Matthiessen's NBA

Eugene Delacroix’s tigre, from Petit Musee.

Peter Matthiessen has won the National Book Award for fiction for his re-working of his Mr. Watson trilogy, now called Shadow Country. Hooray for him. Now, I’ve never read any of his fiction, but I’ve read a number of his non-fiction works, including Wildlife in America, The Snow Leopard, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, (once banned for its detailing of the framing of Leonard Peltier), and the book I have open now, Men’s Lives: The Surfmen and Baymen of the South Fork, all of which I would heartily recommend. A very interesting fellow: naturalist, fisherman, Buddhist, co-founder of the Paris Review, wildlife tour guide, activist, in fact, sort of model of the kind of person I’d like to be. Hooray for Peter Matthiessen, the African (and Antarctic) Explorer!