Whalen Tom - A newcomers guide to the afterlife: on the other side known commonly as The little book

Praise for
A Newcomers Guide to the Afterlife

Startlingly original and eminently practical Assuming that the imaginations of Whalen and Quinn are as accurate as they are rich, the afterlife will be a curious placevast and unpredictable, at times frustrating, and often hilarious.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune

PRAISE FOR DANIEL QUINN

My Ishmael

Enthralling, shocking, hope-filled, and utterly fearless Quinn strikes out in entirely new territory, posing questions that will rock you on your heels, and providing tantalizing possibilities for a truly new world vision.

Susan Chernak McElroy, Animals as Teachers & Healers

The Story of B

One of the most important storytellers of our age, Daniel Quinn, in The Story of B, continues the journey begun so beautifully with Ishmael. Whether or not you agree with every word, there is no doubt that B offers us a unique opportunityto think together about the unquestioned beliefs and assumptions that have shaped our culture over the past 10,000 years and that will, if they remain unquestioned, keep us on a path that seems increasingly unsustainable.

Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline

Ishmael

From now on I will divide the books I have read into two categoriesthe ones I read before Ishmael and those read after.

Jim Britell, Whole Earth Review

PRAISE FOR TOM WHALEN

Whalens work is thickly lyrical and meditative, interrogating the relation of language to things, of books to life.

Review of Contemporary Fiction

This edition contains the complete text
of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED .

A NEWCOMERS GUIDE TO THE AFTERLIFE
A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition published August 1997
Bantam trade paperback edition / November 1998
All rights reserved.
Copyright 1997 by Daniel Quinn and Tom Whalen.

PHOTO COLLAGES BY GREG BOYD .

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-24558
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books

eISBN: 978-0-307-42869-1

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words Bantam Books and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

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The Mother of Clouds and the Father of Cities

Gala at the La Brea Memorial Wild Animal Monument

Wedding Procession at the Village Hall

The Society of Fools at The Acropolis

Ren Magritte at Work in the Afterlife

Wooden Dog Phantasm at the Crystal Tongue Gate

Schismatics of the Church of the Afterlife As Will and Idea

A Meeting of the Church of Constant Crisis

Bedlam: A Quiet Moment at Dusk

The Road at the Valley of Stelae

I have to begin this introduction with a confession: that it was originally my intention to offer a lie to explain how this book came into being.

I planned to offer this lie in an introduction supposedly written by the publishers (whoever they might prove to be), explaining that the manuscript for the book had come to them from an unknown, unagented author well call Jones. In his cover letter, Jones explained that, as a result of an accident that had occurred some months before, he had spent six minutes clinically dead. During this Near-Death Experience (NDE), Jones wandered in a muddled state through an unfamiliar urban landscape until he stopped a stranger and asked where he was. This stranger, recognizing the cause of Joness bewilderment, handed him a small book, saying that Jones was welcome to keep it. Jones replied that it wouldnt be necessary for him to keep it because he had an eidetic memory; by merely glancing at the pages, he would be able to carry away the entire book, every last jot and tittle of it, unread, in his memory. He quickly paged through the book, returned it to its owner, and moments later was restored to life in a hospital emergency room. Several months passed before Jones remembered that he had the text of an unknown book lying in his head; reading it in memory, he realized that he had brought back from his NDE nothing less than a guidebook written for new arrivals to the Afterlife, which he duly transcribed for earthly publication.

It was, I thought, a clever inventionand perhaps not strictly speaking a lie at all, since I didnt actually expect or intend anyone to be deceived by it.

And now for the truth, which, as usual, is not nearly as tidy as the invention.

Id been working for almost a year on Providence, an autobiographical work tracing the origins of Ishmael, the book for which I am best known. It was being written in the form of a dialogue between myself and a stranger, who, according to the framing story of the book, invades my house one night and demands answers to certain questions. Then one night a few months ago, I had a dream that was almost identical to this framing story. Trudging half-asleep (in my dream) from bathroom to bedroom in the middle of the night, I was startled to see someone sitting on a sofa in the living roomstartled but not frightened, because this was plainly not a burglar or a mad slasher come to do us in. Drawing nearer and turning up the lights, I saw, in fact, that it was not a stranger at all, though it was certainly a strange person to find visiting my house in the middle of the night. It was Delores Elaine Pierce, head of the post office where I maintained a box for mail from readers of Ishmael. This was in fact a U.S. Post Office Contract Station, rather than a fully fledged post office, and the whole operation could probably have fit into my living room without squeezing. In terms of personnel, Delores was it; she sorted the mail, filled the boxes, and manned the window. She was an attractive, cheerful, and personable woman in her forties, and we were on a first-name basis almost from the first day of our acquaintance.

So as to be able to include the number of the postal box in my book, Id had to rent it nearly a year before the book actually came out, and by the time the first piece of mail arrived, my wife and I had moved to the other side of the city. I explained the situation to Delores, who said it would be no trouble for her to forward the mail to our new location. However, it soon became obvious to me that it was trouble, and I told her to let the mail accumulate and Id collect it every Saturday. As well as letters, a number of interesting parcels arrived, including, among other things, a framed, life-size photographic portrait of a gorilla, and I saw no reason not to let Delores know what was going on. In fact, I gave her a copy of the book so she could see for herself how the box was being used. She enjoyed this contact with a famous author and confided that she too harbored an ambition to write a book someday.

We became quite friendly, and I missed her whenever she took a vacation and a stranger appeared in her place at the window.