Searching for Crusoe: A Journey Among the Last Real Islands

by Thurston Clarke

Book Overview

They inspire feelings of great passion, serenity, and sometimes fear . . . they give people the opportunity to find themselves--or to lose their minds . . . they are revered as paradise or treated as... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345411439
• ISBN13: 9780345411433
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

FAULTLESS

Buy this book. Save a bundle on your vacation and cruise. Clarke shows you there are no islands left. They are all Marriots with shopping malls and water slides and fake cuisine. You are served and your room is cleaned by the grandchildren of people who used to be royalty on these islands. Want to go to an island? Go to Clarke's; he found them hours before extinction. Appreciate your own special island: your home, your family, your neighborhood.

A wonderful tour of many fascinating islands

_Searching for Paradise_ by Thurston Clarke was a wonderful, well-written, witty book touring many of the world's islands, from the arctic island of Svalbard to sunny South Pacific islands like Abemama and a number of islands in between. I found the book a good mixture of history and travelogue and loved the author's descriptions of the sites, architecture, and in many cases fauna and flora of the places he visited as well as interviews with those who lived there. Daniel Defoe's _Robinson Crusoe_ is one of the greatest stories of Western literature, so much a part of Western culture that its story haunts the very concept of an island, so much so that each person landing on an island brings Crusoe with them. Crusoe he writes "persuades us that islands are more liberating than confining, more contemplative than lonely," a place where one can meet God more easily because one is isolated from the wickedness of the world. Clarke set out to find the reason for the most passionate and "enduring geographic love affair of all time," that between humans and islands, to identify what creates "islomania" (a gripping love for islands) and "islomanes" (island lovers). His intellectual journey took him not only to _Robinson Crusoe_, but also _Lord of the Flies_, _Peter Pan_, _Treasure Island_, _Swiss Family Robinson_, _The Odyssey_, _The Tempest_, _South Pacific_, and even James Bond and _Gilligan's Island_ (that latter which he detests by the way). It also of course took him to over a dozen islands and islets in oceans throughout the world. Does Clarke find the answers to his question? He doesn't find a definitive answer, but does find many theories. Some islands may be appealing because they are so close to many images of the Garden of Eden; the Bandas of eastern Indonesia are the "archetypal island paradise," with palm trees, gorgeous beaches, reefs teeming with fish, dense forests, and verdant mountains. This very attraction has doomed many islands to rampant overdevelopment, pollution, and an eradication of indigenous fauna, flora, and culture, something that Clarke recounted again and again in the book. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the Caribbean, where too many islands had become what he called "mooring blocks" for cruise liners, lands where the locals had been encouraged to sell their precious property, spent the money, and in the end became maids, cleaning buildings they couldn't afford on land that their ancestors used to own. Parrot-haunted jungles, crumbling colonial forts, and small fishing villages were razed to make way for condominiums, exclusive resort hotels, and fast food restaurants. Some like the near timeless, open-air museum quality of some islands, islands which became natural attics, holding all manner of relics. Islanders in Vanuatu walk daily among the ruins of World War II equipment, hoping for the Americans to return. The South Pacific island of Kosrae's Christians - nearly the entirely island - faithfully preserv

A rich and fascinating trip

One might think that Thurston Clarke is compiling his travel books by geographical feature, first a book on the equator and now one on islands. We might expect his next to be about the Tropic of Cancer or salt marshes. Whatever it is, I suspect it will be a worthy and fascinating concoction. While he writes this book from the perspective of what he calls a "islomane", one who fascinated with islands, it makes compelling reading for someone who lacks this particular fascination. As a prairie boy I am more fascinated by mountains than islands, but because Clarke weaves so much collateral information into his text, you will never be anything less than fully engaged. He visits all kinds of islands from tourist meccas to summer cottages to northern coal mines. These journeys seem terribly difficult, but Clarke never lets the encumbrances of modern travel get in the way of his examination of both the fascination he has with islands in general and the particulars of what makes any given island worth visiting. He comes to many surprisingly interesting generalizations about the nature of islands and islanders (that for example changes on islands are usually more permanent than elsewhere). As a traveler he reminds me of Paul Theroux, and certainly his writing is on that level, though without the annoying flashes of ego that often make Theroux painful. It is interesting to compare Clarke's island jaunts with Theroux's Happy Isle of Oceania. Both authors distinctly render the sense of desperation that emerges from these isolated places, but Clarke appears to have a greater sense of the humanity of the people who inhabit them. Perhaps it takes an islomane to truly empathize with those likewise afflicted.Much as I enjoyed this book, I would also recommend Clarke's book on his travels around the equator. I found these places more interesting, and the quality of the writing is just as high.

An enjoyable and entertaining trip from island to island

The author presents and enjoyable book about different islands from the standpoint that many of them have a personality of their own. I have often thought it would be nice to live on an island...that is a remote island. Maybe that's a bit of a pipedream...but this author sure got me thinking again how that might just be the thing to do to renew the spirit and rejuvenate the soul. This book is not for everyone...but it may be just right for readers with an inquisitive interest in an 'island attitude'.

10 vignettes about islands (A book for islomanes)

People who fall in love with the concept of islands, or islomanes, should read this book. There are ten or so short stories about tropical and not-so-tropical islands around the world. The islands must have less than 10,000 people living on them, and include Robinson Crusoe's island, a Spice Island, an island in the Long Island Sound, One of the Bay Islands off the Honduras, and Niihau, the private Hawaiian island near Kauai. Other interesting island books include A Serpent in Paradise, about Pitcairn Island, and A Trip to the Beach, about the authors plans to open a beach restaurant in Anguilla.