Adam and the Story of Everything: A Parable of Creation and Evolution

John Kotre
Cowley Publications (2006)
ISBN 156101298X
Reviewed by John Cartwright for Reader Views (5/07)

John Kotre, the author of “Adam and the Story of Everything,” takes three chapters to tell the reader that this is going to be a parable and to explain what a parable is in some of the most condescending, patronizing verbiage you will see anywhere. This is a short gift-shaped book, you know the little square ones that children and grandchildren of all ages pick up at Borders while they’re waiting on line for a cup of latte, the ones they would never read themselves but think perfect for granny. If granny is in a home, this book is ideal because it is a convenient shape and size for use as a coaster.   

Of course, the novel has the obligatory wise old Grandfather who sits on an oak stump and relates the tale of creation and evolution to little Adam who spends every waking moment AND his dreams analyzing rocks, bones and constellations. No T.V. No soccer. No little league. No MacDonald’s. No Transformers. No Spider-Man. Well, the author did explain it was a parable although I think it might rightly have been called a fairy-tale except we’d be insulting the Brothers Grimm and Aesop.

This attempted explanation at reconciling creationism and evolution, so divisive an issue in the United States for the past 70 years since the Scopes Monkey trial, will only convince people who think greeting cards are great poetry and Richard Bach’s Jonathon Livingston Seagull is a classic. Anyone who can make it through the first 50 pages without a visit to the dentist or the diabetes specialist deserves better. But it is not forthcoming. I was content with the thought that this book was for children aged 7-12 despite the fact that there is no such warning anywhere on the cover until the protagonist, Adam, makes it all the way through high school and college without once thinking about sex and only when he is safely in grad school does he finally indulge. So while I was imagining someone reading it to little Emily or Jason at bedtime, Adam is suddenly “entering her.”  I said, “Well, it’s about time,” but I don’t think Emily or Jason would be quite ready for that part. The author claims that Adam’s sexual liaison with Elise was like standing knee deep in water. Where’s Freud when you need him? I don’t quite know what to say about this simile so I will leave it to you.

While we are expected to see Adam infinitely curious about everything on the planet and the rest of the universe, he never seems to wonder what is going on with women. Given the fact that 80% of high school students acknowledge engaging in sex and 97% in college, we are now truly in the land of make-believe. Perhaps the author is really preaching to the choir, a very small choir no doubt, who believe children who have access to MTV, rap music and the internet are really wondering about whether the earth or the sun or neither is the center of the universe. Right. This choir will really be unhappy when it discovers on page 46 that Elise is pregnant and she and Adam decide to keep the child but not get married. Kotre cannot be blamed for trying to please everyone and introducing extraneous matter to make his parable relevant, but it fails because when we try to please everyone, we end up pleasing no one.

Kotre’s contention with this parable is that reason will lead you to reconcile faith and science. William Blake addressed this issue in his epic poem, Urizen, two-hundred years ago and essentially said that no reconciliation is necessary, that each stands quite nicely on its own and both work without the need for a “Adam and the Story of Everything” to reconcile the two. He goes further and says that reason is a sure-fire way to NEVER reach an understanding of God. I think most modern theologians agree. Current thinking simply states that there is no reason to believe that God is not the origin of the process of evolution. It is not an “either/or” anymore and I just stated in a sentence what will ultimately be the only reconciliation of the two possible. I’m no philosopher but I can assure you that, for example, those who spend their time looking for the remains of Noah’s Ark will convince only believers that there was a Flood, once found. Non-believers will ascribe to a hoax theory and nothing will come of it. Someone should tell Kotre that faith is not something one can be convinced of. Either you have it, get it at some point or remain a skeptic. The “Education of Little Tree” addresses these matters as well, even down to the grandfather and grandson learning from each other and letting the poetry of the good writing carry the reader along to his own conclusion, a much stronger parable, even if the author did turn out not to be a real “Indian.”

Mid-book, “Adam and the Story of Everything” (whose name is capitalized throughout except in the dedication (?) becomes anthropomorphisized into a character. The Story analyzes himself (it is masculine) and ultimately Googles his own name. I wish I could say this left me speechless -- not because it is not imaginative but because its absurdity transcends what Aristotle called “the impossible made probable.” The Googling episode, an impotent attempt at making the “parable” relevant, makes the impossible seem ridiculous.

“Adam and the Story of Everything,” in its final chapter suggests going to a website if you don’t fully get the meaning of the book. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I imagined for the briefest moment William Faulkner writing the last paragraph of “The Sound and the Fury” telling the reader, “For more information on my little story here, see: compsonsandthedeathofcivilization.com.”  I don’t think so.

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