KEEP THE RIVER ON YOUR RIGHT

by Tobias Schneebaum ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1969

...was the only advice given to the author as he traipsed off into the Peruvian jungle carrying nothing more lethal than a pen knife. An artist and amateur (it shows) anthropologist, he had gone down to Peru where he had heard of a priest living with one of the last of the primitive tribes. He found Father Moiseis, who after forty years in the jungle, possessed an ""aura of madness,"" a spirit that pervades this book as he meets Hermano, Father Moiseis' hunchbacked follower who will later renounce both the Father, Catholicism and religion in favor of finding a happier life with a native woman. Then there's Manolo, a missionary ""wanderer"", also a homosexual, who goes through the ""male context of the mission"" in cycles. Manolo will die, leaving behind an extraordinary letter. But this is long after the author has abandoned them in a search for another tribe, the Akaramas, head-hunters and cannibals who have never seen a white man. He is eventually adopted by this tribe and he himself adapts...totally. This is his record, mostly an interior monologue of his involvement and eventual evolvement...done in lush brash strokes that bring the primitive a little too close to the paradaisical. For anthropologists?!?

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1969

ISBN: 0802131336

Page Count: -

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION