By Its Cover, I Guess

So, what happened was...

I found a new author, or, rather, I finally followed up with some authorial snooping, in the sense that one of my favorite author's (Pynchon) favorite author, Peter Matthiessen, has found his way into my possession. With a Decemberween gift-card I made the purchase of an early favorite of fans of Matthiessen, Far Tortuga:

While I waited for the book to arrive, I learned about "Shadow Country, another Matthiessen novel, and a winner of the 2008 National Book Award. I picked it up too, and it arrived and I'm 200 pages into it. It's a masterpiece.

Matthiessen is a rather badass writer, and the only person to win the National Book Award in both fiction (Shadow Country), and non-fiction, for "The Snow Leopard." Matthiessen was a travel writer, adventurer, philosopher, and Leonard Peltier supporter---he was the white writer that first brought Peltier's plight (getting hosed by the feds) to (white) society at large.

Back to Far Tortuga...why start a 900 page book (Shadow Country) when this book's right here? Well, while Far Tortuga was the first thing I ordered, it was the last thing to arrive. 

That may have been because of how I ordered it. I found a copy that was within a price range that was acceptable. But the cover wasn't necessarily doing it for me (which is silly and weird), so I kept scrolling down the choices on Amazon and found something that suited my feelings a little more. Hence the cover above.

When it got here, I tore open the package and glanced at the back:

Wait...what?

I started thumbing through it...

I did not order the French version! Dammit Amazon!

I went back to check in to my Amazon account and see what I could do...about...wait, what?

So, it turns out I never actually clicked on the cover above's actual sale-page: it was entirely in French. Apparently, I just clicked on the cover, and put that order through without ever examining it closer.

Oops. But now i have a book for Delphine, so that's cool.

Plus, look how cool it looks inside:

I can't wait to get the English version, which I did order and have it coming.

Until then, there's this:

This is actually a reworking of three novels that Matthiessen wrote and published earlier. His original idea was for a single, mysterious, 1500 page book, but the publishers had him break it up. Later in life he put it all back together after editing it and reworking the middle section.

It follows the framework of Edgar J. Watson's murder at the hands of his neighbors. Well, that's the opening scene, anyway. The first section follows that initial gun-down in the street with personal statements and recollections from all the people who either participated or witnessed the events, or were close in some way with Watson. Each person has their own voice and personal schema, and Matthiessen gives each their own distinct life.

The middle section has, apparently since I've yet to get that far, at its center one of Watson's sons as a forty-year-ish-old trying to figure out why his father was killed. The last section is, I hear, Watson retelling his own life story, from start to finish, so the book starts and ends with the same scene, just from different perspectives.

Homey could write, yo.