E-list # 110

Peter Matthiessen's first novel, Race Rock, was published in 1954 when he was 26 years old. His last, In Paradise, a fictional meditation on the Auschwitz concentration camp, was published 3 days after he died in April, 2014, at the age of 86. Over the 60 years between the two books, Matthiessen carved out a place in American literature unlike that of any other writer. He became the premier writer of natural history of his era, with books such as Wildlife in America, The Shorebirds of North America, Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, and Sand Rivers, which won the John Burroughs Medal, the highest honor awarded in this country for a book of natural history. He also used his writing to take on social causes and advocate for social justice: his natural history books did not shy away from political issues of environmental despoliation, and he also wrote such books as Sal Si Puedes, about Cesar Chavez and the migrant fruit workers' quest to unionize; In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, about an American Indian activist railroaded into prison; and Indian Country, which was a catalogue of abusive relationships between government and corporate interests against Native Americans. He studied Zen and became an ordained Zen priest, and he published a book of his Zen journals, Nine-Headed Dragon River. He wrote about his expeditions to the East in the National Book Award winner, The Snow Leopard, and in East of Lo Monthang, among others; and he wrote about his expeditions to Antarctica in End of the Earth. Through it all, he continued to write fiction, earning a National Book Award nomination for At Play in the Fields of the Lord; writing a novel in dialect, Far Tortuga; and creating his magnum opus, Shadow Country, a distillation of the fictional Watson trilogy he had published a decade earlier. Shadow Country earned him another National Book Award, as well as the William Dean Howells Medal, which is given out only once every five years, for the best work of American fiction published within that time. Matthiessen remains the only writer to have ever won the National Book Award for both fiction and nonfiction.

Matthiessen came of age with a generation of American writers in the postwar period, including William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut, William Gaddis, George Plimpton, James Salter, Terry Southern and others, many of whom became close friends over the years, to the point that eastern Long Island from the 1950s to 2000 became like an American Bloomsbury. But Matthiessen also had another cohort among nature writers, and a generation of the best of them looked to him as a model and mentor: their books, among others, can be found in this selection from his library. Matthiessen touched many lives in his many roles: famous and sucessful novelist, explorer, activist and advocate for the environment and for indigenous peoples and for social justice, and Zen practitioner, student and priest. The range of his interests was only rivaled by the depth of his wisdom across that range: these paragraphs can not do justice to either the man or his work, and the following list can only begin to. That said, we are pleased and honored to have the opportunity to present this selection of his library to you.

Note: Items #1-47 are books by Peter Matthiessen, from his own library, alphabetical by title. Items #48-114 are books from Matthiessen's library in which, in most instances, Matthiessen has a presence or a contribution; these are listed in chronological order of publication. Items #115-213 are books inscribed to Peter Matthiessen, listed alphabetically by author.