghosts or spirits or what?

A. You may call people people. People are called ghosts or shades only in a  semi-jocular or casual way, except when referring to their former status,  as in, "Today I met the shade of my second cousin Alf." (Most people,  however, would simply say, "Today I met my second cousin Alf.") You will  seldom hear people refer to us as spirits. Most people think of spirits as  bodiless beings (which we are clearly not).


Q. Do people refer to themselves as dead?

A. We often refer to ourselves collectively as "the dead" but as  individuals seldom think of ourselves as such, since we are manifestly  alive (though in a somewhat attenuated form). We say, "I live two streets  over," "This is not a bad life we have here," "I live for my work," "I  prefer to live alone," and so on.


Q. I worry that, being a newcomer, I may inadvertently violate some custom  or give offense to someone. Are there guides to etiquette and good  manners?

A. Such guides exist, though they were more in evidence in the  seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. In general, the good  manners you practiced in life will serve perfectly well here. Special  customs do not seem to arise among the dead; if you think about it, you'll  see that the conditions and occasions that fostered the development of  customs in life are largely absent here.


Q. I heard someone talk about "losing his head." What does this mean?

A. Losing your head is a sort of jocular euphemism for dying; the reference  is of course to decapitation. When in a few days or weeks you have  recovered from the shock of "losing your head," it will be said that you  "have your head on"--in other words, are...

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Verlag
Bantam
Erscheinungsdatum
1998
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553379798
ISBN 13 
9780553379792
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
160
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