Peter Matthiessen

Home > People > Literature and the Arts > American Literature: Biographies

Matthiessen, Peter (1927– ),began his literary career with three short novels, Race Rock (1954), Partisans (1955), and Raditzer (1960), followed at much later dates by a novel, At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965), about missionaries and outsiders despoiling Indian tribal culture in the Amazon jungle; Far Tortuga (1975), another novel; and by Midnight Turning Gray (1984) and On the River Styx (1989), stories. His main career comes with The Cloud Forest (1961), recording his observations of primitive people and wild fauna in the wilderness of South America; Under the Mountain Wall (1963), dealing with his experience of a savage tribe in New Guinea; Oomingmark (1967), concerning a expedition, of which he was a member, to a Bering Sea island, searching for a rare breed of musk ox; Blue Meridian (1971), about another expedition, this one for a great white shark; The Tree Where Man Was Born (1972), dealing with his trips to East Africa; The Snow Leopard (1978, National Book Award), telling of his trek to Tibet in quest of enlightenment; Sand Rivers (1981), about a safari in Tanzania; and Men's Lives (1986), about a severe storm and its wreckage affecting the lives of fishermen and others on Long Island, New York. His travels through the U.S. to observe the spoliation of Indian lands resulted in In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983), on mistreatment of Native Americans, likewise Indian Country (1984). Sal si Puedes (1970) is a profile of Cesar Chavez, and Nine‐Headed Dragon River (1986) treats his old‐time pilgrimage to the Zen culture of the Himalayas and to Japan. Killing Mr. Watson (1990) is an account, part fiction, part history, of the man said to have killed the outlaw Belle Starr, and is the first in a trilogy of novels, followed by Lost Man's River (1997) and Bone by Bone (1999), all set in the Everglades. His recent nonfiction includes Tigers in the Snow (2000), an account of his travels into the Russian Far East and Manchuria in search of the Siberian tiger; The Birds of Heaven (2001), a study of cranes; and End of the Earth (2003), recounting his expeditions to South Georgia and Antarctica..