Peter Matthiessen has long been an idol to me, ever since reading the passionate, brilliantly written nature voyage epic, The Snow Leopard (1978); his feverish book on American Indian rights, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983); and, closest to my heart, his majestic paean to the fifteen Crane bird species, The Birds of Heaven: Travels With Cranes (2001). Now Australian author Lance Richardson has penned the first comprehensive biography of the man (Matthiessen died in 2014), making wonderful use of extensive personal archives. True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen covers the man and the writer in all his glory and grubbiness. Throughout his illustrious career, which kicked off with the joint founding of The Paris Review in 1953, Matthiessen longed to be known most for his novels but nonfiction writing, mostly hard-won, remote-travel-based nature articles and books, swamped the latter decades of his life, until his amazing Killing Mister Watson trilogy of novels (later condensed into one prizewinning volume) from the 1990s. Notwithstanding his heartfelt writing in support of nature suffering under humanity’s predations, his championship of indigenous peoples, and his embrace of Zen Buddhism, Matthiessen’s personal life was fissured by childhood woes and serial love affairs; Richardson unfolds this aspect of his life judiciously and fully. Richardson is an elegant and precise stylist and the 700+ pages of this book slide by easily. Artfully plotted across the many arcs of Matthiessen’s life, the biography never fails to excite and interest. Biographies rarely shine brighter than True Nature. Read it to understand a dazzling novelist and a pioneer of nature and environmental writing.
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