Islomania
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Islomania is a craze for or a strong attraction to islands. The condition was first identified by British writer Lawrence Durrell in his book Reflections on a Marine Venus (1953):
"Somewhere among the notebooks of Gideon I once found a list of diseases as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit. These are people, Gideon used to say, by way of explanation, who find islands somehow irresistible. We islomanes, says Gideon, are the direct descendants of the Atlanteans, and it is toward the lost Atlantis that our subconscious is drawn. This means that we find islands irresistible."
In a letter to a friend Durrell wrote: "Islomania is a rare affliction of spirit. There are people who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are in a little world surrounded by sea fills them with an indescribable intoxication.” The American writer Thurston Clarke utilizes the term in his book Searching for Crusoe (2001) in his exploration of people's attraction to all sorts of islands –from the classic desert island to places such as Svalbard, from Key West to Mykonos.
While most islomanes simply dwell on islands, some dwell on their collection: Durrell noted that fellow poet (islomanes are often poets and artists) Kimon Friar claimed to have lived on 46 different islands, and Philip Conkling, director of Maine's Island Institute, has visited more than 1,000 islands in that state. Some members of the Travelers' Century Club, whose members attempt to visit as many countries as possible, have been to islands in over 100 countries.[1]
For extremely rich islomanes, the possession of islands is the dream: in early 2005, actor/director Mel Gibson purchased Mago Island in Fiji for $15 million, over the protests of the descendants of Mago's original native inhabitants, displaced in the 1860s. Tetiaroa, one of the Society Islands, was purchased in 1965 by actor Marlon Brando, who saw and fell in love with it while filming Mutiny on the Bounty. Tetiaroa has one inhabitant: Brando's son Teihotu. In his will, Brando, who died in 2004, granted his friend Michael Jackson lifelong use of 2000 m2 (a half-acre) on the islet of Onetahi, to the west of Tetiaroa.
Islomaniacs
Islomaniacs are those that suffer from islomaniaTemplate:Fact, a strong attraction to islands.
Probably one of the first literary islomaniacs was Herman Melville, who although now famed as the writer of Moby Dick was better known during his life for Typee, a semi-autobiographical story of his stay in the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia. He followed this with Omoo which describes various other islands and is mainly set in Hawaii.
The fame of Typee placed the seed of islomania within other famous 19th century writer such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Louis Becke, Jack London, and Joseph Conrad.
“Awfully nice man here tonight… telling us all about the South Sea Islands till I was sick with desire to go there; beautiful places, green forever; perfect climate; perfect shapes of men and women, with red flowers in their hair; and nothing to do but study oratory and etiquette, sit in the sun and pick up the fruits as they fall.”
Robert Louis Stevenson Private letter of spring 1875
In the aftermath of World War I, the South Pacific again attracted a host of writing talent in search of a simpler world, they were inspired by the tales of Stevenson and London. Americans James Norman Hall, Charles Nordhoff, Robert Dean Frisbie, and Frederick O'Brien, and W. Somerset Maugham wrote numerous short stories and serials about Polynesia which captured the public imagination.
World War Two bought several other writers who became committed islomaniacs as well. James Michener being the most famous, whose books on the islands and the myth of Bali Hai created a powerful mythos of the beachcomber escapism to tropical islands.
The post war period saw a host of Islomaniac authors who, perhaps having experienced the horrors of war, saw islands as places to escape to.
One of the most committed islomaniacs was a New Zealander called Tom Neale who, inspired by the stories of Nordhoff and Hall and Robert Dean Frisbie, escaped to Suwarrow Atoll in the Cook Islands where he lived alone for 16 years.
The most famous proponent of islomania was the author Lawrence Durrell who fell in love with the islands of the Mediterranean and featured them in his numerous books.
The author Paul Bowles fell in love with the island of Taprobane, off the coast of Sri Lanka and wrote several novels there, as well as short stories describing his love for the island.
It wasn't just authors that were Islomaniacs, there are also those who fell in love with islands, bought them and lived on them.
See also
