Memoir / Travel / Ethnography / Gay Studies
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Secret
Places "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." 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 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. |
September 2000 168 pp 10 6 x 9 ISBN 0-299-16990-1 Cloth $24.95
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