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The first biography of Peter Matthiessen, the novelist, naturalist, and Zen roshi, whose trailblazing work championed Native American rights and helped usher in the modern environmental movementThird Place Books welcomes biographer and author Lance Richardson for a conversation about his groundbreaking biography of Peter Matthiessen (1927–2014), True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen.
This event is co-sponsored by the North Cascades Institute, a nonprofit conservation organization working to inspire environmental stewardship through transformative learning experiences in nature. Learn more at ncascades.org.
Lance Richard's presentation is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!
About True Nature. . .
“A fair-minded, grippingly paced, and tremendously readable narrative.” —Pico Iyer, Air Mail
Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), a towering figure of twentieth-century American letters, achieved so much during his lifetime, in so many different areas, that people have struggled to pin him down. While ambivalent about his WASP privilege—as a teenager he demanded that his name be removed from the New York Social Register—he attended Yale and cut his teeth in postwar Paris, co-founding The Paris Review as he worked undercover for the CIA. But then, after a rebellious stint as a Long Island fisherman, he escaped into a series of wild expeditions: floating through the Amazon to recover a prehistorical fossil; embedding with a tribe in Netherlands New Guinea; swimming with sharks off the coast of Australia. His novels, inspired by his travels, were unclassifiable meditations about Caymanian turtle hunters and frontier outlaws in the Florida Everglades. Meanwhile, his nonfiction became legendary: nature books like Wildlife in America—“key parts of the canon of emergent environmental writing,” says Bill McKibben—as well as advocacy journalism supporting Cesar Chavez, Leonard Peltier, and Native American land claims.
Underlying all Matthiessen’s disparate pursuits was the same existential search—to find a cure for “deep restlessness.” This search was most profoundly articulated in The Snow Leopard, his famous account of a 250-mile wildlife survey across the Himalayas. In True Nature, Lance Richardson reconstructs the full scope of a spiritual quest that ultimately led Matthiessen, even as he inflicted great pain on his family, to the highest ranks of Zen. Drawing on rich primary sources and hundreds of interviews, Richardson depicts Matthiessen’s life with page-turning immediacy, while also illuminating how the writer’s uncanny gifts enabled him to sense connections between ecological decline, racism, and labor exploitation—to express, eloquently and presciently, that “in a damaged human habitat, all problems merge.”
Praise for True Nature. . .
“I loved Lance Richardson’s True Nature, perhaps all the more because I was getting to know both Matthiessen and his writing from this terrifically absorbing chronicle. . . . A biographer aims both to attract new readers and to satisfy hardcore fans, a near-impossible feat that Richardson deftly achieves.”
—Megan Marshall, Lit Hub
“True Nature is a magnificent achievement: an immense work of scholarship, synthesis and empathy, written throughout with verve and lucidity, which illuminates one of the most fascinating writerly lives of the past century.”
—Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland and Is a River Alive?
“Naturalist, novelist, Yeti-hunter, CIA agent—Peter Matthiessen led an exceptional life, and Lance Richardson does a wonderful job capturing it in all its complexity. True Nature is generous and sensitive, but at the same time clear-eyed about its outsized subject.”
—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction
“A riveting account of the tumultuous, untamed, yet determinedly focused life of Peter Matthiessen, a writer of planetary greatness. A superb nature writer, an uncompromising social and environmental activist, a devotee of Zen’s endless path toward transformation, and by all accounts a failure as a proper family man, Matthiessen has been gifted with an excellent biographer in Lance Richardson, whose True Nature approaches this life with a Zen-like quality of calm, gratitude, and expansiveness all its own.”
—Joy Williams
“True Nature is a stunning, formidable achievement by a brilliant biographer. Lance Richardson takes his readers on a wild ride with Peter Matthiessen—portraying the man in all his maddening complexities. And what a journey: founding The Paris Review, working undercover for the CIA, Zen master, chasing the snow leopard in the Himalayas. This intimate and gracefully written biography is absolutely enthralling.”
—Kai Bird, co-author of American Prometheus
About the Nature of Writing Series. . .
A deep appreciation for the transformative power of literature and art has been at the heart of North Cascades Institute since the very beginning. The humanities provide important lenses through which we inhabit and understand our shared landscapes. Our Nature of Writing Speaker Series celebrates the creative minds illuminating the natural world with the turn of a page.
For nearly 20 years, North Cascades Institute has worked in partnership with independent booksellers and community organizations to bring leading authors on environmental issues, natural and cultural history, poetry, art, wellness and adventure together in celebration and appreciation of nature. Past speakers have included Robert Macfarlane, Terry Tempest Williams, Gary Snyder, David B. Williams, Richard Louv, Peter Wohlleben, Brenda Peterson, Tim McNulty, Mary Oliver, Barry Lopez and Molly Hashimoto. By bringing our community together in conversation at these events, we aim to support authors, poets and artists and amplify their voices to promote lifelong stewardship through better understanding of the world around us.
Lance Richardon's first book, House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and named one of the notable titles of 2018 by The Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday, Esquire, and the American Library Association. He has been awarded numerous fellowships, including a year-long residency at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, at the New York Public Library. He teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Bennington College, Vermont.
Want a signed edition of the featured book, but can't make it to the event? Order through our website or over the phone, and write your request for a signature or personalization in the comments field at checkout. Please call the hosting store if you're placing your order within 24 hours of the event.
For media or access inquiries, please email [email protected] or call our Lake Forest Park store at (206) 366-3311.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
17171 Bothell Way NE, Lake Forest Park, WA, United States, Washington 98155
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