Gilligan's Wake

[Richard Romeo]

hey all--smoke'em if you got'em. rich

GILLIGAN'S WAKE
Author: Carson, Tom 

Review Date: NOVEMBER 15, 2002
Publisher:Picador/St. Martin's 
Pages: 352 
Price (hardback): $25.00 
Publication Date: 1/03
ISBN: 0-312-29123-X
ISBN (hardback): 0-312-29123-X 
Category: FICTION
An excruciating postmodern fantasy retells the story
of Gilligan's Island à la James Joyce.

Maybe you really love Finnegan's Wake. Or maybe you're
a Gilligan's Island addict. It's possible, however
unlikely, that you're a fan of both—in which case this
is the story for you. Each character from that old
show gets his own chapter, arranged in the order of
the theme song ("there's Gilligan, / the skipper, too,
/ the millionaire / and his wife . . ."). So, instead
of stately, plump Buck Mulligan, we begin with Li'l
Buddy himself, a beatnik hipster strung out in a Mayo
Clinic psychiatric ward where he reminisces about
happier days in Frisco with his pals Ferlinghetti and
Holden Caulfield. The skipper goes on about his
wartime duty as a PT boat captain in WWII, when he
hung out with the likes of JFK and McHale (i.e.,
Ernest Borgnine). Thurston Howell III turns out to
have been at the center of an espionage ring involving
his old Groton classmate Alger Hiss (who didn't really
go to Groton, but never mind), while his wife (Lovie)
had an unusual relationship with Daisy Buchanan of The
Great Gatsby during the 1920s. Ginger, the movie star,
reveals how she broke into pictures by providing
solace to members of the Rat Pack (and a certain
Massachusetts senator) in the mid-1950s, while the
Professor ruminates on his days at Los Alamos with
Oppenheimer and Teller—professional relationships that
made his life rather complicated during the McCarthy
years (just as Ginger's ministrations to Sammy Davis
Jr. broke her southern mama's heart). Finally,
Mary-Ann, the most boring of the castaways, offers a
long and convoluted account of her years in Paris,
studying at the Sorbonne and dating Jean-Luc Godard.



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