Peter Matthiessen is a towering figure of twentieth-century American letters, and the only writer to win the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction.
He’s also a difficult man to pin down because he accomplished so much in so many different areas.
He co-founded The Paris Review and spied for the CIA.
He’s best known for The Snow Leopard, his book about a Himalayan journey, but he thought of himself as a novelist. Others focused on his nature writing, his environmental advocacy, and his staunch defence of Native American rights.
He was a serial adulterer, a neglectful parent, short-tempered and self-absorbed, and yet his writing students praised his generosity, and he had wonderful lifelong friends.
He was also a spiritual seeker who reached the highest ranks of Zen Buddhism.
How do you come to grips with a life as varied as Peter Matthiessen’s? It’s no surprise that it took today’s guest eight years and nearly 800 pages.
Lance Richardson is the author of True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen, and House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row. He teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Bennington College, Vermont.
You can read more about him on his website.
We spoke about Peter Matthiessen’s privileged background, his life-changing journey to Nepal, his serial womanizing, and his greatest books.
These are the books we mentioned in the podcast:
We also mentioned:
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