Customer Reviews

Krippendorf's Tribe

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A science experiment gone terribly wrong, or a daring foray into reality TV? Frank Parkin takes time out from his straight sociology nonfiction to posit what happens when research goes searching.

"Krippendorf's Tribe" could be a script for the next network "reality" offering. OK, maybe its a little over the top for primetime, but certainly not by much!

While it may have been shocking to the sensibilities in the mid-1980's, Frank Parkin's novel would fit right in to the 'entertainment' values of today's jaded viewers. Is turning his family into a mythical tribe any more outlandish than making yourself at home with the Osborne's? Stranded schoolteachers in a quest to be the last survivor? Paris Hilton down on the farm?

While not badly written, "Krippendorf's Tribe" just didn't strike any chords with me. The characters are just a little too disassociated, distant not just from each other and themselves (which is kind of the point), but from the reader. I couldn't find anything to relate them to - and I have a wide range of relations!

Which I suppose would make it perfect for reality television. If you like Survivor of the Dancing Bachelorettes, this will be right up your alley.

This book is one of the best I have read this year. If you can find it, I would highly recommend it.

As for the story, it centers around James Krippendorf. He is a professor who has squandered all of his grant money and is forced to invent the Shelmikedmu tribe. This is where all similarities between the book and movie end. In the book, James receives a lucrative offer from Exotica, an "anthropological" journal which is tantamount to a magazine filled with the nude pictures one would see in National Geographic.

Krippendorf, to get some photos of Shelmikedmu females, seduces and photographs a number of women whom he becomes familiar with, including a babysitter and one of his son's classmates' mother. Throughout the entire book, while he is carrying out these schemes, his unruly children are creating a maelstrom of destruction around the house. Eventually, the children turn wild and start to live in a treehouse and adopt the Shelmikedmu's "customs". This leads to some interesting and hilarious complications.

The best part of this book by far is Krippendorf. The way he acts is reminiscent of Ignatius Reilly in "A Confederacy of Dunces" in that he sees nothing wrong with his behavior and nonchalantly accepts his childrens' overly unruly behavior. For example, when one of his sons shoots the neighbors' dog with a BB gun, instead of being mad, Krippendorf simply promises him a new gun if his son keeps quiet about it.

This book is definitely not for kids, due to its adult subject matter. Like a previous reviewer, I also find it curious that Disney would make a movie out of it.

A look at how an anthropologist who has read too many "Sunday Sport" newspapers raises his family. It is very funny but its subject matter rates at least an R. If you like Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear & Loathing", the movie "Heathers", or boundless British humor, go for it. You will enjoy it.

However, how Disney can possibly be making a movie of a book about National Geographic style pornography, cannibalism and the like is beyond me.

If you are a parent who is buying this book because you saw, or heard about the movie, please read it before giving it to any kid below the age of 17.

I wish I had not loaned my original hard cover copy, have since bought paperbacks, one to keep and several to give.

I enjoyed this book throughly.It captivated me, with it's odd yet possibly realistic ideas.A bedtime book- I really liked it!My friends thought it was a little perverted but to me that was how the professor(ha ha) was.If Lord of the Flies was a favourite, this is a prescribed work.

Whoever wrote the synopsis never read the book or saw the movie. Krippendorf was neither unemployed nor did he work in the Amazon.