The Island of the Colorblind

In writing this book, I have travelled into many realms not my own, and I have been greatly helped by many people, especially those people of Micronesia, of Guam and Rota and Pingelap and Pohnpei – patients, scientists, physicians, botanists – whom I encountered on the way. Above all, I am grateful to Knut Nordby, John Steele, and Bob Wasserman for sharing the journey with me, in many ways. Among those who welcomed me to the Pacific, I must thank in particular Ulla Craig, Greg Dever, Delihda Isaac, May Okahiro, Bill Peck, Phil Roberto, Julia Steele, Alma van der Velde, and Marjorie Whiting. I am grateful also to Mark Futterman, Jane Hurd, Catherine de Laura, Irene Maumenee, John Mollon, Britt Nordby, the Schwartz family, and Irwin Siegel for their discussions of achromatopsia and of Pingelap. Special thanks are due to Frances Futterman, who, among other things, introduced me to Knut and provided invaluable advice on selecting sunglasses and equipment for our expedition to Pingelap, in addition to sharing her own experience of achromatopsia.

I am likewise indebted to many researchers who have played a part in investigating the Guam disease over the years: Sue Daniel, Ralph Garruto, Carleton Gajdusek, Asao Hirano, Leonard Kurland, Andrew Lees, Donald Mulder, Peter Spencer, Bert Wiederholt, Harry Zimmerman. Many others have helped in all sorts of ways, including my friends and colleagues Kevin Cahill (who cured me of amebiasis contracted in the islands), Elizabeth Chase, John Clay, Allen Furbeck, Stephen Jay Gould, G.A. Holland, Isabelle Rapin, Gay Sacks, Herb Schaumburg, Ralph Siegel, Patrick Stewart, and Paul Theroux.

My visits to Micronesia were greatly enriched by the documentary film crew which accompanied us there in 1994, and shared all of these experiences with us (and got a great many of them on film, despite often difficult conditions). Emma Crichton-Miller, first, provided a great deal of research on the islands and their people, and Chris Rawlence produced and directed the filming with infinite sensitivity and intelligence. The film crew – Chris and Emma, David Barker, Greg Bailey, Sophie Gardiner, and Robin Probyn – enlivened our visit with skill and camaraderie, and not least as friends, who have now accompanied me on many different adventures.

I am grateful to those who have helped in the course of writing and publishing this book, particularly Nicholas Blake, Suzanne Gluck, Jacqui Graham, Schellie Hagan, Carol Harvey, Claudine O’Hearn, Heather Schroder, and especially Juan Martinez, who has skillfully and intelligently organized in innumerable ways.

Though the book was written in a sort of swoop, a single breath, in July 1995, it then grew, like an unruly cycad, to many times its original size, putting out offshoots and bulbils in all directions. Since the offshoots, in volume, now started to vie with the text, and since I felt it crucial to keep the narrative unencumbered, I have placed many of these additional thoughts together, as endnotes. The complexities of what to put in and leave out, of how to orchestrate the five parts of this narrative, owe a great deal to the sensitivity and judgment of Dan Frank, my editor at Knopf, and to Kate Edgar.

I owe a special debt to Tobias Picker’s version of The Encan-tadas. The fusion of Picker’s music, Melville’s text, and Giel-gud’s voice exerted a disturbing and mysterious effect upon me, and whenever, in the writing, memory failed me, listening to this piece operated as a sort of Proustian mnemonic, transporting me back to the Marianas and the Carolines.

For sharing their expertise and enthusiasm on botanical subjects, most especially on ferns and cycads, I am grateful to Tom Mirenda and Mobee Weinstein, to Bill Raynor, Lynn Raulerson, and Agnes Rinehart in Micronesia, to Chuck Hubbuch at the Fairchild Tropical Garden in Miami and to John Mickel and Dennis Stevenson at the New York Botanical Garden. And finally, for their patient and careful readings of the manuscript of this book, I am indebted to Stephen Jay Gould and Eric Korn. It is to Eric, my oldest and dearest friend and companion in all sorts of scientific enthusiasms over the years, that I dedicate this book.

New York August 1996

O.W.S.

Book I THE ISLAND OF THE COLORBLIND

Island Hopping