Peter Matthiessen
Matthiessen in 2008
Matthiessen in 2008
Born(1927-05-22)May 22, 1927
New York City, U.S.
DiedApril 5, 2014(2014-04-05) (aged 86)
Sagaponack, New York, U.S.
OccupationWriter
LanguageEnglish
EducationYale University (BA)
Period1950–2014
Genre
Notable works
Notable awards
Spouse
Patsy Southgate
​
​
(m. 1950; div. 1956)​
    Deborah Love
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1963; died 1972)​
      Maria Eckhart
      ​
      ​
      (m. 1980)​
      Children4

      Peter Matthiessen (May 22, 1927 – April 5, 2014) was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen teacher and onetime CIA agent.[1] A co-founder of the literary magazine The Paris Review, he was the only writer to have won the National Book Award in both nonfiction (The Snow Leopard, 1979, category Contemporary Thought) and fiction (Shadow Country, 2008).[2] He was also a prominent environmental activist.

      Matthiessen's nonfiction featured nature and travel, notably The Snow Leopard (1978) and American Indian issues and history, such as a detailed and controversial study of the Leonard Peltier case, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983). His fiction was adapted for film: the early story "Travelin' Man" was made into The Young One (1960) by Luis Buñuel[3] and the novel At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965) into the 1991 film of the same name.

      In 2008, at age 81, Matthiessen received the National Book Award for Fiction for Shadow Country, a one-volume, 890-page revision of his three novels set in frontier Florida that had been published in the 1990s.[4][5] According to critic Michael Dirda, "No one writes more lyrically [than Matthiessen] about animals or describes more movingly the spiritual experience of mountaintops, savannas, and the sea."[6]

      Matthiessen was treated for acute leukemia for more than a year. He died on April 5, 2014, three days before publication of his final book, the novel In Paradise on April 8.[7]

      Early life

      Matthiessen was born in New York City to Erard Adolph Matthiessen (1902–2000)[8][9] and Elizabeth (née Carey). Erard, an architect, joined the Navy during World War II and helped design gunnery training devices. Later, he gave up architecture to become a spokesman and fund-raiser for the Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy. The well-to-do family lived in both New York City and Connecticut where, along with his brother, Matthiessen developed a love of animals that influenced his future work as a wildlife writer and naturalist. He attended St. Bernard's School, the Hotchkiss School, and — after briefly serving in the U.S. Navy (1945–47) – Yale University (B.A., 1950), with his junior year spent at the Sorbonne. At Yale, he majored in English, published short stories (one of which won the prestigious Atlantic Prize), and studied zoology.

      Paris Review and CIA

      Marrying and resolving to undertake a writer's career, he soon moved back to Paris, where he associated with other expatriate American writers such as William Styron, James Baldwin and Irwin Shaw. There, in 1953, he became one of the founders, along with Harold L. Humes, Thomas Guinzburg, Donald Hall, Ben Morreale, and George Plimpton, of the renowned literary magazine The Paris Review. As revealed in a 2006 film, he was working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time, using the Review as his cover.[10] In a 2008 interview with Charlie Rose, Matthiessen stated that he "invented The Paris Review as cover" for his CIA activities.[11] He completed his novel Partisans while employed by the CIA.[12] He returned to the U.S. in 1954, leaving Plimpton (a childhood friend) in charge of the Review. Matthiessen divorced in 1956 and began traveling extensively.

      Writings

      In 1959, Matthiessen published the first edition of Wildlife in America, a history of the extinction and endangerment of animal and bird species as a consequence of human settlement, throughout North American history, and of the human effort to protect endangered species.

      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.[13] 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.

      Late in 1973, Matthiessen joined field biologist George Schaller on an expedition in the Himalaya Mountains, which was the basis for The Snow Leopard (1978), his double award-winner. Interested in the Wounded Knee Incident and the 1976 trial and conviction of Leonard Peltier, an American Indian Movement activist, Matthiessen 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 South 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, which eventually yielded the award-winning single-volume Shadow Country.

      While Matthiessen is celebrated for his mastery of both fiction and non-fiction, he always considered himself first and foremost a writer of novels, saying, "Like anything that one makes well with one's own hands, writing good nonfiction prose can be profoundly satisfying. Yet after a day of arranging my research, my set of facts, I feel stale and drained, whereas I am energized by fiction. Deep in a novel, one scarcely knows what may surface next, let alone where it comes from. In abandoning oneself to the free creation of something never beheld on earth, one feels almost delirious with a strange joy."[14]

      Crazy Horse lawsuits

      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.[15] After four years of litigation, Federal District Court Judge Diana E. Murphy dismissed Price's lawsuit, upholding Matthiessen's "freedom to develop a thesis, conduct research in an effort to support the thesis, and to publish an entirely one-sided view of people and events."[16] 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.[17][18] With the lawsuits concluded, the paperback edition of the book was finally published in 1992.

      Personal life

      After graduating from Yale in 1950, Matthiessen became engaged to Patsy Southgate, a Smith graduate whose father had been the chief of protocol in Roosevelt's White House. Matthiessen and Southgate had two children together. They divorced in 1956.

      In 1963 he married the writer Deborah Love. They lived in Sagaponack, NY. He adopted her daughter, writer Rue Matthiessen. In 1964, Alex Matthiessen, an environmentalist, was born. In his book The Snow Leopard, Matthiessen reported 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 practiced Zen Buddhism.[19] She died in New York City in January 1972.

      In September of the following year came the field trip to Himalayan Nepal. Matthiessen later became a Buddhist priest of the White Plum Asanga.[19] He gave dharma transmission to three students: Sensei Madeline Ko-I Bastis, Sensei Michel Engu Dobbs, and Sensei Dorothy Dai-En Friedman.[20] Before practicing Zen, Matthiessen was an early pioneer of LSD. He said his Buddhism evolved fairly naturally from his drug experiences.[21] He argued that it was unfortunate that LSD had become outlawed over time, given its potentially beneficial effects as a spiritual and therapeutic tool (when administered with the right care and attention) and was critical of a figure such as Timothy Leary in terms of the long-term reputation of the drug.[22]

      In 1980, Matthiessen married Maria Eckhart, born in Tanzania, in a Zen ceremony on Long Island, New York. They lived in Sagaponack, New York. Eckhart is the mother of Serial host and Executive Producer Sarah Koenig, who was 10 or 11 years old at the time of the marriage. In 1989, Matthiessen published an autobiographical essay wherein he traced his ancestry to North Frisian shipmaster and whaling captain Matthias Petersen (1632–1706).[23]

      Illness and death

      Matthiessen was diagnosed with leukemia in late 2012. He died at his home in Sagaponack on April 5, 2014, aged 86.[2][24]

      Awards

      Works

      Fiction

      • Race Rock (1954) ISBN 0394745388
      • Partisans (1955) ISBN 0394753429
      • Raditzer (1961)
      • At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965)
      • Far Tortuga (1975) ISBN 0394756673
      • On the River Styx and Other Stories (1989) ISBN 0394553993
      • The Watson trilogy
        • Killing Mister Watson (1990) ISBN 0394554000
        • Lost Man's River (1997) ISBN 067973564X
        • Bone by Bone (1999) ISBN 0375501029
      • Shadow Country: a new rendering of the Watson legend (2008) ISBN 081298062X
      • In Paradise (2014) ISBN 1594633525

      Nonfiction

      • Wildlife in America (1959) ISBN 014004793X
      • The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness (1961) ISBN 0140255079
      • Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in the Stone Age (1962) ISBN 9780140252705
      • "The Atlantic Coast", a chapter in The American Heritage Book of Natural Wonders (1963)
      • The Shorebirds of North America (1967) ISBN 1881527379
      • Oomingmak (1967)
      • Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution (1969) ISBN 0520282507
      • Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark (1971). ISBN 9780140265132
      • The Tree Where Man Was Born (1972) ISBN 0525222650
      • The Snow Leopard (1978) ISBN 0143105515
      • Sand Rivers, with photographer Hugo van Lawick. Aurum Press, London 1981, ISBN 0-906053-22-6.
      • In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983) ISBN 0-14-014456-0.
      • Indian Country (1984). ISBN 0670397873
      • Nine-headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969–1982 (1986). ISBN 1570623678
      • Men's Lives: The Surfmen and Baymen of the South Fork (1986). ISBN 039475560X
      • African Silences (1991). ISBN 9780679731023
      • Baikal: Sacred Sea of Siberia (1992). ISBN 0871563584
      • East of Lo Monthang: In the Land of Mustang (1995). ISBN 1570621314
      • The Peter Matthiessen Reader: Nonfiction, 1959–1961 (2000).
      • Tigers in the Snow (2000). ISBN 0865475768
      • The Birds of Heaven: Travels With Cranes (2001). ISBN 0865476578
      • End of the Earth: Voyage to Antarctica (2003). ISBN 0792250591

      Notes

      1. ↑ Dual awards for hardcover and paperback books were conferred from 1980 to 1983, when both Fiction and Nonfiction were also subdivided in other ways. Most of the roughly 30 award-winning paperbacks were reprints; The Snow Leopard alone won awards in both its first hardcover and its first paperback editions.

      References

      1. ↑ "Just Who Was CIA?". Forbes. Retrieved October 17, 2022.
      2. 1 2 "Washington Post Obituary" Obituary, Washington Post, April 6, 2014.
      3. ↑ "Travelin Man". All-Story. Archived from the original on June 28, 2009. Retrieved December 28, 2008.
      4. 1 2 "National Book Awards – 2008". National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 9, 2012. (With interview, acceptance speech by Matthiessen, and essay by Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
      5. 1 2 "2008 National Book Award Winner, Fiction". National Book Foundation. Archived from the original on January 29, 2009. Retrieved January 16, 2009.
      6. ↑ Dirda, Michael "An Epic of the Everglades", The New York Review of Books, May 15, 2008.
      7. ↑ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher, ""Peter Matthiessen, Lyrical Writer and Naturalist, Is Dead at 86"", "The New York Times", April 5, 2014.
      8. ↑ Ravo, Nick (March 23, 2000). "Erard Matthiessen, 97, New York Architect". The New York Times.
      9. ↑ "Erard Matthiessen Obituary (2000) - Fort Myers, FL - The News-Press". Legacy.com.
      10. ↑ McGee, Gina (January 13, 2007). "The Burgeoning Rebirth of a Bygone Literary Star". New York Times. Retrieved January 15, 2007.
      11. ↑ Matthiessen, Peter (May 27, 2008). "The Charlie Rose Show". 15:30–15:41 of interview. pp. 15:30–15:41 of interview. Archived from the original on July 8, 2008. Retrieved September 14, 2008. I went there as a CIA agent, to Paris... I invented The Paris Review as cover.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
      12. ↑ Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War, 1999, Granta, ISBN 1-86207-029-6; p. 246. (USA: The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, 2000, The New Press, ISBN 1-56584-596-X)
      13. ↑ "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest", New York Post, January 30, 1968
      14. ↑ Norman, Howard (January 1, 1999). "Peter Matthiessen, The Art of Fiction No. 157". Paris Review. No. 150. ISSN 0031-2037. Retrieved May 4, 2016.
      15. ↑ Evans, Harold (October 21, 1988). "The Long Arm of a Lawsuit Arrests History". New York Times. Retrieved August 19, 2008.
      16. ↑ Mitgang, Herbert (January 16, 1988). "'Crazy Horse' Author Is Upheld in Libel Case". New York Times. Retrieved August 19, 2008.
      17. ↑ McDowell, Edwin (January 10, 1990). "Book Notes: 'Crazy Horse' Suit". New York Times. Retrieved August 19, 2008.
      18. ↑ Matthiessen, Peter (May 13, 1991). "Who Really Killed the FBI Men: New Light on Peltier's Case". The Nation. Archived from the original on September 16, 2006. Retrieved August 20, 2008.
      19. 1 2 Peter Matthiessen Archived January 4, 2014, at the Wayback Machine at Tibet House
      20. ↑ "Zen Buddhism: Sanbo Kyodan: Harada-Yasutani School and its Teachers".
      21. ↑ Wroe, Nicholas (August 17, 2002). "Call of the Wild". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 22, 2010.
      22. ↑ Perrin, Jim (2011). West: A Journey Through the Landscapes of Loss. Atlantic Books. p. 81. ISBN 978-0857895608. Retrieved June 22, 2014.
      23. ↑ Matthiessen, Peter (1989). "Die Suche nach dem Glücklichen Matthias – Ein Amerikaner auf den Spuren seiner Vorfahren". Merian (in German). Vol. 42, no. 5. pp. 114–127.
      24. ↑ "New York Times Obituary" Obituary, April 6, 2014.
      25. ↑ "National Book Awards – 1979". National Book Foundation. Retrieved February 21, 2012. There was a "Contemporary" or "Current" award category from 1972 to 1980.
      26. 1 2 "National Book Awards – 1980". National Book Foundation. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
      27. ↑ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
      28. ↑ The Heinz Awards, Peter Matthiessen profile
      29. ↑ Spiros Vergos Prize 2010
      30. ↑ "American Academy of Arts and Letters - Award Winners". Artsandletters.org. Archived from the original on March 14, 2015. Retrieved April 7, 2014.
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