Quitting the Nairobi Trio [Hardcover]

Jim Knipfel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 18, 2000

The critically acclaimed author of Slackjaw is forced to spend six months in a locked-door psych ward, only to find that life can be better on the inside.

Thomas Pynchon calls Jim Knipfel's writing "extraordinary," while Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times says that he is "blessed with a natural, one might even say reflexive, knack for telling stories" that display "remarkable lan and some wicked black humor." Now, Knipfel uses those abilities to chronicle six months he spent in a Minneapolis psychiatric ward, where he was left to become his own therapeutic counsel.

As his new memoir begins, Knipfel has just failed at another suicide attempt. This time he is forced to stay in a psych ward until a doctor, whose once-a-week sessions last for ten minutes, deems him mentally fit to leave. Effectively abandoned, Knipfel begins his own self-analysis and embarks upon a series of haphazard skirmishes to regain his sanity, make new friends, and devise ways to pass the time. Finally, revelation and insight from a fellow patient and the late television comic Ernie Kovacs supply an answer only a paranoid could appreciate.

While Quitting the Nairobi Trio is similar to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, the difference in this remarkable book is that Jim Knipfel enjoyed life in the "bin."

"Jim Knipfel's artistic vision is as stunning as a sunset over the Brooklyn Bridge." --Entertainment Weekly

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

You kind of get the feeling that if Jim Knipfel sat next to you on the bus, you'd get up and move. But it'd be your loss. Sure, he's surly, whacked out, and often socially unacceptable, but he can't be beat for smart, bitterly funny writing on subjects as varied as scuba diving and suicide attempts. The author of Slackjaw and a longtime columnist for the New York Press, Knipfel battles idiocy (his own and others') and boredom as a way of life. In Quitting the Nairobi Trio, he ends up in a psych ward after a botched attempt at ending his life with pills and scotch. Unhelpful attendants and randomly communicative wardmates fill his days, along with preposterously short weekly doctor sessions and rare family visits. Knipfel's memory for conversational bits is unerring; a simple question on his part is as likely to descend into violence as it is to end politely, and the result is a book that's hard to put down. Page after page grinds on in the black humor found only on a locked-door psych ward, and when the final illumination arrives--thanks to an Ernie Kovacs segment on a public television fundraiser--he can't even share it with his doctor. No classic happy ending from this author. Knipfel's viewpoint is definitely one-of-a-kind--and even fervent fans will agree that's probably a good thing. --Jill Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

A columnist for the New York Press, Knipfel is a survivor. Already legally blind, he is cursed with a degenerative disease, retinus pigmentosa, which is slowly robbing him of even more of his sight. In his acclaimed first memoir, Slackjaw, Knipfel chronicled his battle not only with that disability, but with an inoperable brain lesion that has resulted in seizures and incidents of severe, suicidal depression. With his latest book, he continues to document the ongoing emotional woes in his splintered life in heartrending detail. As it opens, he is strapped to a bed in the intensive care unit of Minneapolis General Medical Center after yet another suicide attempt. Knipfel remains very capable of cool objectivity about his circumstances, maintaining a droll sense of humor. While languishing in the "bughouse," he recalls the voices and feelings that drove him to drink, pills and general madness. Although he has lost the ability to read faces, his powers of observation are razor sharp, as is his uncanny ability to transform the most mundane situationDsuch as his scuba-diving classes, his battle with a rat on the ward or a near-riot among patientsDinto a laugh-out-loud episode. Inspired by the late comic Ernie Kovacs's Nairobi Trio skits and the mad rantings of fellow roomies, he concocts a scheme to win his release, only to watch it fall apart in another crazy fiasco. Knipfel's wickedly hilarious and nutty viewpoint is so captivating that readers will finish his book with regret, waiting impatiently for the next installment of a unique, courageous life. Agent, Ken Swezey at Cowen, DeBates Esq. First serial to Talk magazine; national radio campaign. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Tarcher; First Printing edition (May 18, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585420271
• ISBN-13: 978-1585420278
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,289,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's not all "Cuckoo's Nest" or "Girl Interrupted", September 8, 2000

By 

John DiBello (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quitting the Nairobi Trio (Hardcover)

The self-confessional, inside-the-mental-institution memoir has become almost such a cliché in the past few years that I wondered if there was anyone who could do anything new with it. I've been a fan of Jim Knipfel's work in the New York Press and his outstanding memoir "Slackjaw" for some time now, though, so it comes as no surprise that he's produced one of the most entertaining and incisive personal memoirs on the subject in recent years.

His dark-humored account of the months spent in a locked-door psych ward make intriguing reading, but won't make a good dramatic movie: the common factor to each day is the unending boredom (I have to admire a guy who can read and re-read Lacan's "Ecrits" day after day *without* going insane). Sure, there are the usual staple of colorful characters you meet in this memoir, but they're not there to teach Knipfel a valuable life lesson, befriend him or have adventures with him: they're just there, having the same boring day he is, in which the most exciting thing might be wrestling on TV or the movement of a woman patient from her usual couch to another. Knipfel's probably most effective in showing us that it wasn't the atmosphere, it wasn't the treatment (a weekly ten-minute interview with a doctor), and it wasn't the fellow patients who helped him get out of the place: it was himself, and his association with an old Ernie Kovacs television sketch, that helped him secure his release: maybe not "cured" (whatever that means), but ready to take on life again.

(A personal note: I take great exception to the Amazon review that "if Jim Knipfel sat next to you on the bus, you'd get up and move." I live in the same Brooklyn neighborhood he does, and regularly see him on the F train into Manhattan. There's nothing about him that would make you want to move away (and believe me, there's plenty of people like that on the F train already). As Knipfel goes a long way towards pointing out in this book, people who've been in mental institutions are *not* all drooling or muttering--that quiet guy sitting next to you might have very well been in one. Isn't that the point of his book, after all?)

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Slackjaw revisited, July 18, 2000

By 

Kevin - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quitting the Nairobi Trio (Hardcover)

After a nearly succesful suicide attempt with scotch and sleeping pills, Knipfel ends up in the harrowing and frustrating world of the mental ward. While trying to prove his "sanity" to his hospital appointed psychiatrist he finds himself locked in a no-win situation. First of all, he only meets with him for one half-hour session once a week. Secondly, if he tells him he's not really crazy then he's looked upon as a liar, and if he admits he does have a few "psychotic breaks" then he'll never get out. Add to this an array of severely mentally ill people and a non-chalant nursing staff and it's a wonder that he could keep whatever sanity he had intact.

In this prequel to "Slackjaw", Knipfel delves deeply into the dark feelings of "will I ever get out of here" and "what if they don't really believe that I'm sane?". It can seem a little hopeless and maddening at times, but Knipfel always seems to come away with a brighter way of looking at things.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved the humor! It worked for a dark subject!, August 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Quitting the Nairobi Trio (Hardcover)

When I bought this book I was unsure as to whether or not the whole business of being in a mental institution would be very funny. Well, somehow or other, treating the subject without pity and a poor me attitude made the story stronger. I felt for the people-- I didn't laugh at them-- it was more the absurdity and self-loathing we all feel in everyday life that came through.