Islomania

Jump to: navigation, search

Islomania is a craze for or a strong attraction to islands.

The British writer Lawrence Durrell first coined the term islomaniac in his book Reflections on a Marine Venus (1953) to describe people who are drawn to spend their time on an island. He wrote at the beginning of Reflections on a Marine Venus…

"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 he 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.”

Durrell notes that a man named Kimon Friar claimed to have lived on 46 different islands. Philip Conkling, the director of Maine's Island Institute, has apparently visited more islands than anyone else; he has been to about 1,000 islands in that state. Some people in the Travelers' Century Club, whose members attempt to visit as many countries as possible, have been to islands in over 100 countries.[1]

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.

Possessing desert or tropical islands is the dream of many, and is often realized by the very rich. In early 2005, Mago Island in Fiji was purchased by actor/director Mel Gibson. Descendants of original native inhabitants of Mago, who were displaced in the 1860s, have protested Mel Gibson's purchase of Mago from Japan's Tokyu corporation for $15 million.

Tetiaroa, one of the Society Islands, was purchased in 1965 by actor Marlon Brando, after filming Mutiny on the Bounty. Tetiaroa has one inhabitant: Marlon Brando's son Teihotu. In his deed, Brando, who died in 2004, granted his friend Michael Jackson lifelong use of 2000 m² (a half-acre) on the islet of Onetahi, in the west of Tetiaroa.