The Carson Show  Pages From a Cold Island  It may be no
coincidence that so many "reality" shows—from Survivor to its
reprehensible kiddy knockoff Endurance—use remote islands as
their milieu of choice. Sure, they're cheap and ready locations,
but isn't it also that modernity leads us to identify with the
hopelessly marooned? Tom Carson, like his cultural forebears
Daniel Defoe, William Golding, and, um, Sherwood Schwartz,
thinks so. In Gilligan's Wake, a dense, elaborate riff on the
venerable '60s sitcom, Carson attempts to excavate significance
from a well-trod corner of the pop-cultural rubbish heap, with
decidedly mixed results.  Carson's three-hour tour de force
devotes a chapter each to back-stories for the series' seven
familiar castaways, tying them together with recurring figures
from history and 20th-century literature. Thus the Skipper, a
PT-boat captain during World War II, rubs elbows with a young
JFK, who turns up later for a romp with soon-to-be starlet
Ginger Grant (who shares a Hollywood room