Peter Matthiessen traveled the world trying to escape from himself

But it was not until his arrival in Paris, during his first year abroad, that he was able to nurture his bohemian streak. The city was still suffering from the effects of World War II. Power went out intermittently, and families scrambled to get enough food. But for Matthiessen, a wealthy American who benefited from a favorable exchange rate, it was a place of greater freedom, beyond the reach of his parents and governed by entirely different rules. He stayed in cafés, had affairs, and read Baudelaire and Proust. He wrote to one of the many women he was seeing at the time: “I cannot describe the feeling of complete relaxation and comfort which depends partly on France itself and partly on escape from that endless chaos and complications at home.”

At this point, Matthiessen was already considering the idea of ​​becoming a writer. When he returned to New Haven, he took creative writing classes and read Steinbeck and Faulkner. Short story published in Atlantic MonthlyHe landed a literary agent, attracted the attention of a publishing executive, and a close friend’s stepfather—all before he was twenty-five. It was a confidence boost for a young man who didn’t really need it. Thus he was surprised when other stories were rejected by magazines, and was also surprised when his agent wrote to say that his novel-in-progress had already been written by James Fenimore Cooper. Decades later, he described this rejection as “a useful experience for a young writer,” although one imagines he did not feel that way at the time.

But Matthiessen was not affected by his failures. He was on the move again, returning to Paris with his wife, Patsy Southgate, a Smiths graduate who would eventually become a major figure in the New York School of Poetry. Like many of his contemporaries – James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Styron – Matthiessen was in Paris to channel the legacy of literary modernism and write innovative novels. But he was also there on a secret mission for the newly formed CIA, which recruited him from Yale and accused him of monitoring Communists and his fellow travelers. (This experience would form the basis of his second novel, “The Partisans,” published in 1955.) Paris Reviewwith Plimpton and writer Harold L. (Doc) Humes, partly to give himself a more substantial cover story. As Richardson noted, it is not clear how much CIA money, if any, went to the magazine. What is clear is that Matthiessen’s socializing with left-leaning French artists and expatriates served the agenda of the deep state.

Matthiessen’s time with the CIA does not fit his resume. He rarely talked about it, but at least once described it as “the only adventure in my life that I regret.” In the years that followed, he tried to compensate for his cooperation with the federal government by practicing “advocacy journalism,” much of which he wrote for this magazine. He defended migrant farm workers, defended traditional Inuit whaling practices, and, at a time when few white Americans took indigenous rights seriously, supported the American Indian Movement (goal), a loosely organized, sometimes militant, grassroots group that promotes indigenous traditions and political interests.

This advocacy work culminated in In the Spirit of the Mad Horse (1983), a controversial account of the trial of local activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted of killing two FBI agents, and the FBI’s “war” against… goal. Not without reason does Matthiessen portray the Bureau as megalomaniacal, dishonest, and allied with corporate interests. Shortly after the book’s publication, two libel lawsuits — one from an FBI agent, the other from William Janklow, the governor of South Dakota, who had once been accused of raping a Lakota girl — took the book off the shelves. The book would remain out of print for the duration of an eight-year legal battle that eventually saw Matthiessen and his publisher, Viking, acquitted.

In Crazy Horse, Matthiessen brings together dozens of indigenous voices, who speak of the desire for freedom: from land deprivation and poverty, from the indignities of sheltered life. Matthiessen places their demands in the context of the history of colonial violence, and convincingly argues for the release of Peltier, who spent nearly fifty years behind bars before President Joe Biden commuted his sentence to house arrest last January. The weight of the book—at more than six hundred pages, exhaustively researched and exhausting to read—reflects the author’s convictions. Unlike many of his peers, Matthiessen was anti-consumer, anti-imperialist, and anti-war. But the book may also reflect his strenuous efforts to escape his past mistakes, to atone for the years he spent spying on his fellow artists. If Matthiessen can’t go back in time, he can write his way to repentance.

In 1953, Matthiessen left the CIA and, along with Patsy and their newborn son Lucas, returned to New York, where they rented a cabin on the east end of Long Island. (Seven years later, after his divorce from Patsy, Matthiessen bought a house in Sagaponack, which would serve as a home base until his death, in 2014.) The area was popular with tourists in the summer, but in the off-season it was inhabited by poor fishermen and farmers known as bonacres. Matthiessen adored his neighbors, especially the men: strict, laconic people who valued independence and were not afraid of hard work. To gain their approval, he fished on their boats from late spring through fall, then spent the colder months working on his novels. In Men’s Lives (1986), his poignant study of the experiences faced by commercial fishermen on Long Island, he recalls those years spent partly on the water as “among the most satisfying years of my life.”

Even as he tried to shirk his wealthy background, live the good life and do hard physical labor, Matthiessen knew he would never truly belong among the sun-beaten men he admired so much. As Richardson notes, in Race Rock (1954), Matthiessen’s first novel, the protagonist and author George McConville compares himself unfavorably with the male workers living in his village: he is a “canary among crows,” a sensitive type with soft hands. He envies working-class men with indigenous heritage. He believes they are “in a closer relationship with life than ever before.”