Much has been made of Exley's debt as a writer, to his "lost generation" predecessors — Fitzgerald, Hemingway — who wrote of Americans disenchanted in an earlier era. Still, Exley remains most fully inscribed in Postmodernism. To wit: One theme of Pages from a Cold Island is "its author's failure to bring the book to a successful completion. Echoing the postmodern im pulse to self-referentiality, Pages from a Cold Island frequently discusses the author's problems in rescuing the 480page manuscript from the trunk of his car, where it has been for three years".

As in A Fan's Notes (1968), Exley uses an historical figure against whom to contrast his own lack of success; this time, the American writer Edmund Wilson.