Customer Reviews

Quitting the Nairobi Trio

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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?)

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.

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.

Slackjaw was a fine debut, but this is a much better book. Controlled, refined, witty, and yes - that rarest of accolades for a 'hip writer' - vulnerable. Funny provocative storytelling. Highlight: Knipfel takes a scuba diving test.

As I began reading "Nairobi Trio" I thought is was shaping to be an exposé of patients treatment in a mental ward. It is not that. Instead, it gives a fairly neutral glimpse into a world that many of us never get to see: that of a fairly insane man. Knipfel's conversational writing style and comic flair are captivating. The story of his suicide, committment, and experience in a mental institution also keep the pages flipping. The book falters in its conclusion, however. Knipfel finally realizes that his life resembles a skit called the Nairobi Trio (hence the name of the book), a group of people dressed like apes who do the same thing over and over again. His mundane life, therefore, has pushed him to attempt suicide several times and landed him in mental institutions. If it sounds like a simple resolution--it is! But what can you really expect from a half crazy writer anyway? This is a funny and interesting book that is enjoyable to read, but when you finish it you begin wondering why you read it.

After just completing "Nairobi Trio" I feel I have embarked on a career of reading nothing but non-fiction. While at times, the truth may be "scary", knowing it's real can be oh-so rewarding. In the case of your recent work....I felt it extremely rewarding, and hope there's more to come!

While the subject is obviously harrowing and painful and scary, somehow Knipfel has managed to tell it through HUMOR rather than the crackling voice of a victim... and this approach is fresh and works. Really great reading.

This book deals specifically with Knipfel's attempted suicide and the resulting time he spent in the booby hatch. While still a very good book, it's not up to the standards of that first, solid writing effort he created in SLACKJAW. While on some levels NAIROBI is a more mature book, it lacks the emotional power of the initial memoir by him. Still and all, it's worth the time to pursue, and as it's only available remaindered these days, you have no excuse at all for not picking up a copy and giving it a whirl.

I mean that title ironically of course. This is not a confessional book. Nor is it one of those incredibly dated "there is no thing as mental illness" tripe like Ken Keesey or R.D. Laing. Knipfel is not so much a participant as an observer. I can tell you, from experience, this is exactly what mental hospitals are like. The everyday boredom from the drug lines to the bland meals served with plastic utensils to the patients zoning out in front of the tv, everything is captured perfectly. And not to give too much away but it made me want to check out some Ernie Kovacs skits. The experience in this book is at once mundane and awe inspiring.

A mad book by a level head. Jim Knipfel gives you a ground zero tour of a locked down psych ward where he spent 6 months (in his early 20's) after trying to off himself with pills and cheap scotch (not that a $20 bottle would've necessarily done the job). He would be the first to admit that he is inept at suicide, this being one (the slam dunk) in a long line of self-inflicted attempts on his life. Writing from the perspective of an older person, one who may not have exorcised all his demons but at least has figured out what to feed them so that he can focus on his writing, Knipfel has drawn an evocative sketch of a milieu most people only see dramatized in films.

There is a cast of "Cuckoo's Nest" characters, each with their own quirks, but Knipfel shoots for empathy, or at least understanding, rather than condescension in his writing. It's the doctors and one particular orderly that make him leery; this orderly makes it a point to give him a guided tour of the electroshock therapy room and the straitjacket closet because he thinks of Knipfel as someone on the "outside". In fact, when he is eventually moved upstairs to the "open" ward (a case of false advertising, it turns out), he begins to miss his former community: the man on the stationary bike who pauses only to yell a bunch of four letter non sequitors and the woman whose makeup is applied in such a way that every day is Halloween for her. It is these descriptions, along with Knipfel's own psychedelic hallucinations that keep you engrossed. Despite having studied philosophy in grad school, thankfully he spins his tales with a layman's vocabulary.

In two books, this one and the earlier "Slackjaw", another painful/funny memoir, Knipfel, if he doesn't quite make the case for suffering as a crucible on the path towards a more tranquil frame of mind, at least allows you to laugh about it in a way that doesn't make you feel bad about doing so. The story has one foot in Purgatory and the other in Hell, and over there, in the toll booth taking your quarters is Beckett. And the author is wearing a Residents T-shirt in the jacket photo, so what are you waiting for?