Keep the river on your right

by Tobias Schneebaum

In 1955, armed with a penknife and instructions to keep the river on his right, Brooklyn-born artist Tobias Schneebaum set off into the jungles of Peru in search of a tribe of cannibals. Forgoing all contact with civilization, he lived as a brother with the Akaramas -- shaving and painting his body, hunting with Stone Age weapons, sleeping in the warmth of the body-pile.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, Anthropology, Memoir, Adventure, Autobiography, Biography

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Tobias Schneebaum was an American artist, anthropologist, and AIDS activist. He is best known for his experiences living, and traveling among the Harakmbut people of Peru, and the Asmat people of Papua, Western New Guinea, Indonesia then known as Irian Jaya.He was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side and grew up in Brooklyn. In 1939 he graduated from the Stuyvesant High School, moving on to the City College of New York, graduating in 1943 after having majored in mathematics and art. During World War II he served as a radar repairman in the U.S. Army.
Travels

In 1947, after briefly studying painting with Rufino Tamayo at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Schneebaum went to live and paint in Mexico for three years, living among the Lakadone tribe. In 1955 he won a Fulbright fellowship to travel and paint in Peru. After hitch-hiking from New York to Peru, he lived with the Harakmbut people for seven months, where he slept with his male subjects and claimed to have joined the tribe in cannibalism on one occasion.

Until 1970 he was the designer at Tiber Press, then in 1973 he embarked on his third overseas trip, to Irian Jaya in South East Asia, living with the Asmat people on the south-western coast. He helped establish the Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress. Schneebaum would return there in 1995 to revisit a former lover, named Aipit. He recounted his journey into the jungles of Peru in the 1961 memoir Keep the River on Your Right. In 1999, he revisited both Irian Jaya and Peru for a documentary film, also titled Keep the River on Your Right.

Schneebaum spent the final years of his life in Westbeth Artists Community, an artists' commune in Greenwich Village, New York City, also home to Merce Cunningham and Diane Arbus, and died in 2005 in Great Neck, New York. He bequeathed his renowned Asmat shield collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and his personal papers are preserved within the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies

Reviews

[Amerynth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Completely dissatisfied with the 1999 documentary of the same name, I decided to pick up Tobias Schneebaum's book "Keep the River on Your Right" to learn more about his experiences in Peru myself.

In the mid-1950's Schneebaum walked into the jungle in search of acceptance and became a member of a tribe of cannibals. He lived amongst them, naked, painted and yes, eating flesh from their dead enemies, for more than seven months before he turned around and walked back out to civilization.

The book is less an interesting anthropological study than a look at Schneebaum himself -- he finds it easier to say that he was a cannibal than to say he is a gay man who fled a 1950's society that wouldn't accept him. His sexuality is very much up front throughout the book, but he never addresses it head on.

He paints a rather romantic view of the "noble savages" who accept him into their tribe, despite their raid of another camp, where they murder the men and kidnap women and children.

If you're looking for a ton of information about Peruvian tribes, this book isn't it. However, it is a fascinating look at the lengths a man will travel to find a place to fit in and belong.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.9999
I’m sure the story of his journey is a little fictionalised, but as one who believes fiction can tell truths better, I in no way object to that. A couple of pages late in the piece had a Biblical resonance, like an Old Testament lament (King James of course). He makes a big deal of his encounter with cannibalism – which he also makes symbolic. He doesn’t judge, and nor is this a ‘heart of darkness’ situation, since what he seeks and finds is beauty and love. Alienated from his own society, he begins with an aversion to having any people whatsoever in evidence around him -- then dives into a society where touch is far more personal than his old allows, where you sleep in a heap and are never alone. In content, psyche and style, he reminded me of TE Lawrence whose Seven Pillars meant so much to me when young.

[Christopher Roth · Rating 5 out of 5]

As mind-blowing as it had promised to be. Tobias Schneebaum went into the Amazon as a painter but with an open heart and an open mind (and his fly was open too, incidentally). In so doing, he has made a greater contribution to the understanding of human nature than a randomly selected 50 new monographs by academic anthropologists put together. I'm wondering what the latest comparative scholarship on cannibalism has to say on his startling revelations about the conceptual and ceremonial relationship between cannibalism and procreation. Why isn't this talked about more? I should read more about cannibalism.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The one thing Tobias Schneebaum never reveals in this slight yet totally absorbing and unique book is the Why? of his journey into an unexplored and dangerous jungle environment. It was almost as if he had absolutely Nothing to lose.

The chance he took paid off in his being accepted into the Life of a "savage" tribe ie. one UNtouched by Western "civilisation" which did eventually intrude in its search for timber and minerals and exterminated them.

I read this in the 1970's and at least twice more and even met Tobias in Sydney a couple of times. As I had suspected his amazing and daring feat came from a man who had nothing to lose - he was Jewish and a homosexual and his journey had been the manifestation of a death-wish which I would say would be common to any of a bullying society's chosen outcasts.

Choosing to live in extremis with his new family, I have no doubt that he took part in cannibalistic rituals which had far more spirituality about them than the materialistic murderers of the West could muster in their small toe.

I recall vividly the UN-fuss about childbirth and how when the time came the mother-to-be working in the gardens would simply crouch down and the baby would slip out. Then she would get back to work.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tobias Schneebaum’s book feels elemental in the way that a society’s core texts do. His book is about the essentials of human experience: how communities survive, regenerate themselves, and die. There is an authenticity to the writing that extends far beyond the story. The story, in fact, might not be authentic. Controversy swirled around his description of cannibalism: had it really happened? The issue wasn’t resolved during Schneebaum’s life. Perhaps the author’s intent was not to write a factual account, but an epic of sorts, an essential story.

[Martin Brant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unnerving, beautiful, bold, disturbing, unforgettable ... just a few of the words you might use to describe this 1955 sojourn into the jungles of Peru in search of a tribe of cannibals. Risking life and limb, even his sanity, Tobias Schneebaum not only finds Akaramas tribe, he lives with them for months, eating and sleeping with them, hunting, bathing, and all but becoming one of them, including a night of terror when he witnesses the raid on a neighboring village, human slaughter and the ritual of cannibalism. Recommended, but not for the faint of heart.

[Rachell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A stream-of-consciousness memoir about the author's experiences living with a native tribe in Peru. I didn't expect a scholarly anthropological text, but I found the book to be a little too much about Schneebaum's inner life and not enough about his interaction with the "Akaramas." Despite his declarations of love, the author never individualizes his "brothers," and ultimately they come across as a vehicle for his self-actualization rather than actual human beings.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess the book’s in keeping with the spiritual find yourself 60s but sheesh. What a tosser. Who writes or thinks like this??!! One star if it was just the self indulgent selfish claptrap, but an extra star because there are some kernels of genuine discovery & experience. I’d give it an extra half star if I could for being so blessedly short. #silverlining

[Mitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a rare and unique book. I'll leave some of my impressions of it here, though these will only give ideas of what impressed me most.

The author was a Jewish gay man who lived in Brooklyn in the 50's and felt as if he didn't belong. (He also spent some time as a Catholic, which couldn't have been too great a fit for him either.)

As a boy, he was possessed of an obsession for living primitively in the jungle. This also had a strong erotic element for him, and when he got older he shed as much of his Western civilization as he could and lived intimately with a primitive tribe.

He was looking for acceptance for he was very lost inside himself, and very alone. He found a great measure of comfort and pleasure living simply and directly with the tribe.

In spite of his adopting and adoption, there came a time when he realized he could never truly be one of them for his relatively sophisticated history separated him; they would never know or experience the things he had and he couldn't just pretend those things weren't there.

Still, he was happy in ways his previous life hadn't provided...though again in time he felt no closer to realizing why he existed and also that the life of pleasures he was leading wasn't the answer.

The part of the book that everyone focuses on is definitely worth a mention: he violated a very fundamental taboo and never really got internal peace again afterwards. It's hard to say what that kind of thing will do to a man's invisible soul, but its effects went on for years.

The book is at times disturbing, at times jarring, at times terribly sad, at times merely curious....it's a lot of things- but forgettable is not really one of them.

[Ian Carpenter · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 A stunning, one of a kind book. Schneebaum is sensitive and searching. His acceptance and heart is vast. The prose is gorgeous. The introspection is as deep as it gets. There's a letter a friend leaves Tobias in here that is a jaw-dropping "who are you?" "who are we?" "what's the point?" leveler the likes of which I've never read. But even as the book visits it's much talked about extreme moments, it's always this reaching, poetic prose that stands out.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book that sits in the weird genre of memoir-travelogue-ethnography. I found the most interesting aspect of the book Schneebaum's sexuality, rather than the tribe he was adopted by or their cannibalism. This was however made tedious by the strange letter form the book was written in. There was no context given beyond vague references that undermined the broader narrative, it felt more like English Literature than an honest memoir in these moments.

[Lance Richardson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ethically reprehensible, with a staggering lack of self-reflection. (Why did he go? What was he hoping to escape/find?) Parts of it also seem wildly implausible, not only events but the long stretches of dialogue.

[allie · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.75

wasn’t expecting a book about a dude traveling the jungles of peru and ending up living with a cannibal tribe in the 1950s GIFTED TO ME BY MY FATHER to to have heavy gay subtext but here we are!

(i want to do research on this dudes life now wtf)

[Ant Atoll · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't recommend this book and I'm very disappointed to write that. The book had its good points but overall was disjointed and kinda seemed pointless....

[Marin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evocative and dreamy, I loved following the author's path deeper into the jungle. I thought it was also a tender exploration of male friendship.

[Vivi · Rating 5 out of 5]

it was profound and all around lovely

[Marie-pier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing yet fascinating.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brought back memories of my travels in the Peruvian Amazon. Was a very similar trip but with more internet and less cannibalism.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, I watched the documentary about 17 years ago, which is good, but the book is excellent.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

slow going at first but you really should read it before you see the movie.

obviously there's nothing to spoil; the man ventures into the jungle, becomes a cannibal for a brief time, returns to new york. it says so on the jacket.

buuuuutttt, reading is an ultra-romantic experience and schneebaum is ultra-romantic in his rendering and you have to fully appreciate that so you don't totally dismiss it when you see the film. his romanticism for the cannibal culture--the choices he makes in classifying thier behavior and customs; his role as embedded anthropologist and those classic imperialist eyes--are a crucial part of realizing the complexity of our relationship to any set of others.

montaigne's essay, "of cannibals", does a work similar to schneebaum's; each work about the cultural other must perform the same reversal as scheebaum and montaigne,

"I find that there is nothing barbarous and savage in this nation by anything that I can gather, excepting, that every one gives the title of barbarism to everythign that is not in use in his own country. ... we ought rather to call those wild, whose natures we have changed by our artifice"
(Montaigne, 1580).

this reversal is necessary as the pursuit of the other is constant. schneebaum's text arrives in 1969. moby dick is written in 1851. montaigne in 1580. i'm not sure in which order the evolution of this pursuit proceeds; it seems as though each incarnation has its own reason for pursuit. the text, again, is ultra-romantic, as is necessary to rationalize the integration of the extreme practices in violence to which, a young New Yorker brought up in 20th century America, was fairly unaccustomed. one will likely envision the past (Montaigne, Melville) as implicitly more violent than the modern world,

"Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other's life meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat; and, though, were you to turn the whole affair upside down, it would stil be pretty much the same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties..." (Melville, p. 364, 1851).


and so the change for schneebaum seems more drastic.

"It is strange now to be thinking of illness and death again. No, not so strange.

I am a cannibal" (Schneebaum, p. 110, 1969).


and so going from the book to the film you get to see that dramatic romanticism chip away somewhat through interviews with schneebaum and others. especially interesting is the questions of schneebaum's homosexuality and its influence on his identification with the tribe. also a highlight: later in the film, during his return to the tribe and the realizations the audience and schneebaum come to together are fantastic. even the myth behind schneebaum's beloved nickname is destroyed,

"By the time they were ready to cross the river, the sun was already resting on top of the forest. A short walk and an enormous house rose up in clearing. People were sitting outside adn they looked up at us, older men with thick bands of black from shoulder to knee. They got up slowly and stood there. Michii went over and there was whispering and embracing, then smiles, and they all came up to me and said, 'Habe, Habe, habe'". (Schneebaum, p.76, 1969).





i guess i've given most of this away by now. but like i said, slow to start but ends alright and has a film version without winnona ryder. it has it all.

[Cynde Moya · Rating 5 out of 5]

New York Jew goes to the Amazon jungle and explores primitive cultures, especially the men. Much talk about Schneebaum and this book focus on the cannibal episode, but there are many other worthwhile moments about Catholocism, wildness, and homosociality.



There are some moments where the reality of what is happening to Schneebaum is concealed by his poetic language. Obfuscation technique or tight, poetic, stylistic writing?



This book is also interesting because it was published by Barney Rosset's Grove Press; the same guy who made Lady Chatterleys Lover legal for our reading consumption.



Some folks recently did a film with Schneebaum, also taking him back to New Guinea, his other wild place. They even found his old best native friend and lover, a poignant moment.

[Ashlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite being written about a world that the majority of its reader will never know I found that I identified with the doubt, self reflection, and questions raised by the author. Of the anthropological books that I have read that recounts time with natives, this one seems to be one of the few in which the narrator actually integrated himself into their culture without his ulterior motives showing. I did not go into this questioning if he really was altruistic and what ethical rules did break by making contact, because I knew that he was not reaching out in the name of science but in the name of self. His honesty in his journey and his emotions are extraordinary and unusual and more intriguing then the recounting of cannibalism, attempts at conversion, and the references to copulation. Of course, all these things do not hurt the narrative either.

[Brett Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written story about the impact of culture on the human identity. A reader looking for anthropological insights may be disappointed, but Schneebaum is quite clear up front that he is writing only about his own experience. He does not even claim all his memories are correct, only that his experiences in the Amazon changed him. As long as we accept that premise, the story is fascinating. As a result of his stay among the Arakmbut Schneebaum realized he could not live without writing and the written products of a literate culture. He continued to paint, but began writing, publishing Keep the River on Your Right 14 years later.

[Jeffrey Crimmel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The idea of this book which, is a true story, was interesting. A man goes off into the Jungles of Peru and hooks up with a tribe of head hunters. I did read about three quarters of the book but I could not keep my focus on the story. It is a short account of the experience, (180 pages) and I wanted to read more than what was written. I cannot explain myself other than I found it difficult to hold my attention to an experience that played out as nothing I could relate to. From an anthropological point of view the story was great and should be read.

[Ohyassi · Rating 1 out of 5]

The producers of Texas Chainsaw Massacre used the Sawney Bean story to claim their movie was "based on a true story", but they could just have easily used Tobias' tribe of inbred, semi-retarded murdering cannibals. Why would anyone want to stay with people who can slaughter their neighbors then stand around laughing and playing with their guts while the victims' families look on and weep? Oh. Because they touched his penis. Well then.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marvelous narrative by a painter who wanders off into the Amazon in search of people not like him. He finds them, lives with them, eats with them, hunts with them, and inadvertently goes to war with them. It probably reads better if you have traveled a bit in South America than if you haven't, but it is a well-written and compelling story nevertheless.

[Athena Deitrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got about half way through. His writing is pretty nice. It was exciting reading about his discover and envelopment into this wild, completely different culture.

But then he starts in on the slicing open bellies and entrails and eating brains and butt secks. And, I think I'm done with it.

Who know what I was expecting, eh?

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read this book recently and many years ago. It is an adventure, a brave and crazy undertaking making most "adventures" you read about today look like a walk downtown. He didn't just read about, hear about, look at cannibals; he lived with and became one. If the whole world could accept each other as he did the native indians there would be no more war. A profound book I will read again.

[Elisabeth Rehn · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my very favorite books. Picked this up at a Goodwill when I was in graduate school and I remember feeling as though reading this was like taking a vacation. I felt like I was transported on a tropical vacation and viewing different cultures. Highly reccommended to those with flexible thinking. Probably not for traditional or conservative types.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was slow going at first but persistence really paid off. I was moved to tears by this amazing account of the human experience! I then passed it on to someone who I thought needed motivation to really live!