Keep the River on Your Right

The viewing of the documentary film prompted me to buy this book. I found it to be a fascinating journey that was both culturally and spiritually incredible. The book challenges the reader and our civilization as to the core of our happiness, connection and vitality. Tobias provides us with a heart felt experience of living with a primative culture and expands our spiritual awareness.

I first read this beautifully crafted work in 1977. Shortly thereafter I had the great pleasure to meet Tobias in Northern California where he presented a slide lecture on his life among the Asmat of New Guinea. There is no question in my mind that Keep the River on Your Right is a work of non fiction. It is an astonishing journal as brutally honest as any I've ever read. It deserves to be in the pantheon with Beaudelaire (Intimate Journals), and Broughton (The Androgyne Journal). I've just reread this timeless work after 23 years after having recently seen the documentary on Tobias' life which no doubt will bring a new generation of readers to this elegantly written masterpiece.

Managed to see advance press screener of the new documentary based on Tobias Schneebaum's life called Keep the River On Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale - the film was so mesmerizing and Mr. Schneebaum so articulate and intriguing I immediately ordered the original memoir by Schneebaum and read it in one sitting. An important "lost" book from the Sixties thank god restored to it's original importance.

If the life of this man seems incredible, it is because the man himself is incredible. I have just seen the world premire of a documentary entitled "Keep The River On Your Right" in which Tobias returns with the filmmakers and relives his journey through Peru.He is 78 years old and not only did they find some of the tribes-people that he lived with while there, those same people remembered him, after 48 years. There need be no more proof of the validity of his book than that. Even beyond the text of this book, Tobias's life offers a larger lesson, and that is one of acceptance and understanding of every human being and culture. I hope that people will continue to read this book and that this message will be taken into the hearts of the readers as a new way to live life.

Hawilson's comments (below) reflect a very limited mind. I know Toby Schneebaum, and have no doubt in my mind that this book is, indeed, non-fiction. Schneebaum is in every way a remarkable man. The reader should celebrate the world depicted in this book, not feel threatened by it, thereby dismissing it, as hawilson has done.