Secret Places: My Life in New York and New Guinea (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies) [Hardcover]

Tobias Schneebaum (Author), David Bergman (Contributor)

Book Description

Series: Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiog | Publication Date: September 2000

In the swamps of Asmat in West New Guinea, Tobias Schneebaum-traveler, writer, painter, explorer-finds the way of life that suits him best. Secret Places reels readers into a world of storytellers and sorcerers, cannibals and carvers, a place where Schneebaum discovers his soulmates and his own soul.

Looking back at a life of wild adventure, Schneebaum seeks in Secret Places to intertwine the varied strands of his experience, pondering the parallel universes of his experience as a gay Jewish New Yorker and his years among the Asmat. The result illuminates both worlds-as when he juxtaposes the Asmat celebration of the spirits of the dead with a New York City plagued by AIDS and its own sad spirits.

"Once in a great while a truly original person like Tobias Schneebaum comes along. Everyone, including the primitive peoples he lives among, recognizes it instantly. Each new work is a demonstration of his remarkable spirit. May we all join in and celebrate his latest."-Edward Field, author of A Frieze for a Temple of Love

"Tobias Schneebaum's Secret Places is a wonderful, riveting memoir, filled with insight, startling honesty, and extraordinary glimpses into the spirit and life of the Stone Age-now almost vanished from the earth. It is a remarkable book."-Robert Klitzman, author of A Year-Long Night

"Schneebaum offers an entirely new and fresh form of ethnography-poetic, passionate, and personal. Secret Places distills his life's work into a compelling narrative and celebrates his love affair with Asmat. This is a gay ethnography that employs an artistic and forensic vision, as well as an excellent ear, in the creation of a fluent and complex account. What is so remarkable about the work is that Schneebaum manages to weave detailed and challenging anthropology and visual research into a tale of personal discovery. Few ethnographers can boast such an achievement."-Nick Stanley, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, University of Central England

"Modest candor, forceful and lucid writing, extraordinary abundance of information-these are the qualities of Schneebaum's saga. And for once the term is exact: these voyages of exploration and discovery, both in the remote world and in the remote self, are on an heroic scale. They are indeed fascinating, and to my mind indispensable."-Hayden Carruth, author of Beside the Shadblow Tree

"Schneebaum's compelling memoir seamlessly intertwines the life of an extraordinary anthropologist with the extraordinary art and culture of the Asmat of New Guinea."-Serena Nanda, author of Neither Man nor Woman

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Tobias Schneebaum is the subject of a new documentary film, Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale, by siblings Laurie and David Shapiro. It premiered at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival in April 2000, where it received the Critic's Choice Award.

About the Author

Tobias Schneebaum is the author of Where the Spirits Dwell, Wild Man, and Keep the River on Your Right. From 1973 to 1983 he was assistant to the curator of the Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress in Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Since then he has lectured widely and curated several exhibitions on Asmat art. Schneebaum is the subject of a documentary film, Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale, by siblings Laurie and David Shapiro. It premiered at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival in April 2000, where it received the Critic's Choice Award.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299169901
• ISBN-13: 978-0299169909
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,314,090 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Increased My Sense of Awe, September 17, 2003

By 

"whitecranejournal" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Secret Places: My Life in New York and New Guinea (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies) (Hardcover)

In travels through faerie sanctuaries and other exotic lands, I've enjoyed the company of many unusual personalities. One of the most memorable is Tobias Schneebaum. Reading his latest book, Secret Places, has increased my sense of awe at the uniqueness of this man.

Toby's fame results largely from a brief encounter (an unpleasantly personal encounter) with cannibalism in the 1950s. His free-wheeling explorations of the Amazon region, searching for a life more meaningful than accumulating money and possessions, led to an extended visit with the little-known Akarama tribe. Toby bonded strongly with the indigenous tribal men, who had little or no experience of modern culture. He found himself embraced as a temporary memory of the tribe, and was included both in headhunting expeditions and same-sex celebrations of body and spirit. On one occasion, a traditional ceremony culminated in eating the heart of a captured warrior from a neighboring tribe; it would have been impolite (and probably dangerous) to decline.

His first book chronicling these and other adventures, Keep The River On Your Right, was published in 1969, and the book soon became a cult classic. Schneebaum became a rather unlikely, and somewhat notorious, celebrity. (Recently, the story has been retold and updated in a fascinating documentary film of the same name, now available on DVD and video - highly recommended.)
Toby's latest book, Secret Places, is one of a series of gay and Lesbian autobiographies from the University of Wisconsin Press. About half the book consists of detailed and fascinating stories of Toby's adventures with the Asmat people of New Guinea. It is probably no coincidence that he describes Asmat stories and myths as "not following any particular pattern. They do not have a beginning; they do not have an ending." My perception may be colored by the way I met the author a few years ago at a dinner party in New York, but to me, the book reads like a transcribed dinner conversation. Unlike any other autobiography I've read, the style is remarkably non-linear. For example, details are often repeated from prior pages as if brand new, as they might be in casual conversation. I found this loose approach unusual, and most enjoyable.

Jumping forward and backward in time and space, incorporating stories of his religious Jewish childhood, of New York friends succumbing to mid-80s AIDS, of aboriginal lovers in faraway lands, of missionaries bringing permanent change to ancient cultures, Toby regales the reader with episodes of his remarkable life. He is struck by the similarity between Catholic communion - eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ - and ritual cannibalism - eating the body and drinking the blood of conquered warriors. He chronicles a multinational company's bull-in-china-shop destruction of untouched wilderness among the Asmat, in an oblivious attempt to drill oil where only water exists. And he mourns the inevitable shift in artistic style among Asmat woodcarvers, from subtle hand-tooled techniques passed down from uncountable generations, to pretty but "soulless" items more easily sold to tourists for easy packing in their luggage or shipping home as excess baggage.
Toby's book is a small but generous gift, offering a glimpse into cultures and climes few will ever experience (and none will experience in the state of preservation that still existed at the time of his youth). It is thrilling to read about Toby's apparently fearless adventures, to enjoy them vicariously through his memoirs. Don't miss this book, and if you ever get the chance to hang out and chat with 80-something Tobias Schneebaum, it will be time well spent.

Reviewed By Mountaine in
White Crane Journal
A Journal on Gay Spirituality

0 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Secret Places: My Life in New York and New Guinea, August 13, 2005

By 

Nicholas L. De Lorenzo - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Secret Places: My Life in New York and New Guinea (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies) (Hardcover)

This book was written by a flagellant. Reading it is a painful experience.