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Eccentric Islands: Travels Real and Imaginary
Bill Holm, often called “the bard of the Midwest,” takes readers on an excursion to islands both real and symbolic. He journeys to five physical islands: Iceland, Madagascar, Molokai, Isla Mujeres, and Mallard Island. And he travels to conceptual islands, including the Necessary Island of the Imagination, the whimsical Piano Island (located in a man-made lake under the atrium of an upscale hotel in the far interior of China), and the acute isolation of the Island of Pain. Writing with the mind-set of a 19th-century traveler for whom the journey is as important as the destination, Holm appeals to the traveler and the philosopher in everyone.
- GenresTravelNonfictionEssays
346 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
6 people are currently reading
117 people want to read
About the author
Bill Holm
55 books31 followersBill Holm was an American poet, essayist, memoirist, and musician.
Holm was born on a farm north of Minneota, Minnesota, the grandson of Icelandic immigrants. He attended Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota where he graduated in 1965. Later, he attended the University of Kansas.
Holm won a Fulbright and went to Iceland for a year, which stretched into longer. He continued to visit Iceland so regularly that his friends there helped him find a house in Hofsós. His last book, The Windows of Brimnes, is about his time in Iceland.
He was Professor Emeritus of English at Southwest Minnesota State University, where he taught classes on poetry and literature until his retirement in 2007. Though Minneota was his home, Holm had traveled the world, teaching English in China, spending summers in Iceland and late winters in Arizona, and visiting Europe and Madagascar.
Holm was a frequent guest on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio show and some of his poems were included in Keillor's Writer's Almanac.
Holm was a McKnight Distinguished Artist in 2008, an award that honors Minnesota artists for their life work.
Holm was born on a farm north of Minneota, Minnesota, the grandson of Icelandic immigrants. He attended Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota where he graduated in 1965. Later, he attended the University of Kansas.
Holm won a Fulbright and went to Iceland for a year, which stretched into longer. He continued to visit Iceland so regularly that his friends there helped him find a house in Hofsós. His last book, The Windows of Brimnes, is about his time in Iceland.
He was Professor Emeritus of English at Southwest Minnesota State University, where he taught classes on poetry and literature until his retirement in 2007. Though Minneota was his home, Holm had traveled the world, teaching English in China, spending summers in Iceland and late winters in Arizona, and visiting Europe and Madagascar.
Holm was a frequent guest on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio show and some of his poems were included in Keillor's Writer's Almanac.
Holm was a McKnight Distinguished Artist in 2008, an award that honors Minnesota artists for their life work.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 10, 2018
Author Bill Holm has produced in this work a wonderful, eclectic, almost at times rambling (but wonderfully so) tour of a number of islands. Many are actual islands he writes about, places where one can journey to; Madagascar, Isla Mujeres or the Island of Women near Cancun off the Mexican coast, Molokai (part of the Hawaiian Islands, once a leper colony, that chapter fascinating and touching centering as it does on the saintly efforts of Father Damien de Veuster and his care for the unfairly maligned and ill-treated lepers cruelly exiled there), and Mallard Island in Minnesota.
Some islands he visits are not actual physical places, a few "states of consciousness" which he writes so "resemble islands that they deserve the geographic name," such as the island of music (Holm, a great lover of pianos, clavichords, and harpsichords, describes how producing music can be an island-like experience in a wonderful, wide-ranging chapter that goes into a great deal of history behind these instruments) and the island of pain (how great physical or emotional pain can isolate oneself from others). Clearly this is a different travel book, one thematically organized rather than simply a description of places, experiences, and detailing the history, politics, cuisine, and culture of the particular places visited by the author.
The largest section of the book - and my favorite part by far - was two rather lengthy chapters describing Holm's experiences in Iceland. A descendent of Icelandic immigrants who grew up in Minnesota, he spent time there in 1979 teaching English and then revisited the island again twenty years later. Clearly loving the place and the people especially, Holm provided for me a wonderful introduction of a place I would now very much like to visit.
We learn that Iceland is a surprisingly small country, an isolated island in the North Atlantic about the size of Ohio (about 40,000 square miles), inhabited by about a quarter million people, most of whom live around the capital and largest city of Reykjavik, and that so sparse has the population of Iceland been through the centuries that only 800,000 Icelanders have ever lived (leading perhaps he says to the sometimes hobby sometimes obsession of many in Iceland with genealogy). A hard island to live on sometimes, first settled in 874 (though a few scattered Irish monks did call the place home before that), the population declined due to the Black Plague in the 14th century, smallpox in the early 18th century, and two large volcanic eruptions in 1783 and 1875, both of which caused massive famine by burying hayfields and killing sheep (it was due to the latter eruption that Holm's great-grandfathers moved to Minnesota). Indeed physically Iceland is a rugged country, subject to volcanic eruptions (the island is still growing, as the volcanic mid-Atlantic ridge bifurcates Iceland) and earthquakes (the author himself experienced a minor one in 1998), ninety percent barren lava and rugged volcanic desert, interspersed with several glaciers, tundra, and boiling fumaroles, occasionally tortured by fierce Arctic gale-force blasts of wind off the polar icecap.
Holm describes a number of the most interesting places in Iceland, such as Pingvellir or the Parliament Plain, an oasis in the southwestern corner of the country where Icelanders first met in 1000 to respond to an ultimatum King Olaf of Norway to become Christian and stop horse eating and infant exposure, this meeting the foundation Icelandic law and the world's first true democracy (differing from the Greek in that in Iceland women could vote too), which with Gullfoss (Golden Falls, one of many magnificent waterfalls in the country), and Geysir (the original geyser, now largely spent and worn out) form the so-called Golden Triangle of tourist attractions in Iceland.
I learned many interesting aspects of Icelandic culture. Icelanders for instance love to dress up to entertain - even in tuxedos and elegant dresses - even in the worst weather. They have a great love of giving flowers for nearly any occasion, even for mere visits over coffee. He was continually touched when even on his return he found that concerns of crime and even the security of their nation's leader were nearly non-existent. Holm sampled a number of Icelandic delicacies, including puffin, svartfugl (guillemot; a sea bird), italskt spaggetti (ground mutton, onion, and ketchup basically), svio (blackened, singed sheep's head), and lots of fish, preferred either boiled or prepared as siginn fiskur (fish hung, dried, and aged outdoors).
Outside the major cities many of those in rural Iceland - generally farmers - he found are often quite isolated; Holm found in 1979 that the national highway that circled the island was often a rough gravel track filled with pot-holes, 16-percent grades down steep mountainsides, and areas where the road was completely washed out even. He found quite a bit of improvement upon his return twenty years later but still many areas were a challenging drive. Indeed he took advantage of this isolation on his first visit there to live for a summer with an Icelandic farming family; Holm wanted to learn to speak Icelandic to a better degree (having great trouble with its "consonantal clots, trilled rs, and long soulful diphthongs"), but found that in the major cities everyone spoke English fluently and generally did not let him "butcher" their language - only in an isolated rural settlement were there people who spoke little or no English. Iceland is a very much a nation of writers and of readers, producing many fine novelists - several of which have been translated into English - as well as the famous Icelandic sagas. The author was touched upon his first trip to find people in restaurants, stores, and in their cars enthralled by a reading of one of the nation's great novels, Halldor Laxness's _Independent People_, glued to the radio as the story of Bjartur of Summerhouses unfolded, a saga centering around an uneducated, gruff sheep farmer whose all-consuming desire to be independent and beholden to no one leads to tragic consequences for him and his family.
A wonderful book.
Some islands he visits are not actual physical places, a few "states of consciousness" which he writes so "resemble islands that they deserve the geographic name," such as the island of music (Holm, a great lover of pianos, clavichords, and harpsichords, describes how producing music can be an island-like experience in a wonderful, wide-ranging chapter that goes into a great deal of history behind these instruments) and the island of pain (how great physical or emotional pain can isolate oneself from others). Clearly this is a different travel book, one thematically organized rather than simply a description of places, experiences, and detailing the history, politics, cuisine, and culture of the particular places visited by the author.
The largest section of the book - and my favorite part by far - was two rather lengthy chapters describing Holm's experiences in Iceland. A descendent of Icelandic immigrants who grew up in Minnesota, he spent time there in 1979 teaching English and then revisited the island again twenty years later. Clearly loving the place and the people especially, Holm provided for me a wonderful introduction of a place I would now very much like to visit.
We learn that Iceland is a surprisingly small country, an isolated island in the North Atlantic about the size of Ohio (about 40,000 square miles), inhabited by about a quarter million people, most of whom live around the capital and largest city of Reykjavik, and that so sparse has the population of Iceland been through the centuries that only 800,000 Icelanders have ever lived (leading perhaps he says to the sometimes hobby sometimes obsession of many in Iceland with genealogy). A hard island to live on sometimes, first settled in 874 (though a few scattered Irish monks did call the place home before that), the population declined due to the Black Plague in the 14th century, smallpox in the early 18th century, and two large volcanic eruptions in 1783 and 1875, both of which caused massive famine by burying hayfields and killing sheep (it was due to the latter eruption that Holm's great-grandfathers moved to Minnesota). Indeed physically Iceland is a rugged country, subject to volcanic eruptions (the island is still growing, as the volcanic mid-Atlantic ridge bifurcates Iceland) and earthquakes (the author himself experienced a minor one in 1998), ninety percent barren lava and rugged volcanic desert, interspersed with several glaciers, tundra, and boiling fumaroles, occasionally tortured by fierce Arctic gale-force blasts of wind off the polar icecap.
Holm describes a number of the most interesting places in Iceland, such as Pingvellir or the Parliament Plain, an oasis in the southwestern corner of the country where Icelanders first met in 1000 to respond to an ultimatum King Olaf of Norway to become Christian and stop horse eating and infant exposure, this meeting the foundation Icelandic law and the world's first true democracy (differing from the Greek in that in Iceland women could vote too), which with Gullfoss (Golden Falls, one of many magnificent waterfalls in the country), and Geysir (the original geyser, now largely spent and worn out) form the so-called Golden Triangle of tourist attractions in Iceland.
I learned many interesting aspects of Icelandic culture. Icelanders for instance love to dress up to entertain - even in tuxedos and elegant dresses - even in the worst weather. They have a great love of giving flowers for nearly any occasion, even for mere visits over coffee. He was continually touched when even on his return he found that concerns of crime and even the security of their nation's leader were nearly non-existent. Holm sampled a number of Icelandic delicacies, including puffin, svartfugl (guillemot; a sea bird), italskt spaggetti (ground mutton, onion, and ketchup basically), svio (blackened, singed sheep's head), and lots of fish, preferred either boiled or prepared as siginn fiskur (fish hung, dried, and aged outdoors).
Outside the major cities many of those in rural Iceland - generally farmers - he found are often quite isolated; Holm found in 1979 that the national highway that circled the island was often a rough gravel track filled with pot-holes, 16-percent grades down steep mountainsides, and areas where the road was completely washed out even. He found quite a bit of improvement upon his return twenty years later but still many areas were a challenging drive. Indeed he took advantage of this isolation on his first visit there to live for a summer with an Icelandic farming family; Holm wanted to learn to speak Icelandic to a better degree (having great trouble with its "consonantal clots, trilled rs, and long soulful diphthongs"), but found that in the major cities everyone spoke English fluently and generally did not let him "butcher" their language - only in an isolated rural settlement were there people who spoke little or no English. Iceland is a very much a nation of writers and of readers, producing many fine novelists - several of which have been translated into English - as well as the famous Icelandic sagas. The author was touched upon his first trip to find people in restaurants, stores, and in their cars enthralled by a reading of one of the nation's great novels, Halldor Laxness's _Independent People_, glued to the radio as the story of Bjartur of Summerhouses unfolded, a saga centering around an uneducated, gruff sheep farmer whose all-consuming desire to be independent and beholden to no one leads to tragic consequences for him and his family.
A wonderful book.
January 16, 2019
I miss Bill Holm, an authentic person who asks us along in this collection of essays to think about and experience both real and personal islands. He brings alive the cultures and people he visits. I feel miserable along with him in the squalor of China, but then he fills Pages about the people, and music and books...always books. Your spirit picks up then. It’s not a fast read but stay with it. His voice is stilled now but his writing lives on.
May 18, 2018
I've been reading this book off and on for YEARS and finally decided to finish it. Some parts are very entertaining, and I love the premise of writing about a series of islands, but this author can definitely be a rambler at times, and his prose is occasionally self-indulgent. Still, it's all good natured, with a lot of interesting material surfacing throughout.
August 29, 2021
A delightful series of essays that taught me more than most books manage, especially textbooks. The vivacious prose brought me great joy while I savored this book over a month. I plan on re-reading this some time after I've gotten a little more familiar with
August 27, 2017
An old favorite by a favorite. The chapters on Iceland are must reads for anyone planning a trip to this singularly beautiful eccentric island.
September 4, 2017
I only read the chapter on Madagascar and enjoyed it very much.
August 29, 2022
I read two chapters--the ones about Iceland by a Minnesota writer of Icelandic heritage.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 18, 2024
Like any book with short stories, this memoir had great variations in how well I liked his chapters. I loved the chapters about Iceland, Moloka'i and Pain. The others were so-so.
November 10, 2012
Poet, essayist, raconteur, Bill Holm begins this book about islands with himself. "Call me island," he writes. "Holm" is the Icelandic word for island. "It's a satisfactory name, and I'll keep it." From his lifelong home on the prairies of southwestern Minnesota, where as a boy he invented islands for himself, Holm travels to Iceland, his ancestral home, to Moloka'i, Madagascar, and other geographical islands, as well as visiting the islands of pain, music, and the imagination. He explores the idea that "islands are necessary for us to be able to think about what is true at the bottom of our own character; we need to reduce the world for a while to count it and understand it." Eccentric Islands is marked by Holm's breadth of knowledge and depth of reflection, his keen power to observe, and the way he revels in language and narrative.
Comprehending the world from the perspective of "islandness," Holm faces reality at its earthiest and its most divine. Writing about Father Damien, the Belgian priest who lived and died among the lepers banished to the Hawaiian island of Moloka'i, Holm offers unsettling facts about the disease: "Leprosy, evidently, wants only to torture you while you are sentient." After death, "the bodily swellings, discolorations, distortions leave. . . . You now boast a robustly healthy-looking corpse, as if you had died in your sleep at a great age with complete calm."
The same topic provides a context for musings on the human race and all that it fears. "As our longevity grows almost at a geometric ratio, compared to any previous age in human history, anywhere, we become more hysterical in the presence of death, sure that by right action and careful planning we can evade it." Holm's observations about the death, by AIDS, of a dear friend, demonstrate that we have progressed only so far from our tendency to banish that which we fear to isolated islands.
In his essays on Iceland, Holm celebrates a culture that celebrates language. At a gathering of Icelandic writers, Holm remarks, "It is good to be in a room that trusts narrative," as distinct from a similar gathering in America, at which "you are besieged with opinions and preferences." An eighty-year-old friend tells Holm, "An Icelander must always keep a book pile by his bed. You are never reading just one book but many," and proceeds to give an annotated tour.
As island made of marble, in the middle of a decorative pool in a Chinese hotel lobby, provides the locus for Holm's thoughts on the island of music. That marble island is the residence of a grand piano, and playing piano is one of Holm's passions. Again, his observations on the physical place and on the history of the piano, interesting in themselves, are accompanied by more sublime comments.
Eccentric Islands concludes with Holm's musings on "The Necessary Island," the imagination. In just a few sentences he manages to critique the world of NASDAQ and Pentagon and corporate conglomeration, and makes a bold case for the imagination, which is "the only divine spark in us -- kill it, and you kill any possibility of growing a soul."
To read Eccentric Islands is to travel to places and concepts with a writer whose singular voice will ring in the ears for days or weeks afterward. Bill Holm is outspoken and cantankerous, curmudgeonly and contrarian, but he is always eloquent, and all that he has to say originates in a desire to see human beings live more fully, fearlessly, and, despite our islandness, connectedly.
Comprehending the world from the perspective of "islandness," Holm faces reality at its earthiest and its most divine. Writing about Father Damien, the Belgian priest who lived and died among the lepers banished to the Hawaiian island of Moloka'i, Holm offers unsettling facts about the disease: "Leprosy, evidently, wants only to torture you while you are sentient." After death, "the bodily swellings, discolorations, distortions leave. . . . You now boast a robustly healthy-looking corpse, as if you had died in your sleep at a great age with complete calm."
The same topic provides a context for musings on the human race and all that it fears. "As our longevity grows almost at a geometric ratio, compared to any previous age in human history, anywhere, we become more hysterical in the presence of death, sure that by right action and careful planning we can evade it." Holm's observations about the death, by AIDS, of a dear friend, demonstrate that we have progressed only so far from our tendency to banish that which we fear to isolated islands.
In his essays on Iceland, Holm celebrates a culture that celebrates language. At a gathering of Icelandic writers, Holm remarks, "It is good to be in a room that trusts narrative," as distinct from a similar gathering in America, at which "you are besieged with opinions and preferences." An eighty-year-old friend tells Holm, "An Icelander must always keep a book pile by his bed. You are never reading just one book but many," and proceeds to give an annotated tour.
He would, by God, think till the lights went out, and the whole world was his province -- oceans, ideas, capitalist plots, the state of trout, the mystery of the origin of the cosmos itself, human nature, poems. If you are a human being, it is all your business. Until you die. No letup. No slacking.
As island made of marble, in the middle of a decorative pool in a Chinese hotel lobby, provides the locus for Holm's thoughts on the island of music. That marble island is the residence of a grand piano, and playing piano is one of Holm's passions. Again, his observations on the physical place and on the history of the piano, interesting in themselves, are accompanied by more sublime comments.
When the strings were set vibrating, the divine came out to dance the sacred dance in the currents of sound, misstrikes, botched tempos, and all. The gods don't care about a few wrong notes if you strike them with a full heart.
Eccentric Islands concludes with Holm's musings on "The Necessary Island," the imagination. In just a few sentences he manages to critique the world of NASDAQ and Pentagon and corporate conglomeration, and makes a bold case for the imagination, which is "the only divine spark in us -- kill it, and you kill any possibility of growing a soul."
To read Eccentric Islands is to travel to places and concepts with a writer whose singular voice will ring in the ears for days or weeks afterward. Bill Holm is outspoken and cantankerous, curmudgeonly and contrarian, but he is always eloquent, and all that he has to say originates in a desire to see human beings live more fully, fearlessly, and, despite our islandness, connectedly.
February 19, 2009
I picked this up a while ago and never got beyond the first couple of pages. This last go-round with it was much more successful; I greedily gobbled up the entire thing. In retrospect, I think I was put off by his folksy style (What is it with residents of Minnesota?). This is the psychological companion piece to Quammen's The Song of the Dodo (which Holm mentions), and so enjoyable for being that. It indulges my delight in travel, islands, finding beauty in the unconventional and being curmudgeonly.
April 7, 2015
Eccentric Islands, by Bill Holm, 1999. Borrowed from Mike Racette (great reader, discusser, and promoter of reading) on our annual overnight in late December at Springhill, this book was engaging, riveting in parts, moving, enjoyable, provoking. Music, people, islands “real and imaginary”, geography, history, poetry, story -- great stuff. For me, the essay on Moloka’i and Father Damien was most powerful. “Most of us can’t bear to think very hard on the triviality of our own fear.”
May 6, 2013
This is hard to review. I loved the writing and his sense of adventure, but he came across as a total luddite. He seemed to hate every modern invention, acting like using an outhouse is a higher cosmic level than modern plumbing. I think the best chapter was the one about Molokai, the leper island. I thought the long chapters on Iceland kind of dragged.
January 30, 2012
mostly I found this book fascinating, both the travel and his thoughts. Occasionally I got a bit bogged down, which is why I gave it 4 rather than 5. (I suspect this was more my mood rather than the book).
September 26, 2015
I very much enjoyed some of the chapters (Molokai and Madagascar), and very much disliked other chapters (both Iceland chapters). The author's habit of randomly referring to himself in the third person got old quickly.
June 17, 2009
I discovered this book right after Bill Holm died. Great man. Great book. Feels like I've just come back from an extraordinary travel adventure of my own. Thanks Bill. Mr Island himself.
October 14, 2012
What a way to travel, and this guy just recently died. Wish I'd discovered him earlier
November 20, 2011
The best of the three Holm books I've read. As always impeccably researched and poetic yet informative. A great introduction to an author we lost too soon.
April 1, 2013
Holm's background as a poet shows in his prose, and I found myself reading lines aloud to anyone who would listen. Beautiful, funny, completely different from anything I've read. What a treasure.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews