Peter Matthiessen is a two-time National Book Award winning American novelist, as well as an environmental activist, and Zen Buddhist. Along with George Plimpton and Harold L. Humes, Matthiessen founded the literary magazine The Paris Review in 1953. In 2008 Matthiessen reissued a revised edition of  his trilogy of novels — Killing Mr. Watson, Lost Man’s River and Bone by Bone, for which he received his second National Book Award.  In Men’s Lives he champions yet another cause, this time the baymen of Long Island’s East End.  Matthiessen himself worked as a commercial fisherman in the early 1950s on the South Fork of Long Island. As both knowledgeable insider and keen observer of a passing culture, he writes of the independent, tough, skilled members of a few large families who have fished those coastal waters for generations, but who no longer can make a living in the face of regulations, political restrictions, economic pressures.  A meditation on a traditional culture  marginalized by the forces of the modern culture, but also a masterful celebration of pride in one’s work, and the sense of community it brings.

Description: INSCRIBED, SIGNED & DATED BY PETER MATTHIESSEN on then half title page. TRUE FIRST EDITION. Two volumes, hardbound in olive green linen with pasted down illustrations affixed to front boards. No dust jackets, as issued. In original publishers olive green linen slipcase. Matthiessen’s tribute to the fishermen of eastern Long Island and their way of life that slowly seemed to dying away. Matthiessen has spent much of his life on the eastern end of Long Island, where he maintains a house in Sagaponack. Photographs by Danny Lyon, Gilles Peress, Lynn Johnson, Dan Budnick and others. 238 and 170 pages; as new condition. ; clean and crisp books and slipcase. A RARE INSCRIBED COPY!

Bookseller Inventory # 25017

SOLD

Men’s Lives: The Surfmen and Baymen of the South Fork
Matthiessen, Peter

Publisher: Rock Foundation
Publication Date: 1986
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, As Issued
Signed: Inscribed by Author
Edition: 1st Edition, Limited

· Category: Sold ·