Peter Matthiessen

At 86 years old, Peter Matthiessen physical status not available right now. We will update Peter Matthiessen's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Peter Matthiessen, 1927--2014, was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen instructor, and CIA officer.

He was the only author to have been recognized by the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction. He was a co-founder of the Paris Review.

He was also a leading environmental campaigner.

Matthiessen's nonfiction book The Snow Leopard (1978) and American Indian affairs and history, as well as a lengthy and conflictual review of Leonard Peltier's case, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983).

His fiction was turned into film by Luis Buel and the author At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965) and the 1991 film of the same name. Matthiessen was given the National Book Award for Fiction for Shadow Country in 2008, a one-volume, 890-page retort of his three books set in frontier Florida that hadn't been published in the 1990s.

"No one writes more lyrically [than Matthiessen] about animals, or else the emotional experience of mountaintops, savannas, and the sea, according to critic Michael Dirda. "Matthiessen was treated for acute leukemia for more than a year."

He died on April 5, 2014, three days before the release of his final book, The novel In Paradise, was published on April 8.

Early life

Erard Adolph Matthiessen (1902–2000) and Elizabeth (née Carey) were born in New York City to Erard Adolph Matthiessen (1902–2000) and Elizabeth (née Carey). Erard, an architect, served in the Navy during World War II and was instrumental in the design of gunnery training systems. Later, he left architecture to serve as a spokesperson and fund-raiser for the Audubon Society and Nature Conservancy. The well-to-do family lived in both New York and Connecticut, where Matthiessen and his brother, Robert, developed an obsession with animals that inspired his future as a wildlife writer and naturalist. He attended St. Bernard's School, the Hotchkiss School, and — after briefly serving in the US Navy (1945–47) — Yale University (B.A., 1950), with his junior year spent at the Sorbonne. He majored in English, published short stories (one of which received the coveted Atlantic Prize), and investigated zoology at Yale.

He soon returned to Paris, where he worked with fellow expatriate American writers such as William Styron, James Baldwin, and Irwin Shaw. He was one of the founders of the famous literary journal The Paris Review in 1953, alongside Harold L. Humes, Thomas Guinzburg, Donald Hall, Ben Morrow, and George Plimpton. He was working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time, and as described in a 2006 film, using the Review as his cover. Matthiessen said in a 2008 interview with Charlie Rose that he "invented The Paris Review as a shield" for his intelligence operations. He wrote his book Partisans while being employed by the CIA. In 1954, he returned to the United States, leaving Plimpton (a childhood friend) in charge of the Investigation. Matthiessen divorced in 1956 and began traveling extensively.

Personal life

Matthiessen married Patsy Southgate, a Smith graduate whose father was the head of protocol in Roosevelt's White House, after graduating from Yale in 1950. Matthiessen and Southgate had two children together. They divorced in 1956.

Deborah Love, a writer from 1963, married him. Matthiessen's book The Snow Leopard revealed that he and his wife Deborah had a somewhat rocky on-again off-again relationship, culminating in a deep commitment to each other shortly before she was diagnosed with cancer. Matthiessen and Deborah followed Zen Buddhism. She died in New York City in January 1972.

The field trip to Himalayan Nepal began in September of this year. Matthiessen later became a White Plum Asanga Buddhist priest. Sensei Madeline Ko-I Bastis, Sensei Michel Engu Dobbs, and Sensei Dorothy Dai-En Friedman were among three students who received dharma transmission: Sensei Madeline Ko-I Bastis, Sensei Michel Engu Dobbs, and Sensei Dorothy Dai-En Friedman were among three students. Matthiessen was an early LSD pioneer before practicing Zen. His Buddhism emerged quite naturally from his drug use, according to him. He argued that it had been unfortunate that LSD had been outlawed over time due to its potentially therapeutic and therapeutic benefits (when administered with the right care and attention) and was skeptical of a figure such as Timothy Leary in terms of the drug's long-term reputation.

Matthiessen married Maria Eckhart, a Tanzanian girl, in 1980 at a Zen wedding on Long Island, New York. They lived in Sagaponack, New York. Eckhart, the mother of Serial host and Executive Producer Sarah Koenig, who was 10 or 11 years old at the time of the marriage, is a mother of five children. Matthiessen published an autobiographical essay in 1989, in which he traced his ancestry to North Frisian shipmaster and whaling captain Matthias Petersen (1632-1706).

In late 2012, Matthiessen was diagnosed with leukemia. He died at his Sagaponack home on April 5, 2014, at the age of 86.

Source

Awards

• 1979 National Book Award, Contemporary Thought, for The Snow Leopard
• 1980 National Book Award, General Non-Fiction (paperback), for The Snow Leopard
• 1991 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
• 1993 Helmerich Award, the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust.
• 1995–97, designated the State Author of New York
• 2000 6th annual Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities
• 2008 National Book Award, Fiction, for Shadow Country
• 2010 Spiros Vergos Prize for Freedom of Expression
• 2010 William Dean Howells Medal, for Shadow Country