Word: matthiessen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...September 1973 George Schaller and Peter Matthiessen began a 500 mile trek from the Himalayan town of Pokhara to the unspoiled Crystal Mountains and back. Schaller, an ethologist, went to research mating behavior among a wild herd of bharal, the blue sheep of the Himalayas. He wanted to confirm his speculations that the bharal are a living, missing link between the true goats and the true sheep. He also wanted to see the snow leopard, the most elusive, and one of the rarest, cats in the world, which preys on the bharal. He accomplished both...
...Matthiessen didn't join Schaller as an assistant or as a co-researcher. He is not a scientist per se, but a writer, one of the world's best bird-watchers, and a professional traveller. He has journeyed through South America, lived among a stone age tribe in New Guinea, and with turtlehunters in the Carribbean. The Himalayan trip was more than just another notch in his belt. Matthiessen is a Zen Buddhist and Nepal is the navel of his world...
...Snow Leopard is a day by day account of the expedition, told soley from Matthiessen's point of view. It is an account of presence, in every sense of the word. The two men move through space and over distance, from Westernized civilization to its outposts and beyond. The author never met Nepalese or Tibetans completely isolated from the world outside their valleys, but he comes close. For Matthiessen, at least, this is a journey to the core. Time has no meaning in a land where the past is no different than the future, where there is only the present...
IRONICALLY just these observations allow the reader to understand what Matthiessen means and how he can come by his beliefs and his escapes. The Himalayan world he depicts is the enactment of his religion. Seen through Western eyes the Himalayan people calmly progress through prayers and days alike, buffetted by little and infrequently alarmed. Their life isn't meaningless, but neither is its meaning marked. It just is, which is precisely Matthiessen's point...
...Mirror, Barbara W. Tuchman ∙American Caesar, William Manchester ∙In Search of History, Theodore H. White ∙ Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie ∙ Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. The Gulag Archipelago III. Alexander Solzhenitsyn ∙The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen...