Island People Book

He was an island of ruined men. This is how a dream is read. This is how a nightmare is read. This is how echoes of the past are read. This is how loneliness, isolation, desire, depravation, desperation, sorrow, love, lust, hate, pain, pleasure are read. And here I thought that reading this book would be like a fun voyage to an Island. How wrong I was and how glad I am. I wanted to shout, I wanted to type this whole review in uppercase just to put across my point in case anyone misses it that I LOVED THIS BOOK. This despite of the fact that almost 70-80% of it went over my head and I'm not to blame. It's the kind of novel that should have the Annotated Island People, a Coleman Dowell Wiki and since we're on it, Understanding Coleman Dowell won't harm either. But it's just a wishful fancy on my part as a result of my overenthusiastic reaction to this...Masterpiece.

I was immensely disappointed when I read these words on the Dalkey edition cover: The kind of Novel that can change a Reader's Life. Really? Of all the encomiums this book had in its kitty, why the publishers went for something so banal and commercial (?), I asked myself and the book answered. I won't say my life is changed per se but as a reader, some changes can be acknowledged without sounding melodramatic. In a broader sense, many books do that but there are few who does that with a big bang boom. (Yes, I loved this book)

The first part is called 'THE GAME' and that's how the whole novel can be perceived. A complicated game where many players are coming and going, losing and winning but an appropriate end is not within sight. I haven't experienced a more perfect, perfectly complex and an almost indecipherable display of meta-fiction before reading Island People. A series of narrative fragments and journal entries written by 'I' (masculine) and further carried on by Beatrix (feminine) but simple structure doesn't satisfy our crazy postmodernists so, there is again a masculine (Chris) who'll break down into many other personae. And there is a Bitch (Miss Gold). So we get stories written about writing stories where temporal shifts shift not only between few days or few nights but the whole centuries. And what do we get in return by dealing with so many complications? Brilliant writing, a perfect prose and a palpable experience of all the damned feelings of the universe.

Nowhere in his new life was there a thought or wish for another person. Sex was a closed fist, conversation was in books or in his head, invented or recalled; in either case, an improvement over the real thing. If he had only substituted one kind of emptiness for another, there was no one in his present life to know. A shallow man, alone, may gain a distant reputation for depth.

Dowell knew what he was doing and he doesn't abandon his readers at all. There are many generous hints thrown where he clearly explains how to 'get' certain things in order to make 'connections'. But one needs to stick to it. In order to view the whole thing as a 'novel' it's important to tread the path at least till 250 pages and before you'll know it, the end would already be there but the confusion, most probably, would persist so one got to re-read the book.

How can I convey for some future brain the impressions of this room, now, and make that brain sense the complexity of this particularly confusion?

There are many themes that are being explored throughout, namely homosexuality, racism, religion, child abuse; impact of past on present and most importantly, No Man should be an Island. Dowell said that had this book received better reception, he was going to write another book, 'People of the Peninsula.' But neither happened. He wanted an audience, he didn't get them. He knew he was good and he is damn good so read the book.

Some of my favorite quotes:

He had thought of some of these things at the moment they were suggested or at the moment they were occurring, but once in his car he seemed to be encased in the circle of a dream both present and deferred. He was free of plots.

He thought of the coarseness of life, good fibers holding you together no matter what color they were, that kept you from falling apart in the face of death and silence.

He drew on the cigarette, loathing its staleness, and expelled a cloud of flat smoke before he again looked at other's face, finding deep shadow in which two hazy luminosities seemed no more committal nor benevolent than a moon divided into twins by capriciously unfocused binoculars.

A link to Coleman Dowell's interview:



Christopher Sorrentino on Island People:



Garima on Island People:

There is possibility that on a random booze session, Gilbert Sorrentino might have said to Coleman dowell,"Damn You, Cole! I wish I had written Island People."

Five/5 Stars

I live in nightmare. My primary activity is concealing that fact. I am less and less successful.