Schneebaum has had a life and a half and, given that he also has a brain and a half, this account of his fascinating transit makes for compelling reading -- as enchanting as it is peculiar. Now 80, Schneebaum seems to be everywhere these days, partly because of "Secret Places" and partly because he's the subject of a new documentary film, "Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale," that has been winning awards at festivals. The film, which opens across the U.S. this month, was the focus of a recent New York Times magazine feature on the author. Articles about Schneebaum, an expert on the art of New Guinea's Asmat tribe, former headhunters, have also appeared recently in the Advocate, the Christian Science Monitor, the Times of London and the Village Voice among others.

Schneebaum is gay, and his lovers current and past -- New York sophisticates and a New Guinea tribesman -- are key characters in "Secret Places." A subtext of the book is the devastation of two tribes close to the author's heart: his circle of mostly young, urban gays (by AIDS), and the Asmat and their way of life (by the press of civilization).

The troubling juxtaposition of his young New York friends' early deaths from AIDS and the likely-to-vanish New Guinea tribe's ambiguous outlook on the value of life has, not surprisingly, been a strong undercurrent in Schneebaum's life and writings in recent decades:

In Asmat, the concept of life and death is different from that of the West; at least, it was when I first arrived there in 1973. Head-hunting continued in the remoter regions then, and may still be practiced in parts of the foothills of the Jayawijaya Mountains ... The people had evolved a culture of revenge that kept them in constant contact with the spirit world; they had developed a mythology that explained and excused violence against others. All deaths were attributed to magic performed by enemies, therefore, the spirits of those recently killed demanded vengeance before they would set off for Safan, Land of the Dead.

Early in the book, as things heat up between Schneebaum and an Asmat man named Aipit, the writer wonders, "How does one make a pass at a headhunter, even if he no longer hunts heads?" Regardless of your sexual leaning, it's a question you've no doubt asked yourself many times. Finally, in "Secret Places," you find out. And that's just the beginning. Well, not quite.

Schneebaum grew up the son of a grocer in New York and became a painter; he trained for a while with renowned Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo. But he was in his 30s when his story really began. It was then, in 1956, that he went to Peru to study art on a Fulbright fellowship, then disappeared into the Amazon jungle for seven months, causing the American Embassy to declare him dead and Peruvian papers to publish his obituary. Schneebaum hadn't died, however; he'd been adopted -- by cannibals, the "Akarama" people. He in turn adopted them and their customs, including sampling their cuisine.

One snack caused a tempest when years later he wrote about it in his first book, 1969's "Keep the River on Your Right":

We three were alone until Ilhuene, Baldore and Reindude were in front of us. Reindude, cupping in his hand the heart from the being we had carried from so far away, the heart of he who had lived in the hut we had entered to kill ... Michii looked up at the moon and showed it to the heart. He bit into it as if it were an apple, taking a large bite, almost half the heart, and chewed down several times, spit it into a hand, separated the meat into six sections and placed some into the mouths of each of us. We chewed and swallowed.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"