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Underwritten by Hoffman Construction Company of Washington Biography Lecture Preview by David Secord
Matthiessen was born in New York, the son of an architect and conservationist. He published his first story while at Yale, and after graduation moved to France where he co-founded The Paris Review with his friend, the late George Plimpton. He lives in Sag Harbor, New York. "The poet laureate of nature writers." —The New Yorker Excerpt
from End of the Earth: Voyages to Antarctica Ahead, the pack is broken by big chunks and pressure ridges forced upward by conflicting floes. On a disk of new ice banked by ridges, two emperor penguins raise long beaks to cry out to the heavens in the penguin manner, a lament too faint to be heard over the ship's passage through rough ice. Then, abruptly, the hull grinds to a stop, and the sudden stillness troubles the birds more than its noisy progress. One flops forward, sledding on its belly to the other, where it stands up again, reassured by penguin company. Its companion, more stalwart, remains impassive, light flashing from the golden wash on its ivory breast... To westward,
from an icy peak where the sun's low fireball irradiates the glaciers,
comes an astonishing silver light that illuminates the sea ice plain with
rainbow crystals. How beautiful and treacherous are turning floes with
their fine cracks, and all the more so in this wind, when without warning
they may slide apart, revealing the mysterious black water. Selected
Works Web
Site Links A Series of Tiny Astonishments (interview) Zen and the Art of Peter Matthiessen
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Novelist
and Conservationist