Peter Matthiessen (1) (1927–2014)

I bought this book years ago, and although I've long since been aware that it's more travel/nature-writing than about wildlife, let alone the snow leopard in particular, I admit I was still hoping for more of a focus on wildlife. There's no denying that Matthiessen is an incredibly talented nature writer, and for what it is, I enjoyed reading about his travels and hiking, but I can't help feeling that the book is closer kin to books on spirituality and eastern philosophy than it is to anything related to nature and/or wildlife. I'm not sure if this is in the territory of the rest of Matthiessen's writing, but it's undeniable that I feel a touch misled and likely won't read his other works.

I'd recommend this for readers interested in personal spiritual journeys undertaken in nature and fans of nature-based travel writing, but that's about all I can say, I fear. It was fine, but it really wasn't for me.… (mere)

The story is told as a drawn-out series of accounts of the famous shoot-out at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1975, but also concerning many other related events and combined with extracts of court transcripts and of the author’s interviews. Ultimately it’s never clear why FBI agents were at the shoot-out site initially, who shot whom when, and exactly what Leonard Peltier had to do with it. Most or all prosecutorial, FBI, and presented “witness” accounts seem unreliable, and there is now knowledge of either fabricated ballistic evidence or information that was withheld about ballistic evidence. The author was clearly personally involved in this, his sympathies are immediately and everywhere clear. He brings the story to us in a protracted repetitive fashion, but the main disappointment for the reader is that almost everything is left in the air, and although it seems clear that Peltier was picked by the FBI to take the fall and then received a sham trial, it is also clear that two FBI agents were murdered (it's not self-defense when you shoot a wounded man in the head), and that Peltier is a serial felon from adolescence. An account related to the author from an unnamed and disguised Indian "X" confessing to the murders given near the end of the book didn't seem to be a more reliable account than any other.
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I have had some interest in lying in the past, and I noticed that many of the stories told on both sides are of a type commonly used when lying (see the current liar-in-chief or, especially, Mr. Putin). If I ask you if you did something, a common truthful response might be "no", but a common untruthful response is, "Why would a person like me do something like that?".… (mere)