20 Facts About Jim Knipfel

Jim Knipfel is an American novelist, autobiographer, and journalist.

Jim Knipfel wrote news stories, film and music reviews, the crime blotter, and feature articles until June 13,2006, for the weekly alternative newspaper New York Press.

Jim Knipfel wrote the long-running "Slackjaw" column for the Press.

Jim Knipfel was born on June 2,1965, in Grand Forks, North Dakota on the American air base where his father was then stationed.

Between the ages of 14 and 22, Jim Knipfel tried to kill himself twelve times.

Jim Knipfel recounted his time there in his second memoir.

Jim Knipfel briefly studied physics at the University of Chicago, and then transferred to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he majored in philosophy.

Jim Knipfel writes that he planned, attempted, and committed many petty crimes in his youth.

In 1990, Jim Knipfel moved to Brooklyn, New York with his then-wife Laura.

Jim Knipfel continued to write his weekly "Slackjaw" column for Philadelphia's Welcomat and tried to get the editor of the alternative weekly New York Press, John Strausbaugh, interested in publishing "Slackjaw", but the Press did not want to share the column with the Welcomat.

Jim Knipfel kept "Slackjaw" at the Welcomat out of loyalty to his editor Derek Davis, but he began occasionally contributing articles and music reviews to New York Press;.

In 1993, after Davis was pushed out by Welcomat management, Jim Knipfel moved Slackjaw to the New York Press.

Shortly thereafter Jim Knipfel became a receptionist at the paper's offices, and later a full-time columnist and staff writer.

In contrast to his first book tour, Jim Knipfel remained in New York City to promote Quitting the Nairobi Trio, a chronicle of the six months he spent in a locked psychiatric ward in Minneapolis following his last suicide attempt.

Ellen Clegg in The Boston Globe believed that while personal hallucinations are "important to the beholder [they] don't always translate in the wider world" and Daphne Merkin in The New York Times expressed how her interest flagged "only when [Jim Knipfel] went into lengthy descriptions of his wearyingly vivid dreams".

Jim Knipfel is fond of pulp fiction and his fiction has been categorized as such.

Several other attempts at fiction by Jim Knipfel were rejected before his novel The Buzzing clicked with a publisher; his first novel was released by Vintage Books in 2003.

In June 2006, Jim Knipfel was fired by the New York Press, concluding thirteen years with the paper.

Jim Knipfel has complained about excessive media coverage of Heath Ledger's death, wrote about Charlton Heston's obituary, and, for a number of years, has written an annual column on notable passings.

Jim Knipfel often recalls pleasant or defining moments from his youth, usually describing the state of his vision loss in those years.