Robert Dean Frisbie (1896–1948)
Autor von The Book of Puka Puka
Über den Autor
Werke von Robert Dean Frisbie
Mr. Moonlight's Island 4 Exemplare
The Ghost of Alexander Perks, A.B. 2 Exemplare
Williamu Cowboy 1 Exemplar
Fei-Hunting in Polynesia 1 Exemplar
The Sex Taboo in Puka-Puka 1 Exemplar
The Sea Afire 1 Exemplar
"At Home in Puka-Puka: Life on an Atoll" 1 Exemplar
Fishing with King-of-the-Sky 1 Exemplar
South Sea Authors 1 Exemplar
There is an "Indenture" System in Polynesia 1 Exemplar
Uninhabited Island 1 Exemplar
Unconventional Journey I: Travels of Ropati 1 Exemplar
The Grandpapa of All the Fishes 1 Exemplar
Cinderella at Puka-Puka 1 Exemplar
A Copra Island 1 Exemplar
Full and By: III. A Kanaka Voyage 1 Exemplar
A Kanaka Voyage: I. Tagua Sails North 1 Exemplar
South Sea Fairylands: II. A Kanaka Voyage 1 Exemplar
Magic Dances - Festivities in Puka-Puka 1 Exemplar
Adventures in a Puka-Puka Library 1 Exemplar
Americans in the South Seas 1 Exemplar
Rum Row: Western 1 Exemplar
Puka-Puka Neighbors 1 Exemplar
Dar Din Skatt Ar 1 Exemplar
Zugehörige Werke
Gentlemen, Scholars and Scoundrels: A Treasury of the Best of Harper's Magazine from 1850 to the Present (1959) — Mitwirkender — 55 Exemplare
Getagged
Wissenswertes
- Geburtstag
- 1896-04-17
- Todestag
- 1948-11-19
- Geschlecht
- male
- Nationalität
- USA
- Geburtsort
- Cleveland, Ohio, USA
- Sterbeort
- Avatiu, Cook Islands
- Wohnorte
- Papeete, Tahiti
- Berufe
- travel writer
- Beziehungen
- Frisbie, Johnny (daughter)
Mitglieder
Rezensionen
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Nahestehende Autoren
Statistikseite
- Werke
- 38
- Auch von
- 3
- Mitglieder
- 104
- Beliebtheit
- #184,481
- Bewertung
- 4.2
- Rezensionen
- 2
- ISBNs
- 4
- Favoriten
- 2
What is good and unique about this work is how Frisbie, who has come to be regarded as a legend among chroniclers of the South Seas, integrated himself so closely into the world and society of the people of Puka Puka. He never "went native," and strongly advised against anyone ever doing so, but he lived and made a family in as close a proximity to the ways of Puka Pukans as is possible to imagine for any foreigner. And when he shifts his locale to Suvarrow, his descriptions of his family ties and their struggle to survive the worst that nature can through against them makes for both moving and gripping reading.
Against these attributes, the failures of the book seem relatively insignificant. Yes, Ropita, the best that the Puka Pukans could do to approximate the pronunciation of his first name, Robert, is prone to employ purple prose. And he sometimes gets lost in his own prose. It is easy to see why he never became a successful novelist. His worst fault in The Island of Desire is the lengthy passages devoted to Captain Prospect, who Frisbie undoubtedly thought would serve as a colorful old coot of sorts but who quickly becomes tiresome and one-dimensional. All these drawbacks, however, are washed away in the detailed and exciting chapter on the Frisbies' encounter and survival of the hurricane. Many times, only seconds separated them from life and death. This part of the story is harrowing and exciting. It exceeds in its descriptiveness, in fact, Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall's fictional portrayal of a cyclone dismembering a South Seas island in their 1936 novel, The Hurricane. Hall was a friend and supporter of Frisbie's. Such an irony that Frisbie lived to experience what Nordhoff and Hall could only imagine some years earlier.
Robert Frisbie was not an immature man, although his seemingly careless ways and risky decisions may make it seem that way to contemporary readers. But the truth was that Frisbie was a nineteenth-century man living in the middle of the twentieth-century. He longed to make life more than mere existence. He wanted to capture meaning in it. The Island of Desire served that goal. For although its readership has always remained small; it has remained consistent. Frisbie will still be read with the same appreciation 100 or 200 years from now, while more contemporaries, much more popular at the time, fade into oblivion. I suppose that, then, is about as meaningful as it gets.… (mehr)