"We are a country of pilgrims, engaged in a lifelong search for what Ralph Waldo Emerson called an "original relation to the universe"-a unique understanding of the world that doesn't rely on the traditions or teachings of past generations. Those who internalize this expectation will walk, trek, and seek-anything to shed an inherited skin and find an undiscovered self they can inhabit."
"Few have embodied this supposedly American quality with more complexity than the writer Peter Matthiessen. And few have captured it with more clarity than Lance Richardson in his new biography of Matthiessen, True Nature. Richardson portrays the peripatetic life of Matthiessen-a celebrated author, magazine editor, and undercover agent who died in 2014-not as an eclectic series of adventures but as a single, 86-year spiritual quest."
Peter Matthiessen rejected his wealthy upbringing and pursued a lifelong search for an authentic core he described with Zen Buddhists' phrase 'true nature.' He moved widely as an author, magazine editor, and undercover agent, yet treated those roles as facets of a singular, 86-year spiritual quest. Restlessness and the American myth of pilgrim identity propelled repeated attempts to "shed an inherited skin" and discover an undiscovered self. Emersonian influence and a sense that an "inner journey determined the choices" of his life guided radical personal transformations. His story warns that external achievements often fail to fill deep existential emptiness.
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