The Peter Matthiessen Reader - Softcover

Matthiessen, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375702725 ISBN 13: 9780375702723

Publisher: Vintage, 2000

Synopsis

"Our greatest modern nature writer in the lyrical tradition." --The New York Times Book Review

"Matthiessen is a great travel companion. . . . His knowledge of plants, animals and people is breathtaking." --The Boston Globe

Perhaps no writer has better articulated our relationship to the environment than Peter Matthiessen. From Wildlife in America to Men's Lives, his work has captured the wonder of the natural world--and the horrors of resource exploitation, with its violent effects on traditional peoples and the poor.

In The Peter Matthiessen Reader, editor McKay Jenkins presents a single-volume collection of this distinguished author's nonfiction. Here are essays and excerpts that highlight the spiritual, literary, and political daring so crucial to Matthiessen's vision. Matthiessen chronicles his 250-mile trek across the Himalaya to the Tibetan Plateau in a selection from the National Book Award winner The Snow Leopard. Wild peoples, wilderness, and wildlife--common themes throughout Matthiessen's oeuvre--are examined with grace and power in The Tree Where Man Was Born. Here too are excerpts from Indian Country and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Matthiessen's stunning exposé of the Leonard Peltier case and the ongoing conflict between the U.S. government and the American Indian Movement. Comprehensive and engrossing, The Peter Matthiessen Reader celebrates an American voice unequaled in its commitment to literature's noblest aspiration: to challenge us to perceive our world--as well as ourselves--truthfully and clearly.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Matthiessen lives in Sagaponack, New York. McKay Jenkins teaches literature and nonfiction writing at the University of Delaware.

From the Back Cover

Perhaps no writer has better articulated our relationship to the environment than Peter Matthiessen. From Wildlife in America to Men's Lives, his work has captured the wonder of the natural world -- and the horrors of resource exploitation, with its violent effects on traditional peoples and the poor.

In The Peter Matthiessen Reader, editor McKay Jenkins presents a single-volume collection of this distinguished author's nonfiction. Here are essays and excerpts that highlight the spiritual, literary, and political daring so crucial to Matthiessen's vision. Matthiessen chronicles his 250-mile trek across the Himalaya to the Tibetan Plateau in a selection from the National Book Award winner The Snow Leopard. Wild peoples, wilderness, and wildlife -- common themes throughout Matthiessen's oeuvre -- are examined with grace and power in The Tree Where Man Was Born. Here too are excerpts from Indian Country and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Matthiessen's stunning expose of the Leonard Peltier case and the ongoing conflict between the U.S. government and the American Indian Movement. Comprehensive and engrossing, The Peter Matthiessen Reader celebrates an American voice unequaled in its commitment to literature's noblest aspiration: to challenge us to perceive our world -- as well as ourselves -- truthfully and clearly.

From the Inside Flap

"Our greatest modern nature writer in the lyrical tradition." --"The New York Times Book Review
"Matthiessen is a great travel companion. . . . His knowledge of plants, animals and people is breathtaking." --"The Boston Globe
Perhaps no writer has better articulated our relationship to the environment than Peter Matthiessen. From Wildlife in America to Men's Lives, his work has captured the wonder of the natural world--and the horrors of resource exploitation, with its violent effects on traditional peoples and the poor.
In The Peter Matthiessen Reader, editor McKay Jenkins presents a single-volume collection of this distinguished author's nonfiction. Here are essays and excerpts that highlight the spiritual, literary, and political daring so crucial to Matthiessen's vision. Matthiessen chronicles his 250-mile trek across the Himalaya to the Tibetan Plateau in a selection from the National Book Award winner The Snow Leopard. Wild peoples, wilderness, and wildlife--common themes throughout Matthiessen's oeuvre--are examined with grace and power in The Tree Where Man Was Born. Here too are excerpts from Indian Country and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Matthiessen's stunning expose of the Leonard Peltier case and the ongoing conflict between the U.S. government and the American Indian Movement. Comprehensive and engrossing, The Peter Matthiessen Reader celebrates an American voice unequaled in its commitment to literature's noblest aspiration: to challenge us to perceive our world--as well as ourselves--truthfully and clearly.

Reviews

Jenkins (English/Univ. of Delaware) presents an enticing array of excerpts from Matthiessens substantial output. This tasting menu from 13 of Matthiessen's books from Wildlife in America (1959) to African Silences (1991), grazing in between on all the authors nonfiction except for Nine-Headed Dragon River, East of Lo Monthang, and Tigers in the Snow (below). Jenkins has arranged the selections chronologically to convey a sense of Matthiessen's evolution as a writer, and he has done a perceptive job of harvesting passages that display Matthiessen's knack for intuitively reading people and places; his unadorned, moving prose; his love of language and story-making; his pervasive melancholy; and his saving ethical sense. As Jenkins says: ``Matthiessen's work is marked above all by an unblinking gaze at the world's subtle beauty, and at its fragility when set against humankind's blundering self-interest.'' This deference emerges in both Matthiessen's writings on the natural worldThe finality of extinction is awesome, and not unrelated to the finality of eternity. Certainly no species has ever devoured itself, an accomplishment of which man appears quite capable'' and in such politically inspired works as In the Spirit of Crazy Horse and Men's Lives. Even readers disappointed that Jenkins has not included some of Matthiessen's more memorable pieces of journalism which remain more difficult to lay hands on than his books, will be happy to have the excerpts from The Shorebirds of North America (later retitled The Wind Birds) and Sal Si Puedes, on Cesar Chavez and California farm workers, which will introduce many new readers to these less well-known projects. And Jenkins's glass-sharp introduction is a perfect springboard to what follows. A collection that reaffirms Matthiessens unshakable conviction that the earth's beauty and mystery are not to be trifled or tinkered with to gratify our greed or hubris. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

An introduction to Matthiessen's nonfiction, this collection of excerpts will inspire the novice to indulge further and convince those already familiar with his work to reconnect. Jenkins (literature and writing, Univ. of Delaware) provides a thoughtful preface, placing the excerpts in the context of Matthiessen's literary life and providing complementary biographical information. Each excerpt is introduced with a brief overview that provides the place and time and identifies them as a source of inspiration for "an entire generation of writers who have collectively helped make 'nature writing' one of the vibrant fields in contemporary American literature." For all the literary excellence in Matthiessen's nonfiction prose (of which the excerpts in this reader are prime examples), Jenkins reiterates Matthiessen's desire to be first and foremost a novelist. This book is highly recommended for all public and academic libraries. [See also Mathiessen's Tigers in the Snow, reviewed on p. 153--Ed.]--Sue Samson, Univ. of Montana Lib., Missoul.
---Sue Samson, Univ. of Montana Lib., Missoula
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375702725
• ISBN 13: 9780375702723
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400