December 14, 2023 • 45 mins
In this very special episode, author Daniel Quinn’s wife Rennie Mackay Quinn joins us for her first ever interview: sharing untold stories, new insights, and reflections on her life and journey with her beloved late husband & Daniel Quinn.
Rennie tells us about the 15 years it took Daniel to write Ishmael, the childhood dream that sparked it, how the word "hamburger" changed their lives, how they navigated the response and acclaim to Ishmael, and much more.
CITATIONS
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (1992)
Providence by Daniel Quinn (1994)
You can read more of Rennie and Daniel’s story at Ishmael.org and see Rennie’s paintings at RMQabstracts.com.
Music: Celestial Soda Pop
By: Ray Lynch
From the album: Deep Breakfast
Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI
All rights reserved.
1. Amazon: Celestial Soda Pop
https://amazon.com/music/player/albums/B000QQXURI
2. iTunes:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/celestial-soda-pop/3242445?i=3242425
3. Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/track/2THDVIVytLuGX7S7UghuC1?si=20ea63807bba401f
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Teacher seeks pupil
must have an earnest desireto save the world.
A blind person,
so begins the novel Ishmael
by Daniel Quinn.
Ishmael is a powerful book,and it's a strange book.
(00:25):
It questionssome of our most basic assumptions.
It's imaginative, mythical,but also systematic and practical.
Since 1992, it's been read
by millions of peopleand published in over 30 languages.
Most importantly,and most impossible to quantify,
it has fundamentally changed people.
(00:46):
It's expanded their minds,giving them new meaning.
It certainly has for me.
And who knows?
Maybe one day in the distant future,when our culture ends, its war
on the world and future generationsare able to live in balance with what
Ishmael calls the community of life.
This strange, powerful book
(01:07):
will have had a part to play in it.
Welcome to Episodeeight of Human Nature Odyssey,
a podcast investigatingwhere these strange ideas come from.
I myself, I wanted to ask you,
(01:46):
because Ishmael begins with the narratorfinding an ad in the paper.
Teacher seeks pupil but in real life.
IshmaelThe book also began in a way with finding
an ad in the paper,but it was you who found it.
How did you come across it?
And what was the ad?
Yeah, we were living in Austinand I was working for a publishing
(02:10):
company, Holt Rinehart and Winstonand I just finished a big project
and had this stack of magazines on my deskwaiting for me to go through it.
I was flipping through,I think it was Publishers Weekly.
I always start from the back ofthe magazines running down the classifieds
and saw this littlead announcing the Turner Awards.
(02:30):
I read that,and I immediately got in the car
and went home for lunch and said,Look at this.
If you happen to have a copy of Ishmaeland you open to one of the very
first pages,you'll see the dedication for any.
Renny McKay Quinn is a writer, painterand the wife of Daniel Quinn,
(02:54):
a 45 years before Daniel'spassing in 2018.
In many ways, without Renny,Ishmael would not have been possible.
When I first startedworking on this podcast,
I could have only dreamedI get a chance to talk with her.
But as you'll soonhear, dreams are worth following.
So in this very special episode,
(03:15):
Renny joins us for her first everinterview, sharing untold stories,
new insights and reflectionson her life and journey
with her beloved latehusband, Daniel Quinn.
So without any further ado, here
is my conversation with Renny McKay.
Quinn.
(03:36):
I only recently learned,I think, in the new intro
that you sent me, the interesting symmetryof you kind of finding something
in the classified ad, and that's startingthis Ishmael adventure.
I just loved the symmetrywith the narrator
finding the ad in the book,starting his own adventure to.
I wonder, do you think that, oh,I didn't even thought of that before.
(03:57):
You know, that hadn't occurred to methat there was a symmetry there
and that that's true.
And do you still have the ad?
Can you read what it says?
Okay.
What it says in the pressrelease was a literary
competition created by Turnerjust 18 months ago is designated
to encourage authors throughout the worldto write original works of fiction
(04:20):
with creative and positive solutionsto global problems.
You saw this in the classified, andwas there part of you that was like, Huh?
I wonder if it would be rightto apply for this?
Or did you feel pretty certain like,Oh, I have to produce?
This was just, you know,my reaction was immediate.
Oh, this is what we've been waiting for.
I took I had lunchtime to get to her apartment
(04:41):
and shove it in downstairs and out here.
I mean, it wasn't more than six weeksbefore the deadline.
We didn't know what was going to happen,but it was certainly worth a shot.
And the odd thing is now
I have found the same found magazinesthat we had that had
earlier announcements of this thingand no way noticed that before. No.
(05:03):
And so if I had just finished my project,
if I hadn't had this and if I hadn't just
started flipping from the back,I never would have found it.
Wow. The whole thing was, you might say,
providential.
(05:28):
There's a lot of questions
I have, and we'll get into the backgroundthat led to that moment.
But first,I wanted to kind of zoom out from that
because that was published in 1992,
the year before I was born,and 14 years after that.
And it's preparing for my summer vacationand told I had to read this book.
(05:49):
And it was the last thing in the worldthat I wanted to do is read a book,
but it ended uplike it has for so many people,
really deeply and profoundly impacting me.
And, you know,growing up in the 21st century,
finding out that glaciersare disappearing, just as I'm learning
that something called a glacier evenexists was really terrifying in many ways.
(06:12):
And Ishmael didn't alleviate any of thatterror, but it provided a lot of clarity.
And I've always feltsince reading that, that there was
a reason,a framework for why this was happening
and maybe even how we could change itand I've always
(06:33):
wanted to do something about thisand didn't know what.
And after all these years, it'sturned into this podcast.
And I went to Ishmael dot org
and figured I wanted to share itwith whoever was managing the website.
I didn't know who that wasand I submitted it and I, to my great
(06:54):
surprise,received an email back from you and
was probably one of the coolest emailsI've ever gotten to get an email from you
appreciating it and really grateful
to have gotten to connect with youand get to talk with you again today.
Well, it's been great.
This has been just funand exciting for me to talk with
(07:17):
you and be involved in this, too,and involved in what you're doing.
This is the thing that Daniel wantedwas for people to do
what they can do,whatever they feel like doing.
It emerges from their experiencewith Ishmael
rather than, you know,a lot of people have to do What can I do?
What can I do?
(07:38):
And they want to be told what to think
and that's not what he was about,telling people what to do.
So yeah, you're doing it.
Well, I wanted to askyou kind of zooming out very far.
I'm curious,what was your greatest dream as a child?
What did you hope for, for your life?
(07:58):
Well, I grew up in the fifties,got out of high school in 1955.
I was living in a small town.
We moved from Canadaback to my mother's home in South Dakota.
And it was like a town of like 300 people.
And there was 13 kidsin my graduating class in high school.
And I had not ever read a biographybefore that.
(08:20):
You read one for an English class, and Iread one about Ralph Bunche, who was U.N.
at that time.
And at that point,I realized what I wanted.
And then when I grew up,you went to school.
You were lucky if you went to collegeand then you got married and had children.
Well, I didn'tI didn't really want children, but
I figured getting marriedwas part of the way life went.
(08:43):
But I wanted to marry someone.
I wanted my manwho was going to do something important.
I had just read this biography of a manwho done something very important.
That's what I wanted.
I always had that in the back of my mind,but when I met Dan,
I had no idea that that waswhat was going to happen, that
(09:03):
neither one of us had any ideathis was going to happen. Hmm.
I know that Daniel mentions the Sixties
and Ishmael and some of his other booksas this really big turning point.
And I'm curious,like what it was from your perspective,
what was changing and what it was likefor you in the sixties?
There was freedom.
I graduated from college in 1959and I got a job teaching in California.
(09:27):
Well,to go from the Midwest to California.
That in itself was liberating.
I mean, that was a whole new world.
But then the sixties began, you know,there was the civil rights movement.
There was all kinds of stuff going onand everybody was tuning in
and dropping out and doing jobs, you know,none of which I did.
But it was all the restrictions were gone.
(09:50):
Then there were the beginningof the women's, you know, Betty Friedan,
and all this was just new stuff.
I was single, I was young.
I was living in Chicago. It was fun.
My family was newspaper publishing,so I'd grown up in the newspaper business.
So publishingwas kind of a natural thing for me.
I was a major English majorwhen I met Dan.
(10:12):
I ended up freelancing,you know, writing educational materials.
I wrote for radio.
That's what I was doing.
I had been working, writing forpublishing was editing, so I knew it.
And volunteers had a big Christmas partyevery year for all their freelance help.
Decided I was going to go to that party.
I didn't like going to parties,
but I wanted someone to invite meto dinner afterwards.
(10:35):
That was my goal.
But I got stuck at the fruit tablewith this guy.
I kept trying to get over to the sideof the room where the other editors were
and where Daniel was.
But then he came up to me and he said,Would you like to go get out here?
So we escaped.
You know, all the timesI've seen him in interviews
and images, probably I'll post Ishmael.
(10:58):
And so I'm trying to imaginehow young you guys were,
how old were you both at that timeand at that time?
That was 1972.
I would have been 34 and it was 31.
And his he's three years older than I am,so he would have been 35.
What do you rememberfirst drawing you to him?
(11:19):
Well, I had never met him.
And, you know,
being interviewed, talking to himabout what it was going to be doing.
I was scared to death.
He was the editor.He was the executive editor.
I was having to write stuffand deliver it to him.
It was work.
I remember wondering if he was me.
I remember that.
But other than that, I didn't havemuch contact with him until that evening.
(11:40):
Right.
And then so there you arehaving your hamburgers.
What do you think drew him to you
and not even just necessarily initially,because it sounds like for you
you just wanted to have a hamburgerand have it not be with the shrimp guy.
But but as you both
started dating and as it was romanticand becoming partners, like what?
What do you think in those first dayswas drawing you to each other?
(12:03):
Well, okay, I will tell you this.
And he doesn't tell us, but this is
we were sittingwaiting for our hamburgers. And,
you know, we were in a booth and he wassitting across from me in the booth.
I suddenly, you know, he just looked at meand he said, I'm already
in love with you. No way
to get to that.
I answered it beforeany first thing is okay.
(12:24):
So we went out there.
None of that was public yet.
So at any of those points,did you find yourself thinking like,
this is the person that did you rememberthat vision you had a look at?
No, no,that didn't even come into it at all.
It's odd,but no, I didn't even think of that.
It wasn't until much later that I realizedit wasn't until years later.
(12:46):
And we were close in 1976and we were standing
waiting for a cab and it was winter timeand it was, you know, late.
We closed on our favorite restaurant.
We were just waiting for a caband then told me the stories
of his experience at the ceremony andthe dream that he had had a beetle dream.
(13:07):
This is all stuffthat he put in Providence.
So a couple of
years after Ishmael, Daniel Quinnpublished Providence,
an autobiography of sorts, and in it
he tells the story of this dreamhe had when he was just six years old,
where this mysterious treefalls down and blocks his path.
(13:28):
And little Daniel could see thatit had fallen from a long way away
outside of the city, from a forest,
and along the trunk came scurryingwhat Quinn called a great black beetle
who came from that far awayforest and spoke to him telepathically.
The Beetle told Daniel he was needed backwhere the trunk came from.
(13:51):
Here's what Quinn wrote.
The Beetle said to him, quote,Well, I'll be there waiting for you.
He went on and then paused,as if thinking about how to explain
you need to
know some things you seeif you're going to help us.
We need to tell youthe secret of our lives,
unquote.
(14:13):
You never told me that before.
He never told anybody this story.
I heard those stories and I immediatelysaid, You got to do something
you can't let go.
Because it wasn't longafter that we began working on
what ultimately became Wow.
But before that we were justscraping along.
(14:33):
He'd quit his job
because of the president's edictthat we should stop making things for kids
that were so good because there wereonly kids after all he didn't need.
So that was the end of that.
So the president of the publishing clubhad given him a hard time
for writing with such high qualitywith the kids books that was or
(14:53):
and this was another companythat he was at the time.
He was the editorial director of this.
And they were making wonderfulproducts, their primary kids.
And Dan wrote most of them,but they had college professors names on
second and third graders, huge modules
with filmstrips and gamesand all kinds of things.
And they got won all kinds of awards andthey went to major educational publishing.
(15:17):
There was a new president, he was in it.
So we got to see the profits.
We had to show, we can't do this.
We can't say, okay, well, we'll just makeour own products and sell them to people.
We did.
We had our own little company.
We were making educational products.
That's what we did,
came to discover that that wasn'twhat we should be doing either.
So we did not dothings the way people usually
(15:41):
think it does.
And we didn't think anything about justquitting something and starting something
like that.
Well, it sounds like you were botha really good team, kind of encouraging
and enabling each other to take thoserisks and live a more unconventional life.
Well, yeah, we were of course,I been freelancing, you know,
(16:03):
and that'sa pretty precarious thing to do.
I can relate. Yeah, right.
And then we time to get out of Chicago.
And so where shall we go?
We ended up in New Mexico
was a you that had a vision of the desertor wanted to retreat.
Yeah, it's very biblicalto go to the desert and find your way.
And you wanted to get out of a city.
(16:24):
And we knew, you know, we already livedin the Midwest and farming territory.
We didn't want that and we certainlydidn't want to be in Texas. And
would you say with
irony, as you live there rightnow, the desert was all that was left.
And so that's where we ended up.
And ultimately in a former ghosttown, midway between
(16:48):
Albuquerque and Madrid,which was populated by people
just like us, a little weird and strangewho wanted to do
what they wanted to dowas kind of white. Okay.
And what year was that?
So we moved to New Mexico in 1980.
We were there.
Chicago was the seventies.
New Mexicowas pretty much the eighties in Austin
(17:08):
in the nineties and Houston in 2002.
So we kind of had four placesthat were our geographic location.
Yes. You a nomadic?
Nomadic.
So in 1975 or 76,
you said he mentionedthese childhood memories
(17:30):
and how they impacted him to you andyou encouraged him to write about them and
then 15
years later is when Ishmael gets written.
But it's my understandingthere's many versions
that exist in Evolve in betweenwhat was that process like?
How many versions,how many books did he write in between?
(17:51):
1976 iswhen the very first version was done
and it was done very fast.
He didn't know what he was getting intoeither when he started out,
and that went to several publishers andso will agents and so and got turned down.
That first version that he published,it wasn't called Ishmael,
(18:11):
there was no guerilla.
Nothing was publishedbecause none of it was published.
The first versions,some of them didn't even get finished.
Some of them didn't get sent.
That's how I went to New Mexico, partlybecause we needed to get out of Chicago.
He was at a point he needed someother environment to work in.
So he's working on
these different draftsand versions over a course of a decade.
(18:34):
And I'm curious
what he expressed about these ideas to youwhile working on these books.
Was it part of everyday conversationor did he keep it to himself
until it was ready?
We didn't have everyday conversation
about this stuff,but I typed those manuscripts.
When he started out.
He was writing everything by handon yellow line paper with a black pen.
(18:56):
He never talkedabout what he was writing about.
He wrote it, and then he gave it to meto try to get my reaction to it.
So I had to learnhow to react to something as a reader.
And it took me a while to do it,but when I was typing, I read everything
and when I did the first impressionsI thought I was going to get struck down
by lightning coming from the skyif you didn't watch out, because
(19:19):
I'd never heard anything like this beforeand I didn't know what to make of it.
He was doing was entirely new to me.
There's part of youthat felt like these ideas
were blasphemous in a way that, well,I thought they were, you know.
Yeah, they were radical.
They were.I didn't know what was going on here.
Yeah, it was it wasn'tuntil I think it was the third version
(19:43):
which was called The Book of Nightand looking at
how was a retelling of thatGenesis story really.
And of course, thisI knew I'd grown up with this.
This was a whole new lookat what had been my world that got to me.
And that was when I began finally to tune
in to what was going on here, because thatI could that I could relate to.
(20:06):
And that affected me.
I never had the experiencethat all the rest of
you know,you and others have all had with me.
But I had it with that.
That was my epiphany,sort of one of the dismissals,
the rejections that a publishergave him calling the book Unpublishable.
Right.
And it's just in a way,it's funny to read that now,
(20:27):
knowing how it all ended up,but also it just I can't
imagine persevering, working on thisafter all these rejections.
What was that like?
Oh, it's terrible.
And it was I have that right here.
It that wasthat was not Ishmael, of course.
And that was calledanother story to be in.
That's what people were turning down.
And it wasn't publishable in that form
(20:49):
because it didn't have what Ishmael has,
which is Ishmael,the agent, didn't think that, you know,
anybody cared about this stuff anymore,which is how dumb he was.
I mean, he wasn't that he was a highpowered agent that he didn't understand
what was going onwith people in the world in this.
He didn't think people caredabout this stuff anymore.
(21:12):
Right.
You know, the worldand what's going to happen to it.
That was completely wrong.But yeah, no, that was never.
Would Daniel express self-doubt.
How did he take these rejections?
He got depressed,went through a lot of depression.
One day he threw away a thousand pagesof manuscript, handwritten manuscript.
(21:34):
I thought that was that drove me crazy.
He didn't think it was worthwhile,right? Oh.
But he kept on going.
It didn't stop him from trying.
The next thing he always tried.
The next thing.
And he credits you as encouraging himthat he'll find a way.
Why did you believe in him?
How did you find that?
(21:55):
I knew that he would.
I mean, I knew it was importantthis was going to
get a lot of other stuff.
And in New Mexico,
you know, we started in weekly newspaperand covered a territory.
The size of Rhode Island,and that was great.
We did all these other thingsthat kept us going,
but this was always at the heart of it.
(22:15):
Once Dan started on this mission, really,it was his work to do.
It consumed our lives and the restwas just stuff we could do to keep alive.
And some of it was fun.
Most of it was fun. And
this but this was the driving force.
Always got it.
And I understood thisbecause I'd been around this.
(22:38):
I'd been around missionariesand people who do this, and people
have causesand people who are doing stuff like this.
So I understood it.
But the thing is that I got to doeverything that I wanted to do.
I'd always wantedto have my own newspaper.
We did that.
We both got to do
other things that we wanted to dobecause we were always in it together
(22:59):
and it's partlybecause we did the same stuff.
We were writers, so what we did,I don't know many people who,
you know, couples go together 24 hoursa day and, you know, not go crazy.
But that we did.
We were always working at home.
We were always doing stuff jointly.
We just had somethingthat was unique to us.
(23:19):
And I couldn't have been the kind of wifeI envisioned back in the fifties.
So that was not it
one. So
now I'm curious about life onceIshmael exists.
So we talked about how youyou find Ted Turner's
(23:41):
ad in the newspaper or in the classifieds,and you submit it.
And do you remember the moment you heardthat is No. One.
Yes. There was no indicationwhen this announcement will come.
So we sort of just put it at the back,because you can't go around thinking
about that.
For six months we were in Austin.
This was on Mother's Day in May.
(24:02):
In 1991, we had our favorite barthat we would go to the cedar door.
We'd go down there on Sunday afternoons,and we had just come home
and Dean was down in the parking lot
putting oil in the car,which was falling apart.
And I had gone up the stairs, the
apartment, and I heard the phone rang.
(24:24):
I dashed in to get the phoneand answered it.
And this guy on the phonesays, Is Daniel Clinton there?
He gave me his namefrom Turner Publishing.
I went to talk to Daniel Collinsand it didn't register with me at all.
But really, I had been waiting for that.
He had applied for some
freelance thing with somebodyand he was expecting a call that was done.
(24:45):
I thought, Well, that's who this is.
So I called down to himto come up to answer the phone and
oh yeah, yeah,just one half million dollar reward.
And the judges would like you to cometo New York tomorrow so they can meet you.
Oh, my God.
It was like. It was just crazy.
(25:07):
And they said,Oh, plane tickets will be waiting for you.
And I saw an airport terminal either.
And it was a shock.
It was bizarre.
And so he flew to New York.
We walked into the roomto meet the judges,
and that was when Refrigerator cameand met him at the door
and shook his hand and said,Will there be a sign of his will?
And said, no.
(25:27):
But of coursethere were more books to come after all.
More books to come after all.
Yeah, that initial reactionto Ishmael once it's released
and the popularity of it,and just there's people reaching out and,
you know, celebrities are hearing about itand reaching out to.
Well, first of all, that was in June,the big event in New York,
(25:48):
where they had the big banquetand they gave out the awards
and had the press conferenceand all that stuff.
The announcement got madeand there was a lot of about that.
Then it was in the papers and we got phone
calls and interviews and things like that.
It was hectic, yeah.
For me reading this,I was really interested
in the life of Daniel Quinnthrough Providence and stuff later on,
(26:11):
but initially I almost wanted to keep himas this like mythical figure, you know?
So when I was a teenager, did he feelthe tension of people wanting the answers
of what to do with their lives,and how did he navigate that?
Well, once that started happening,I mean, it's sort of like,
you know, this is the first podcastthat I've ever done.
It's you learn by doing things totally.
(26:34):
Yeah, I do learn how to do all this stuff.
You had to learn how to do interviews.
He hadn't done this. He'd been secluded.
He had to give speeches.
He had to do these kinds of things.
And gradually it's easier and easierand easier because it's happened.
So many people learn it so many times.
One of the first thingswhen after it's all came out
(26:55):
in Austin,was invited to speak to a book club.
I think it was a book club,but it was in somebody's house
and you know, they'd read all this stuffin the newspapers.
So we went thereand we're sitting around in a circle
and it's like they wereexpecting Ishmael to show up
and Daniel Collins showed up
(27:16):
and they didn't know what to make of itbecause he is not that imposing.
We sort of thought they expected Englishand it's a real issue.
It's like, you know,and so they were disappointed
and we had a bunch of strangethings like that right at the beginning.
But then interesting as time went on,
they grew into being Ishmael.
(27:39):
You know, theit was kind of his alter ego, but it was a
it was a process because at first,you know,
he was just Daniel,you know, it's it's true.
And it makes sensealso that it's one thing
to write this book in this conclusionand like you can really think about
what you're going to say.
He really is someone who was so carefulabout how to express
(28:00):
these complex ideas,wanting his words to be meaningful.
You know, I know even for myself,it's like I'm much more eloquent
about this in the podcastthan I could possibly be.
You know,just talking to someone in conversation.
So I can imagine being in this positionwhere people are asking questions
that maybe he hadn't
quite been ready to articulate yet,or like putting this pressure on.
(28:21):
It seems like it's a lot to navigate.
Yes, it is.
And he did it oddly when it washis favorite thing to do, though
he did a lot of this in Houstonand especially in the later on,
because he could sitin his favorite chair, which is relaxed.
The back chairwe can sitting in now actually
and oh,I think we have a picture on the website
(28:43):
as the last picture, one of the fewpictures that we have of us.
And he said.
Teacher seeks pupil
must have an earnest desireto save the world.
A blind person,
so begins the novel Ishmael
by Daniel Quinn.
Ishmael is a powerful book,and it's a strange book.
(00:25):
It questionssome of our most basic assumptions.
It's imaginative, mythical,but also systematic and practical.
Since 1992, it's been read
by millions of peopleand published in over 30 languages.
Most importantly,and most impossible to quantify,
it has fundamentally changed people.
(00:46):
It's expanded their minds,giving them new meaning.
It certainly has for me.
And who knows?
Maybe one day in the distant future,when our culture ends, its war
on the world and future generationsare able to live in balance with what
Ishmael calls the community of life.
This strange, powerful book
(01:07):
will have had a part to play in it.
Welcome to Episodeeight of Human Nature Odyssey,
a podcast investigatingwhere these strange ideas come from.
I myself, I wanted to ask you,
(01:46):
because Ishmael begins with the narratorfinding an ad in the paper.
Teacher seeks pupil but in real life.
IshmaelThe book also began in a way with finding
an ad in the paper,but it was you who found it.
How did you come across it?
And what was the ad?
Yeah, we were living in Austinand I was working for a publishing
(02:10):
company, Holt Rinehart and Winstonand I just finished a big project
and had this stack of magazines on my deskwaiting for me to go through it.
I was flipping through,I think it was Publishers Weekly.
I always start from the back ofthe magazines running down the classifieds
and saw this littlead announcing the Turner Awards.
(02:30):
I read that,and I immediately got in the car
and went home for lunch and said,Look at this.
If you happen to have a copy of Ishmaeland you open to one of the very
first pages,you'll see the dedication for any.
Renny McKay Quinn is a writer, painterand the wife of Daniel Quinn,
(02:54):
a 45 years before Daniel'spassing in 2018.
In many ways, without Renny,Ishmael would not have been possible.
When I first startedworking on this podcast,
I could have only dreamedI get a chance to talk with her.
But as you'll soonhear, dreams are worth following.
So in this very special episode,
(03:15):
Renny joins us for her first everinterview, sharing untold stories,
new insights and reflectionson her life and journey
with her beloved latehusband, Daniel Quinn.
So without any further ado, here
is my conversation with Renny McKay.
Quinn.
(03:36):
I only recently learned,I think, in the new intro
that you sent me, the interesting symmetryof you kind of finding something
in the classified ad, and that's startingthis Ishmael adventure.
I just loved the symmetrywith the narrator
finding the ad in the book,starting his own adventure to.
I wonder, do you think that, oh,I didn't even thought of that before.
(03:57):
You know, that hadn't occurred to methat there was a symmetry there
and that that's true.
And do you still have the ad?
Can you read what it says?
Okay.
What it says in the pressrelease was a literary
competition created by Turnerjust 18 months ago is designated
to encourage authors throughout the worldto write original works of fiction
(04:20):
with creative and positive solutionsto global problems.
You saw this in the classified, andwas there part of you that was like, Huh?
I wonder if it would be rightto apply for this?
Or did you feel pretty certain like,Oh, I have to produce?
This was just, you know,my reaction was immediate.
Oh, this is what we've been waiting for.
I took I had lunchtime to get to her apartment
(04:41):
and shove it in downstairs and out here.
I mean, it wasn't more than six weeksbefore the deadline.
We didn't know what was going to happen,but it was certainly worth a shot.
And the odd thing is now
I have found the same found magazinesthat we had that had
earlier announcements of this thingand no way noticed that before. No.
(05:03):
And so if I had just finished my project,
if I hadn't had this and if I hadn't just
started flipping from the back,I never would have found it.
Wow. The whole thing was, you might say,
providential.
(05:28):
There's a lot of questions
I have, and we'll get into the backgroundthat led to that moment.
But first,I wanted to kind of zoom out from that
because that was published in 1992,
the year before I was born,and 14 years after that.
And it's preparing for my summer vacationand told I had to read this book.
(05:49):
And it was the last thing in the worldthat I wanted to do is read a book,
but it ended uplike it has for so many people,
really deeply and profoundly impacting me.
And, you know,growing up in the 21st century,
finding out that glaciersare disappearing, just as I'm learning
that something called a glacier evenexists was really terrifying in many ways.
(06:12):
And Ishmael didn't alleviate any of thatterror, but it provided a lot of clarity.
And I've always feltsince reading that, that there was
a reason,a framework for why this was happening
and maybe even how we could change itand I've always
(06:33):
wanted to do something about thisand didn't know what.
And after all these years, it'sturned into this podcast.
And I went to Ishmael dot org
and figured I wanted to share itwith whoever was managing the website.
I didn't know who that wasand I submitted it and I, to my great
(06:54):
surprise,received an email back from you and
was probably one of the coolest emailsI've ever gotten to get an email from you
appreciating it and really grateful
to have gotten to connect with youand get to talk with you again today.
Well, it's been great.
This has been just funand exciting for me to talk with
(07:17):
you and be involved in this, too,and involved in what you're doing.
This is the thing that Daniel wantedwas for people to do
what they can do,whatever they feel like doing.
It emerges from their experiencewith Ishmael
rather than, you know,a lot of people have to do What can I do?
What can I do?
(07:38):
And they want to be told what to think
and that's not what he was about,telling people what to do.
So yeah, you're doing it.
Well, I wanted to askyou kind of zooming out very far.
I'm curious,what was your greatest dream as a child?
What did you hope for, for your life?
(07:58):
Well, I grew up in the fifties,got out of high school in 1955.
I was living in a small town.
We moved from Canadaback to my mother's home in South Dakota.
And it was like a town of like 300 people.
And there was 13 kidsin my graduating class in high school.
And I had not ever read a biographybefore that.
(08:20):
You read one for an English class, and Iread one about Ralph Bunche, who was U.N.
at that time.
And at that point,I realized what I wanted.
And then when I grew up,you went to school.
You were lucky if you went to collegeand then you got married and had children.
Well, I didn'tI didn't really want children, but
I figured getting marriedwas part of the way life went.
(08:43):
But I wanted to marry someone.
I wanted my manwho was going to do something important.
I had just read this biography of a manwho done something very important.
That's what I wanted.
I always had that in the back of my mind,but when I met Dan,
I had no idea that that waswhat was going to happen, that
(09:03):
neither one of us had any ideathis was going to happen. Hmm.
I know that Daniel mentions the Sixties
and Ishmael and some of his other booksas this really big turning point.
And I'm curious,like what it was from your perspective,
what was changing and what it was likefor you in the sixties?
There was freedom.
I graduated from college in 1959and I got a job teaching in California.
(09:27):
Well,to go from the Midwest to California.
That in itself was liberating.
I mean, that was a whole new world.
But then the sixties began, you know,there was the civil rights movement.
There was all kinds of stuff going onand everybody was tuning in
and dropping out and doing jobs, you know,none of which I did.
But it was all the restrictions were gone.
(09:50):
Then there were the beginningof the women's, you know, Betty Friedan,
and all this was just new stuff.
I was single, I was young.
I was living in Chicago. It was fun.
My family was newspaper publishing,so I'd grown up in the newspaper business.
So publishingwas kind of a natural thing for me.
I was a major English majorwhen I met Dan.
(10:12):
I ended up freelancing,you know, writing educational materials.
I wrote for radio.
That's what I was doing.
I had been working, writing forpublishing was editing, so I knew it.
And volunteers had a big Christmas partyevery year for all their freelance help.
Decided I was going to go to that party.
I didn't like going to parties,
but I wanted someone to invite meto dinner afterwards.
(10:35):
That was my goal.
But I got stuck at the fruit tablewith this guy.
I kept trying to get over to the sideof the room where the other editors were
and where Daniel was.
But then he came up to me and he said,Would you like to go get out here?
So we escaped.
You know, all the timesI've seen him in interviews
and images, probably I'll post Ishmael.
(10:58):
And so I'm trying to imaginehow young you guys were,
how old were you both at that timeand at that time?
That was 1972.
I would have been 34 and it was 31.
And his he's three years older than I am,so he would have been 35.
What do you rememberfirst drawing you to him?
(11:19):
Well, I had never met him.
And, you know,
being interviewed, talking to himabout what it was going to be doing.
I was scared to death.
He was the editor.He was the executive editor.
I was having to write stuffand deliver it to him.
It was work.
I remember wondering if he was me.
I remember that.
But other than that, I didn't havemuch contact with him until that evening.
(11:40):
Right.
And then so there you arehaving your hamburgers.
What do you think drew him to you
and not even just necessarily initially,because it sounds like for you
you just wanted to have a hamburgerand have it not be with the shrimp guy.
But but as you both
started dating and as it was romanticand becoming partners, like what?
What do you think in those first dayswas drawing you to each other?
(12:03):
Well, okay, I will tell you this.
And he doesn't tell us, but this is
we were sittingwaiting for our hamburgers. And,
you know, we were in a booth and he wassitting across from me in the booth.
I suddenly, you know, he just looked at meand he said, I'm already
in love with you. No way
to get to that.
I answered it beforeany first thing is okay.
(12:24):
So we went out there.
None of that was public yet.
So at any of those points,did you find yourself thinking like,
this is the person that did you rememberthat vision you had a look at?
No, no,that didn't even come into it at all.
It's odd,but no, I didn't even think of that.
It wasn't until much later that I realizedit wasn't until years later.
(12:46):
And we were close in 1976and we were standing
waiting for a cab and it was winter timeand it was, you know, late.
We closed on our favorite restaurant.
We were just waiting for a caband then told me the stories
of his experience at the ceremony andthe dream that he had had a beetle dream.
(13:07):
This is all stuffthat he put in Providence.
So a couple of
years after Ishmael, Daniel Quinnpublished Providence,
an autobiography of sorts, and in it
he tells the story of this dreamhe had when he was just six years old,
where this mysterious treefalls down and blocks his path.
(13:28):
And little Daniel could see thatit had fallen from a long way away
outside of the city, from a forest,
and along the trunk came scurryingwhat Quinn called a great black beetle
who came from that far awayforest and spoke to him telepathically.
The Beetle told Daniel he was needed backwhere the trunk came from.
(13:51):
Here's what Quinn wrote.
The Beetle said to him, quote,Well, I'll be there waiting for you.
He went on and then paused,as if thinking about how to explain
you need to
know some things you seeif you're going to help us.
We need to tell youthe secret of our lives,
unquote.
(14:13):
You never told me that before.
He never told anybody this story.
I heard those stories and I immediatelysaid, You got to do something
you can't let go.
Because it wasn't longafter that we began working on
what ultimately became Wow.
But before that we were justscraping along.
(14:33):
He'd quit his job
because of the president's edictthat we should stop making things for kids
that were so good because there wereonly kids after all he didn't need.
So that was the end of that.
So the president of the publishing clubhad given him a hard time
for writing with such high qualitywith the kids books that was or
(14:53):
and this was another companythat he was at the time.
He was the editorial director of this.
And they were making wonderfulproducts, their primary kids.
And Dan wrote most of them,but they had college professors names on
second and third graders, huge modules
with filmstrips and gamesand all kinds of things.
And they got won all kinds of awards andthey went to major educational publishing.
(15:17):
There was a new president, he was in it.
So we got to see the profits.
We had to show, we can't do this.
We can't say, okay, well, we'll just makeour own products and sell them to people.
We did.
We had our own little company.
We were making educational products.
That's what we did,
came to discover that that wasn'twhat we should be doing either.
So we did not dothings the way people usually
(15:41):
think it does.
And we didn't think anything about justquitting something and starting something
like that.
Well, it sounds like you were botha really good team, kind of encouraging
and enabling each other to take thoserisks and live a more unconventional life.
Well, yeah, we were of course,I been freelancing, you know,
(16:03):
and that'sa pretty precarious thing to do.
I can relate. Yeah, right.
And then we time to get out of Chicago.
And so where shall we go?
We ended up in New Mexico
was a you that had a vision of the desertor wanted to retreat.
Yeah, it's very biblicalto go to the desert and find your way.
And you wanted to get out of a city.
(16:24):
And we knew, you know, we already livedin the Midwest and farming territory.
We didn't want that and we certainlydidn't want to be in Texas. And
would you say with
irony, as you live there rightnow, the desert was all that was left.
And so that's where we ended up.
And ultimately in a former ghosttown, midway between
(16:48):
Albuquerque and Madrid,which was populated by people
just like us, a little weird and strangewho wanted to do
what they wanted to dowas kind of white. Okay.
And what year was that?
So we moved to New Mexico in 1980.
We were there.
Chicago was the seventies.
New Mexicowas pretty much the eighties in Austin
(17:08):
in the nineties and Houston in 2002.
So we kind of had four placesthat were our geographic location.
Yes. You a nomadic?
Nomadic.
So in 1975 or 76,
you said he mentionedthese childhood memories
(17:30):
and how they impacted him to you andyou encouraged him to write about them and
then 15
years later is when Ishmael gets written.
But it's my understandingthere's many versions
that exist in Evolve in betweenwhat was that process like?
How many versions,how many books did he write in between?
(17:51):
1976 iswhen the very first version was done
and it was done very fast.
He didn't know what he was getting intoeither when he started out,
and that went to several publishers andso will agents and so and got turned down.
That first version that he published,it wasn't called Ishmael,
(18:11):
there was no guerilla.
Nothing was publishedbecause none of it was published.
The first versions,some of them didn't even get finished.
Some of them didn't get sent.
That's how I went to New Mexico, partlybecause we needed to get out of Chicago.
He was at a point he needed someother environment to work in.
So he's working on
these different draftsand versions over a course of a decade.
(18:34):
And I'm curious
what he expressed about these ideas to youwhile working on these books.
Was it part of everyday conversationor did he keep it to himself
until it was ready?
We didn't have everyday conversation
about this stuff,but I typed those manuscripts.
When he started out.
He was writing everything by handon yellow line paper with a black pen.
(18:56):
He never talkedabout what he was writing about.
He wrote it, and then he gave it to meto try to get my reaction to it.
So I had to learnhow to react to something as a reader.
And it took me a while to do it,but when I was typing, I read everything
and when I did the first impressionsI thought I was going to get struck down
by lightning coming from the skyif you didn't watch out, because
(19:19):
I'd never heard anything like this beforeand I didn't know what to make of it.
He was doing was entirely new to me.
There's part of youthat felt like these ideas
were blasphemous in a way that, well,I thought they were, you know.
Yeah, they were radical.
They were.I didn't know what was going on here.
Yeah, it was it wasn'tuntil I think it was the third version
(19:43):
which was called The Book of Nightand looking at
how was a retelling of thatGenesis story really.
And of course, thisI knew I'd grown up with this.
This was a whole new lookat what had been my world that got to me.
And that was when I began finally to tune
in to what was going on here, because thatI could that I could relate to.
(20:06):
And that affected me.
I never had the experiencethat all the rest of
you know,you and others have all had with me.
But I had it with that.
That was my epiphany,sort of one of the dismissals,
the rejections that a publishergave him calling the book Unpublishable.
Right.
And it's just in a way,it's funny to read that now,
(20:27):
knowing how it all ended up,but also it just I can't
imagine persevering, working on thisafter all these rejections.
What was that like?
Oh, it's terrible.
And it was I have that right here.
It that wasthat was not Ishmael, of course.
And that was calledanother story to be in.
That's what people were turning down.
And it wasn't publishable in that form
(20:49):
because it didn't have what Ishmael has,
which is Ishmael,the agent, didn't think that, you know,
anybody cared about this stuff anymore,which is how dumb he was.
I mean, he wasn't that he was a highpowered agent that he didn't understand
what was going onwith people in the world in this.
He didn't think people caredabout this stuff anymore.
(21:12):
Right.
You know, the worldand what's going to happen to it.
That was completely wrong.But yeah, no, that was never.
Would Daniel express self-doubt.
How did he take these rejections?
He got depressed,went through a lot of depression.
One day he threw away a thousand pagesof manuscript, handwritten manuscript.
(21:34):
I thought that was that drove me crazy.
He didn't think it was worthwhile,right? Oh.
But he kept on going.
It didn't stop him from trying.
The next thing he always tried.
The next thing.
And he credits you as encouraging himthat he'll find a way.
Why did you believe in him?
How did you find that?
(21:55):
I knew that he would.
I mean, I knew it was importantthis was going to
get a lot of other stuff.
And in New Mexico,
you know, we started in weekly newspaperand covered a territory.
The size of Rhode Island,and that was great.
We did all these other thingsthat kept us going,
but this was always at the heart of it.
(22:15):
Once Dan started on this mission, really,it was his work to do.
It consumed our lives and the restwas just stuff we could do to keep alive.
And some of it was fun.
Most of it was fun. And
this but this was the driving force.
Always got it.
And I understood thisbecause I'd been around this.
(22:38):
I'd been around missionariesand people who do this, and people
have causesand people who are doing stuff like this.
So I understood it.
But the thing is that I got to doeverything that I wanted to do.
I'd always wantedto have my own newspaper.
We did that.
We both got to do
other things that we wanted to dobecause we were always in it together
(22:59):
and it's partlybecause we did the same stuff.
We were writers, so what we did,I don't know many people who,
you know, couples go together 24 hoursa day and, you know, not go crazy.
But that we did.
We were always working at home.
We were always doing stuff jointly.
We just had somethingthat was unique to us.
(23:19):
And I couldn't have been the kind of wifeI envisioned back in the fifties.
So that was not it
one. So
now I'm curious about life onceIshmael exists.
So we talked about how youyou find Ted Turner's
(23:41):
ad in the newspaper or in the classifieds,and you submit it.
And do you remember the moment you heardthat is No. One.
Yes. There was no indicationwhen this announcement will come.
So we sort of just put it at the back,because you can't go around thinking
about that.
For six months we were in Austin.
This was on Mother's Day in May.
(24:02):
In 1991, we had our favorite barthat we would go to the cedar door.
We'd go down there on Sunday afternoons,and we had just come home
and Dean was down in the parking lot
putting oil in the car,which was falling apart.
And I had gone up the stairs, the
apartment, and I heard the phone rang.
(24:24):
I dashed in to get the phoneand answered it.
And this guy on the phonesays, Is Daniel Clinton there?
He gave me his namefrom Turner Publishing.
I went to talk to Daniel Collinsand it didn't register with me at all.
But really, I had been waiting for that.
He had applied for some
freelance thing with somebodyand he was expecting a call that was done.
(24:45):
I thought, Well, that's who this is.
So I called down to himto come up to answer the phone and
oh yeah, yeah,just one half million dollar reward.
And the judges would like you to cometo New York tomorrow so they can meet you.
Oh, my God.
It was like. It was just crazy.
(25:07):
And they said,Oh, plane tickets will be waiting for you.
And I saw an airport terminal either.
And it was a shock.
It was bizarre.
And so he flew to New York.
We walked into the roomto meet the judges,
and that was when Refrigerator cameand met him at the door
and shook his hand and said,Will there be a sign of his will?
And said, no.
(25:27):
But of coursethere were more books to come after all.
More books to come after all.
Yeah, that initial reactionto Ishmael once it's released
and the popularity of it,and just there's people reaching out and,
you know, celebrities are hearing about itand reaching out to.
Well, first of all, that was in June,the big event in New York,
(25:48):
where they had the big banquetand they gave out the awards
and had the press conferenceand all that stuff.
The announcement got madeand there was a lot of about that.
Then it was in the papers and we got phone
calls and interviews and things like that.
It was hectic, yeah.
For me reading this,I was really interested
in the life of Daniel Quinnthrough Providence and stuff later on,
(26:11):
but initially I almost wanted to keep himas this like mythical figure, you know?
So when I was a teenager, did he feelthe tension of people wanting the answers
of what to do with their lives,and how did he navigate that?
Well, once that started happening,I mean, it's sort of like,
you know, this is the first podcastthat I've ever done.
It's you learn by doing things totally.
(26:34):
Yeah, I do learn how to do all this stuff.
You had to learn how to do interviews.
He hadn't done this. He'd been secluded.
He had to give speeches.
He had to do these kinds of things.
And gradually it's easier and easierand easier because it's happened.
So many people learn it so many times.
One of the first thingswhen after it's all came out
(26:55):
in Austin,was invited to speak to a book club.
I think it was a book club,but it was in somebody's house
and you know, they'd read all this stuffin the newspapers.
So we went thereand we're sitting around in a circle
and it's like they wereexpecting Ishmael to show up
and Daniel Collins showed up
(27:16):
and they didn't know what to make of itbecause he is not that imposing.
We sort of thought they expected Englishand it's a real issue.
It's like, you know,and so they were disappointed
and we had a bunch of strangethings like that right at the beginning.
But then interesting as time went on,
they grew into being Ishmael.
(27:39):
You know, theit was kind of his alter ego, but it was a
it was a process because at first,you know,
he was just Daniel,you know, it's it's true.
And it makes sensealso that it's one thing
to write this book in this conclusionand like you can really think about
what you're going to say.
He really is someone who was so carefulabout how to express
(28:00):
these complex ideas,wanting his words to be meaningful.
You know, I know even for myself,it's like I'm much more eloquent
about this in the podcastthan I could possibly be.
You know,just talking to someone in conversation.
So I can imagine being in this positionwhere people are asking questions
that maybe he hadn't
quite been ready to articulate yet,or like putting this pressure on.
(28:21):
It seems like it's a lot to navigate.
Yes, it is.
And he did it oddly when it washis favorite thing to do, though
he did a lot of this in Houstonand especially in the later on,
because he could sitin his favorite chair, which is relaxed.
The back chairwe can sitting in now actually
and oh,I think we have a picture on the website
(28:43):
as the last picture, one of the fewpictures that we have of us.
And he said.
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