Quitting the Nairobi Trio [Paperback]

KnipfelJim (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: PENGUIN PUTNAM * TRADE (2000)
• ASIN: B000QBNYDS
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,782,657 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.