This is a man whose death I never contemplated, as he seemed immortal. But he died yesterday in Sagaponack, New York. Matthiessen was 86. According to the New York Times:
His son Alex said the cause was leukemia, which was diagnosed more than a year ago. “He continued to fight gallantly to the end and was surrounded by his family,” Alex said. “He was terrifically brave.”
Mr. Matthiessen’s final novel, “In Paradise,” is to be published on Tuesday by Riverhead Books.
Peter Matthiessen was of course one of the founders of The Paris Review, but most of us probably know him best for his books and novels about travel and foreign culture, which include The Snow Leopard (a wonderful book and a winner of the National Book Award), At Play in the Fields of the Lord (a staple when I was in college), and these:
A sample of his titles convey his geographic reach: “Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons of Stone Age New Guinea” (1962); “Oomingmak: The Expedition to the Musk Ox Island in the Bering Sea” (1967); “The Shorebirds of North America” (1967, revised as “The Wind Birds” in 1973); “Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark” (1971); “The Tree Where Man Was Born” (1972), a contemplative account of East Africa; and “Sand Rivers” (1981), about a safari in the Selous Game Preserve in Tanzania.
Yes, it’s well known that he worked for the CIA when he was in Paris, but it didn’t carry the stigma that it does now. Finally, he was an avid student of Zen Buddhism:
He regularly welcomed Zen students to a zendo, a place of meditation, on his grounds.
“Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and to be awake,” he told the British newspaper The Guardian in 2002. “We tend to daydream all the time, speculating about the future and dwelling on the past. Zen practice is about appreciating your life in this moment. If you are truly aware of five minutes a day, then you are doing pretty well. We are beset by both the future and the past, and there is no reality apart from the here and now.”
Life is short, but Mattheissen’s short life was packed with experience, and he was awake.
But the years are long.
Not while the evil days come not.
(Heinlein, in the voice of Lazarus Long)
I read the Snow Leopard for the first time when travelling through Africa – it made a great impression on me.
But you were doing it wrong! In Africa you should have been reading “The Tree Where Man Was Born” or “Sand Rivers”. Read “Snow Leopard” while traveling in India or Nepal. All clear now? 🙂
Unfortunately never been to India or Nepal. I also read Bruce Chatwin’s Australian travel book ‘Songlines’ in Madagascar so I obviously keep keep getting it wrong 🙂
I read it when I was working in the Front Range, and it made a great impression on me, too.
Reblogged this on The Road.
It’s unfortunate that we’ve lost him. He left us a great body of work though and that will last into the distant future.
I’m glad you mentioned “At Play in the Fields of the Lord”. It is one that WEIT readers will appreciate, being about evangelicals doing their destructive business among the natives of S. Am.
One of his that’s not listed above but which I think anyone interested in wildlife conservation should read is “Wildlife in America” — a fine basic introduction to the history of the problem on this continent. “The Wind Birds” covers some of the same ground and needs reading too IMO. Especially if you’re a bird person.
Oh heck, all his stuff is well worth your time — read any of it you can get your hands on. That’s my recommendation anyway.
I’ve re-read The Snow Leopard so many times I know parts of it from memory! Thanks for the post.
Truly a great book.
Two that I especially like (mostly I “especially like” all of his writing), are The Birds of Heaven and Far Tortuga.
There is an essay about Mathiessen written shortly before he died in the New York Times Magazine. It may be found here ( )
A great writer of fiction and non fiction. I’d like to mention his Killing Mr Watson trilogy as another fine achievement.
Some of Mathiessen that you should not miss (I am MUCH fonder of his NF wirting than his fiction):
Indian Country
Wildlife in America
Under the Mountain Wall
Blue Meridian
The Tree Where Man Was Born (The illustrated edition is wonderful.)
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
Aand of course: The Snow Leopard
(And his writings on Native Americans reminds me of an excellent book I just read: The Last Stand, by Nathaniel Philbrick, probably the most even-handed view of the Battle of the Little Bighorn you’ll ever read, and very nicely written.)