| Peter Matthiessen | |
|---|---|
Matthiessen at WNYC New York Public Radio in 2008 promoting his novel Shadow Country |
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| Born | May 22, 1927 New York City, New York |
| Occupation | prose writer: novelist, essayist |
| Nationality | USA |
| Genres | nature & travel writing; fiction |
| Notable work(s) | The Snow Leopard, Shadow Country |
Peter Matthiessen (born May 22, 1927, in New York City) is a two-time National Book Award-winning American novelist and non-fiction writer, as well as an environmental activist. He has written about American Indian issues and history, as in his detailed study of the Leonard Peltier case, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983).
In November 2008, at age 81, he received his second National Book Award for Shadow Country, an 890-page revision of a trilogy of novels set in frontier Florida, which he released in the 1990s. His first National Book Award was won in 1980 for The Snow Leopard.[1]
His story "Travelin' Man" was adapted by Luis Buñuel as the film The Young One (1960).[2]
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Along with George Plimpton, Harold L. Humes, Thomas Guinzburg and Donald Hall, in 1953 Matthiessen founded the literary magazine The Paris Review. At the time he was working for the CIA.[3]
In 1959, Mathiessen published the first edition of Wildlife in America, a history of the extinction and endangerment of various animal and bird species because of human settlements throughout North American history, as well as historical efforts at endangered species protection. It was one of the first books to call attention to global warming, by mentioning how the polar ice cap formations caused the lowering of the seas, and how the isthmus that Mongoloid people crossed from Asia to present-day Alaska to establish North America's first settlement is now submerged by the Bering Strait.
In 1965, Matthiessen published At Play in the Fields of the Lord, a novel about a group of American missionaries and their encounter with a South American indigenous tribe. The book was adapted into the film of the same name in 1991. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[4] In 1979, Matthiessen's nonfiction book The Snow Leopard won the Contemporary Thought category of the National Book Award.
His work on oceanographic research, Blue Meridian, with photographer Peter A. Lake, documented the making of the film Blue Water, White Death (1971), directed by Peter Gimbel and Jim Lipscomb. It was thought to have inspired Peter Benchley to write Jaws in 1974.
Interested in the Wounded Knee Incident and the 1976 trial and conviction of Leonard Peltier, an American Indian Movement activist, Mathiessen wrote a non-fiction account, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983).
In 2008, Matthiessen revisited his trilogy of Florida novels published during the 1990s: Killing Mr. Watson (1990), Lost Man's River (1997) and Bone by Bone (1999), inspired by the frontier years of Florida and the death of planter Edgar J. Watson shortly after the Southwest Florida Hurricane of 1910. He revised and edited the three books, which had originated as one 1,500-page manuscript. His single volume Shadow Country (2008) won the National Book Award that year.
Shortly after the 1983 publication of In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, Matthiessen and his publisher Viking Penguin were sued for libel by David Price, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, and William J. Janklow, the former South Dakota governor. The plaintiffs sought over $49 million in damages; Janklow also sued to have all copies of the book withdrawn from bookstores.[5] After four years of litigation, Federal District Court Judge Diana E. Murphy dismissed Price's lawsuit, upholding Matthiessen's right "to publish an entirely one-sided view of people and events."[6] In the Janklow case, a South Dakota court also ruled for Matthiessen. Both cases were appealed. In 1990, the Supreme Court refused to hear Price's arguments, effectively ending his appeal. The South Dakota Supreme Court dismissed Janklow's case the same year.[7][8] With the lawsuits settled, the paperback edition of the book was finally published in 1992.
In his book The Snow Leopard, Matthiessen reports having had a somewhat tempestuous on-again off-again relationship with his wife Deborah, culminating in a deep commitment to each other made shortly before she was diagnosed with cancer. Matthiessen and Deborah had practiced Zen Buddhism.[9] She died in New York City near the end of 1972. She and Matthiessen had four children; the youngest, Alex Matthiessen, was seven or eight years old at the time of her death. In September of the following year, Matthiessen went on an expedition to the Himalayas with field biologist George Schaller.
Matthiessen later became a Buddhist priest of the White Plum Asanga.[9] Before practicing Zen, Matthiessen was an early pioneer of LSD. He says his Buddhism evolved fairly naturally from his drug experiences.[10]
In 1980, Matthiessen married Maria Eckhart, born in Tanzania, in a Zen ceremony on Long Island, New York. They live in Sagaponack, New York.
In 2005, Matthiessen, along with Barry Lopez, Terry Tempest Williams, and James Galvin, was hailed in Mark Tredinnick's The Land's Wild Music in which Tredinnick analyzed how the landscape nourished and developed Matthiessen's writing.[11]