Peter Matthiessen (1927 - 2014) was an America novelist, naturalist, nature writer, and CIA agent.
"The wilderness itself is full of beauty and also a great mystery and a great
silence, a very healing silence. I find it exhilarating, and sometimes it pushes me to
the edge of depression. But most of us don't know what to do with it, so we build
roads and airstrips into it," said Peter Matthiessen, whose life-long attraction to
wilderness has led him on expeditions to South America, Africa, New Guinea,
Nepal, and the Sudan, and has brought him into contact with peoples whose way of
life precariously awaits the encroachment of modern life, and the threat of
annihilation.
Matthiessen sees the frontier as the place where the American way was forged,
and feels that the weaknesses and qualities of the frontier character operate long after
the wilderness has been cleared. Matthiessen was keen to talk of the novel he is
currently writing on this theme. "I'm interested in the violence of the American frontier and how the frontier
developed. I hope the novel is a kind of reflection of ...the frontier mind, how it
works, where it goes wrong and why this country goes so easily into violence. For we
have a lot of violence."
