Wild Man

Part autobiographical journal, part social-historical novel, Wild Man tracks Tobias Schneebaum's fascinating and almost epic life story, from his earliest contemplation of homoerotic desire through his life in Peru, Borneo, and beyond. A young man from New York, Schneebaum "disappeared" in 1955 on the eastern slopes of the Andes. He was, in actuality, living for more than a year among the remote Harakhambut people, discovering a way of being that was strange, primitive, and powerfully attractive to him. This longing to find the "wild man" in other cultures--and in himself--eventually led him on an odyssey through South America, India, Tibet, Africa, Borneo, New Guinea, and Southeast Asia. He lived among isolated forest peoples, including headhunters and cannibals, in regions where few, if any, white men had ever been.

Tobias Schneebaum is the author of Where the Spirits Dwell, Keep the River on Your Right, and Secret Places: My Life in New York and New Guinea. From 1973 to 1983 he was assistant to the curator of the Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress in Irian Jaya, Indonesia. He is the subject of a documentary film, Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale, which received the Critic's Choice Award at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival in 2000.