Vol. 19, No. 20

Feb. 17, 2000

Prof. completes collection
of wildlife author’s works

Fans of wildlife and wilderness writer Peter Matthiessen will delight in the first collection of his nonfiction work compiled with a sense of tribute by McKay Jenkins, English. Jenkins, who researches and teaches wilderness literature and calls Matthiessen a mentor, worked with the author in choosing the selections for the book The Peter Matthiessen Reader. Published by Vintage Books just before Christmas, the book won praise from Kirkus Reviews for its “enticing array of excerpts from Matthiessen’s substantial output.” The reviewer added, “Jenkins has arranged the selections chronologically to convey a sense of Matthiessen’s evolution as a writer, and he has done a perceptive job of harvesting passages that display Matthiessen’s knack for intuitively reading people and places; his unadorned, moving prose; his love of language and story-making; his pervasive melancholy; and his saving ethical sense.” Author of a vast collection of works for The New Yorker and other magazines, Matthiessen also has published fiction, most notably At Play In the Fields of the Lord, nominated for a National Book Award in 1961. Jenkin’s book, however, salutes Matthiessen’s nonfiction works and includes selections from such notable works as The Snow Leopard, Wildlife in America, The Tree Where Man Was Born and In The Spirit of Crazy Horse. While Matthiessen’s topics range from the killing of the last two great auks, a species of North Atlantic bird, to Native American activist Leonard Peltier, imprisoned for two life terms after a shoot-out that killed two FBI agents, Jenkins writes “Throughout his work Matthiessen remains steadfast but heartbroken when confronted by our inexorable drive to subdue wilderness, assimilate native peoples and wring the mystery from life. In a period of American literature when many writers consider their inner torments to be their source of greatest mystery, Matthiessen has relentlessly focused his gaze outward, beyond suburban landscapes, toward wilderness, its threatened human inhabitants and their punishment at the hand of civilization’s wallowing greed and rapacity. In so doing he has inspired an entire generation of writers who have collectively helped make ‘nature writing’ one of the most vibrant field in contemporary American literature.” After he finished graduate school and was looking for a book to write, Jenkins initially thought of writing a biography of Matthiessen, whose work had inspired him since young adulthood. Jenkins visited Matthiessen at his Long Island home to explore the idea. Matthiessen, who had recently had an unpleasant experience with a journalist, was wary about a project detailing his life but was receptive to the idea of an anthology, Jenkins said. And so, the two began the dance–deciding what they might cull from 40 years of writing to include in the book. Jenkins drew up a preliminary list; Matthiessen added and subtracted from it. “He is famously a very controlling author. He really keeps his hand in the process,” Jenkins said. “He’s known for standing over his editors choosing things, saying no to suggestions. I knew from the start that out of respect for him I would defer to his opinions.” The resulting collection from 13 of Matthiessen’s books “pays homage to one of the guys at the top of the country’s list of nonfiction writers,” Jenkins said. “Someone who has never read Matthiessen can pick this up and get an idea of the breadth of what he does,” Jenkins explained. “It creates in one place evidence of how important he has been.” As Jenkins writes in his introduction, “The guiding idea in this collection was to present both Matthiessen’s stylistic eloquence and his considerable political energies in all their beauty and power: At his best Matthiessen is able to create images that leave a reader doubly shaken.” “He’s extremely inspiring,” Jenkins continued. “As a young writer, I was fortunate to have had conversations and work with someone I admire. He’s incredibly charismatic. They say the temperature in a room goes up 30 degrees when he enters. He’s a great dinner companion; he commands everyone’s attention. But he can be very hard-nosed. He’s a tough customer.” Matthiessen began to write in the 1950s cultivating a “Thoreau-on-the-Road” image as Jenkins writes. “As legend has it, his research included driving a convertible around the country equipped with only a stack of books, a sleeping bag and a shotgun. “Many readers like to think of him as a kind of literary Indiana Jones, searching the wilds of New Guinea or Africa or Nepal and bringing stories back alive,” Jenkins writes. “But lost in the romantic image is the recognition of a remarkable literary voice, characterized mostly by a deep mourning for the natural magic the world has lost and is losing. Matthiessen’s work is marked above all by an unblinking gaze at the world’s subtle beauty and at its fragility when set against humankind’s blundering self-interest.” Jenkins earned his doctorate from Princeton University. He is a former reporter for the Atlanta Constitution and joined UD in 1996. He also is the author of The South in Black and White and The White Death. –Beth Thomas