DAN’S PAPERS
Page 24 April 11, 2014
danspapers.com
Peter Matthiessen, 86
P
eter Matthiessen, the tall, gentle presence who for more than half a century made Sagaponack his home, has died at the age of 86. Matthiessen made his mark on the world in many fields, most notably literature, where two of his many books won a total of three National Book Awards, two for nonfiction and one for fiction. He also wrote Men’s Lives, which drew upon the three years in the mid-1950s when he was a commercial fisherman, working with the local Bonackers in these parts, haul-seining for bass and bluefish from pickup trucks and boats along the ocean beaches here. Matthiessen grew up among the wealthy set of
Manhattan in the 1930s. One of his best friends was the late George Plimpton, with whom, in Paris in the 1950s, he and others founded The Paris Review. The two grew up in the same Fifth Avenue building and went to St. Bernard’s School together; Matthiessen eventually went off to Yale, while Plimpton attended Harvard. Both rebelled from their backgrounds as young men. Both became authors and both traveled widely, Plimpton largely among kings and queens and other royalty, Matthiessen largely among adventurers and
explorers. Matthiessen came to celebrate the natural world. Matthiessen joined the U.S. Navy at the tail end of World War II and at 18 served at Pearl Harbor. After the war he went to Yale, where he wrote a short story, “Sadie,” which won a prestigious prize given by The Atlantic magazine. After graduation in 1950, inspired by the prize and The Atlantic’s accepting a second story, he hired an agent, Bernice Baumgarten, and gave her the first few chapters to a novel, and she sent it around. Author Peter Matthiessen “I waited by the post office for praise to roll in, calls from Hollywood, everything,” Matthiessen said in an interview with Kay Bonetti of The Missouri Review years later. The letter soon arrived. “Dear Peter, James Fenimore Cooper wrote this 150 years ago, only he wrote it better. Yours, Bernice.” Many prominent American writers went to live in Paris after the war. They included Irwin Shaw, Terry Southern, James Baldwin, James Jones, William Styron and others. Matthiessen went, too, to write a novel but also secretly as an agent for the CIA. He needed a job to support himself while writing. With the CIA, he reported on the activities of certain Americans in that community. Matthiessen later said being a CIA agent was the only adventure he ever regretted. He was young, he said. But the fact was, many Yalies joined that organization after the war. Matthiessen married Patsy Southgate, an American he had met in Paris while they were both undergraduates studying at the Sorbonne. Then, returning to Paris, he talked to author Harold Humes and others about starting a literary magazine. Matthiessen would be publisher, but early on he felt Humes, though brilliant, was too erratic to be the editor. So he turned to George Plimpton, his old friend from America, at that time studying in London, who became the first editor of The Paris Review in 1953. (Plimpton remained its editor until his death in 2003.) Matthiessen left the CIA shortly thereafter, but many years later had to tell Plimpton that The Paris Review was founded as a “cover” for his day job with the CIA—something that, by all accounts, made Plimpton very angry for a while. Matthiessen and Southgate returned to America and rented a house in Sag Harbor. Matthiessen continued his writing, but it wasn’t bringing in much money. So he started to run a charter boat that took people deep-sea fishing out of Montauk. In addition, he became a commercial fisherman, working with the Bonackers fishing for sea bass and bluefish out of the surf in Bridgehampton. A decade later, Matthiessen bought six acres in Sagaponack and made that his home. He would live there the rest of his life. There are locals today who fondly remember Matthiessen in his years as a commercial fisherman. Often, he would be away traveling to exotic places such as Peru, Tierra del Fuego, the Amazon or Tanzania. But he’d always come 31641 back. John White, a local (Continued on page 26) Linda Girvin
By dan rattiner