July 28, 2025 • 10 mins
Listen to full audiobooks for free on : https://hotaudiobook.com/free Title: No Boundaries Author: Peter Matthiessen Format: Original Recording Length: 1 hr and 7 mins Language: English Release date: 12-16-99 Publisher: Phoenix Books Genres: Comedy, Memoirs Summary: Would you believe that one man championed the cause of Native Americans with Leonard Peltier, helped migrant farm workers with Cesar Chavez, traveled to Nepal, hiked the Himalayas, explored Africa and founded The Paris Review? It's true, and it's the life of Peter Matthiessen. Listen to entrancing travel tales and real life anecdotes from this author of At Play in the Fields of the Lord and the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard. Recording (P)1997 by Audio Literature Contact: info@hotaudiobook.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You know, I could do that. I could write about boats,
I could write about the sea. I knew how to
do this, and I knew how to do that, which
was really there the contribution to my life. I feel
very grateful and very lucky. And even though now these
days I repudiate a lot of those WASP and values,
I do. I feel that those WASP values led us
(00:21):
to George Bush. And I think that, and as much
to be said for the wast values too. There are
certain elements of the WASP character that I admire very much.
But I think that there a certain category of people
which included most of the people we knew, and including
the Bushes who lived in the same time we didn't,
which was so sheltered, which was so really unaware of
(00:43):
mass poverty and misery and social iniquity and social injustice.
I just couldn't believe it. So I've always felt obliged
to write four on behalf of people who did not
have those advantages. And I think that my own family
and my own people I was raised with went to
school with all I think I'm a turncoat, that I've
betrayed my heritage or something like that. I don't feel
(01:07):
that nor do I feel that I'm hostile to my country.
I feel it, and I feel it in being ashamed,
for example of the Gulf War, I don't think that's
being anti American, that's being anti flag waving. That's being
anti kind of tin patriotism, which we hear so much
from Washington. But I think for this country with an
(01:27):
extraordinary record, extraordinary constitution, extraordinary men who've led this country
to be involved in so many wars so called against
third world countries, people who cannot detend themselves in every case,
small brown people. Is somehow I think it would have
(01:48):
sickened Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and these people. You feel
that this is kind of beneath us. I think I
always wanted to write. I mean, since I was fifteen,
I was writing very bad and short stories, and most
(02:12):
of them mercifully never saw the light of day. But
then when I was in college and I went to
a creative writing course so called, and while I was
a senior at college, I sold my first short story
to the Atlantic and it won the Atlantic Prize that year.
And then they took another story, and on the basis
(02:36):
of that, I got this very tough agent. She was
actually great, but I didn't realize it at the time.
She was like a zen teacher. She beat me up,
you know. And after she became my agent, I then said, well,
this is come on a publish stories. I got a prize,
I got a nation. I'll write the Great American novel.
(02:57):
That's obviously the next step, you know. So I went
home to write that, and after about one hundred and
fifty pages, I thought, well, she you know, I better
share this with the world. I mean, this is some
stuff I got. So I fired it off to Bernice,
my agent, and then I just started hung around the
post office for a few weeks waiting for the offerers
(03:17):
from Hollywood to roll in and stuff. And suddenly my
manuscript came back. I was amazed to see it back,
and there it was with a note from Beernice. And
here's the note in its entirety. Dear Peter James Fenimore
Cooper wrote this one hundred and fifty years ago, only
(03:37):
he wrote it better yours, Bernice. So that was a
smart pill. And I put that novel on the shelf
and I never have taken it off. I don't know
whether that was good or bad. But whatever she was
very tough. And then later on I went. I went
to Paris where we started the Parish for You and everything.
A while there I was still scribbling short stories, so
(03:59):
I put one in a contest in the London Observer newspaper,
Christmas Contest Christmas oriented some something that the story had
to has something to do with Christmas. Very bad idea
to dictate the idea of anyway, that's what they did,
and I was broke, so I threw my stock through
the story. It was won by a very good writer
named Muriel Spark, who was unknown men but has since
(04:21):
would come very well known. But I was one of
the four hundred and fifty ulsa rands, and I think
I was paid eighteen dollars for my pains, and I
thought it would be courteous to send Benice her commission
on this eighteen so I really did send her a
check for I don't know ten percent of whatever I got,
thinking she'd be just swimming get away with gratitude my courtesy.
(04:43):
So she didn't handle the story. And the letter I
got back was dear Peter, I'm awfully glad you were
able to get rid of this story in Europe, as
I do not think we would have had much luck
with it here yours Beernice. So on the other hand,
I will say, when Bennice retired, she called me in
(05:08):
and she said, she said, I know, and I'm aware,
I was very tough with you. She said, I was
very tough with you because I think you're very good
and I didn't want you to get any swollow head.
And she was right. It's exactly the where as an
teacher will treat you kick you around. The better students
you are, the worse treatment you get. But she had
(05:30):
to wait till she was no old lady on a
deathbed before she admit such. Years ago, when I was
working with the New Yorker a lot, I read in
a wonderful book which I recommend to anybody or everybody,
a book called The Windward Road by doctor Archie Carr,
who was a herpetologist specializing in sea turtles. And at
(05:52):
that time they had not discovered the nesting beaches of
an animal called the olive Ridley turtle, just to look
at the small and scarce sea turtle. So Carr had
this enviable job. We're going all around the Caribbean to
every Caribbean island, exploring beaches for turtles. I can't imagine
a more delightful way to spend my life in that.
(06:14):
And in the course of this journey he went to
graham came An Island, and he discovered there was a
man there still sailing a schooner down to the Mosquito
coast of Nicaragua fishing green sea turtles, and that this
was a schooner under sail. And I couldn't believe that.
I can believe there's still an operating, working schooner in
(06:34):
the Western Hemisphere. So I went rushing into mister Swan
and I told him about this, and I said, I
gotta get on that boat, and I want to go
down on this turtle wires if I can get arranged
to it. He said, go ahead. Sounds like a good idea.
So I went, but what with one delay or another.
And a very very erratic man and difficult man. The
captain of this boat was a wonderful man, the way
a very funny guy will say that I had a
(06:55):
lot of laughs. But he was a pirate beginning to end,
and he was anxious to take as much of the
New Yorker's money and or mine off me as possible
and stall me off. But I finally succeeded on going
on Turtle Boys. But by that time I'd run up
quite a lot of expense for the New Yorker on
travel and hotels and stuff down there, and even worse
(07:16):
than that, I went on as Turtle Voyage and immediately
knew over within two or three days that I wanted
to do a novel. I did not really want to
do a nonfiction piece on it. I saw I was
seeing things a whole different way as an experiment that
I could make. That excited me very much. So I
came back to New York and I thought it was
only honest to tell me, sir Sean, as look, I
(07:37):
can do the piece, and the piece will be okay,
but I'm not going to give you the best stuff.
I'm going to hold back the best material. Now. With
my experience of editors up until then, I was expecting
an angry screaming what do you mean wait paper that's
come out, and telling you know, I was just waiting
for that, you know, abuse. Mister Sean, without even hesitating,
(07:58):
said and do it's best for your work by pack
crashed on my knees, tears arcing out of my eyes
with gratitude and reverence. You know, at that stage, I
just hadn't run into that kind of editor before. And
a few years ago when he was and I did
do I did do the non fiction piece for them too.
It's back in The New Yorker somewhere. But a few
(08:20):
years ago when he was booted out of the New
Yorker while summarily by the New House Group, I wrooned
him a letter. I just reminded him of the story
and I just told him, mister Seawan, I just want
to let you know that this is the apogee of
my meetings with editors and all my life by the
book editors or magazine. And I honored this moment the most.
(08:41):
And I had a very sweet, affectionate letter back from him.
And as you know, he just died ten days ago.
So the wonderful man and a wonderful editor. I can't
say I knew him very well. I worked with him
within a couple of years after he came to The
New Yorker, so in nearly thirty years, I guess. And
he is always mister Shan and mister Matheson, absolutely formal,
(09:05):
but also very affectionate and respectful. I began with them.
That's something I've never done since, which was an annals
of crime. They used to have to think called annals
of crime, Great crime stories. This is an extraordinary story
of a woman named Yvonne Chevalier who murdered her husband,
Pierre Chevalier, who was a minister in the French government,
(09:28):
and she's having an affair with them, more or less
with the cooperation of her husband, who, when asked in
court why he didn't protest this affair so you should
have seen the last one, he said, at least this
guy was kind of upperclass. He was a minister. You know,
this is his wife, the minissa was having an affair.
So it was kind of a Moliere story. And I
(09:49):
did that story. I worked on it actually with Ben Bradley,
later became the editor of the Washington Post, and we
worked out together and put that in New York and
that was it, a long long time ago.
You know, I could do that. I could write about boats,
I could write about the sea. I knew how to
do this, and I knew how to do that, which
was really there the contribution to my life. I feel
very grateful and very lucky. And even though now these
days I repudiate a lot of those WASP and values,
I do. I feel that those WASP values led us
(00:21):
to George Bush. And I think that, and as much
to be said for the wast values too. There are
certain elements of the WASP character that I admire very much.
But I think that there a certain category of people
which included most of the people we knew, and including
the Bushes who lived in the same time we didn't,
which was so sheltered, which was so really unaware of
(00:43):
mass poverty and misery and social iniquity and social injustice.
I just couldn't believe it. So I've always felt obliged
to write four on behalf of people who did not
have those advantages. And I think that my own family
and my own people I was raised with went to
school with all I think I'm a turncoat, that I've
betrayed my heritage or something like that. I don't feel
(01:07):
that nor do I feel that I'm hostile to my country.
I feel it, and I feel it in being ashamed,
for example of the Gulf War, I don't think that's
being anti American, that's being anti flag waving. That's being
anti kind of tin patriotism, which we hear so much
from Washington. But I think for this country with an
(01:27):
extraordinary record, extraordinary constitution, extraordinary men who've led this country
to be involved in so many wars so called against
third world countries, people who cannot detend themselves in every case,
small brown people. Is somehow I think it would have
(01:48):
sickened Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and these people. You feel
that this is kind of beneath us. I think I
always wanted to write. I mean, since I was fifteen,
I was writing very bad and short stories, and most
(02:12):
of them mercifully never saw the light of day. But
then when I was in college and I went to
a creative writing course so called, and while I was
a senior at college, I sold my first short story
to the Atlantic and it won the Atlantic Prize that year.
And then they took another story, and on the basis
(02:36):
of that, I got this very tough agent. She was
actually great, but I didn't realize it at the time.
She was like a zen teacher. She beat me up,
you know. And after she became my agent, I then said, well,
this is come on a publish stories. I got a prize,
I got a nation. I'll write the Great American novel.
(02:57):
That's obviously the next step, you know. So I went
home to write that, and after about one hundred and
fifty pages, I thought, well, she you know, I better
share this with the world. I mean, this is some
stuff I got. So I fired it off to Bernice,
my agent, and then I just started hung around the
post office for a few weeks waiting for the offerers
(03:17):
from Hollywood to roll in and stuff. And suddenly my
manuscript came back. I was amazed to see it back,
and there it was with a note from Beernice. And
here's the note in its entirety. Dear Peter James Fenimore
Cooper wrote this one hundred and fifty years ago, only
(03:37):
he wrote it better yours, Bernice. So that was a
smart pill. And I put that novel on the shelf
and I never have taken it off. I don't know
whether that was good or bad. But whatever she was
very tough. And then later on I went. I went
to Paris where we started the Parish for You and everything.
A while there I was still scribbling short stories, so
(03:59):
I put one in a contest in the London Observer newspaper,
Christmas Contest Christmas oriented some something that the story had
to has something to do with Christmas. Very bad idea
to dictate the idea of anyway, that's what they did,
and I was broke, so I threw my stock through
the story. It was won by a very good writer
named Muriel Spark, who was unknown men but has since
(04:21):
would come very well known. But I was one of
the four hundred and fifty ulsa rands, and I think
I was paid eighteen dollars for my pains, and I
thought it would be courteous to send Benice her commission
on this eighteen so I really did send her a
check for I don't know ten percent of whatever I got,
thinking she'd be just swimming get away with gratitude my courtesy.
(04:43):
So she didn't handle the story. And the letter I
got back was dear Peter, I'm awfully glad you were
able to get rid of this story in Europe, as
I do not think we would have had much luck
with it here yours Beernice. So on the other hand,
I will say, when Bennice retired, she called me in
(05:08):
and she said, she said, I know, and I'm aware,
I was very tough with you. She said, I was
very tough with you because I think you're very good
and I didn't want you to get any swollow head.
And she was right. It's exactly the where as an
teacher will treat you kick you around. The better students
you are, the worse treatment you get. But she had
(05:30):
to wait till she was no old lady on a
deathbed before she admit such. Years ago, when I was
working with the New Yorker a lot, I read in
a wonderful book which I recommend to anybody or everybody,
a book called The Windward Road by doctor Archie Carr,
who was a herpetologist specializing in sea turtles. And at
(05:52):
that time they had not discovered the nesting beaches of
an animal called the olive Ridley turtle, just to look
at the small and scarce sea turtle. So Carr had
this enviable job. We're going all around the Caribbean to
every Caribbean island, exploring beaches for turtles. I can't imagine
a more delightful way to spend my life in that.
(06:14):
And in the course of this journey he went to
graham came An Island, and he discovered there was a
man there still sailing a schooner down to the Mosquito
coast of Nicaragua fishing green sea turtles, and that this
was a schooner under sail. And I couldn't believe that.
I can believe there's still an operating, working schooner in
(06:34):
the Western Hemisphere. So I went rushing into mister Swan
and I told him about this, and I said, I
gotta get on that boat, and I want to go
down on this turtle wires if I can get arranged
to it. He said, go ahead. Sounds like a good idea.
So I went, but what with one delay or another.
And a very very erratic man and difficult man. The
captain of this boat was a wonderful man, the way
a very funny guy will say that I had a
(06:55):
lot of laughs. But he was a pirate beginning to end,
and he was anxious to take as much of the
New Yorker's money and or mine off me as possible
and stall me off. But I finally succeeded on going
on Turtle Boys. But by that time I'd run up
quite a lot of expense for the New Yorker on
travel and hotels and stuff down there, and even worse
(07:16):
than that, I went on as Turtle Voyage and immediately
knew over within two or three days that I wanted
to do a novel. I did not really want to
do a nonfiction piece on it. I saw I was
seeing things a whole different way as an experiment that
I could make. That excited me very much. So I
came back to New York and I thought it was
only honest to tell me, sir Sean, as look, I
(07:37):
can do the piece, and the piece will be okay,
but I'm not going to give you the best stuff.
I'm going to hold back the best material. Now. With
my experience of editors up until then, I was expecting
an angry screaming what do you mean wait paper that's
come out, and telling you know, I was just waiting
for that, you know, abuse. Mister Sean, without even hesitating,
(07:58):
said and do it's best for your work by pack
crashed on my knees, tears arcing out of my eyes
with gratitude and reverence. You know, at that stage, I
just hadn't run into that kind of editor before. And
a few years ago when he was and I did
do I did do the non fiction piece for them too.
It's back in The New Yorker somewhere. But a few
(08:20):
years ago when he was booted out of the New
Yorker while summarily by the New House Group, I wrooned
him a letter. I just reminded him of the story
and I just told him, mister Seawan, I just want
to let you know that this is the apogee of
my meetings with editors and all my life by the
book editors or magazine. And I honored this moment the most.
(08:41):
And I had a very sweet, affectionate letter back from him.
And as you know, he just died ten days ago.
So the wonderful man and a wonderful editor. I can't
say I knew him very well. I worked with him
within a couple of years after he came to The
New Yorker, so in nearly thirty years, I guess. And
he is always mister Shan and mister Matheson, absolutely formal,
(09:05):
but also very affectionate and respectful. I began with them.
That's something I've never done since, which was an annals
of crime. They used to have to think called annals
of crime, Great crime stories. This is an extraordinary story
of a woman named Yvonne Chevalier who murdered her husband,
Pierre Chevalier, who was a minister in the French government,
(09:28):
and she's having an affair with them, more or less
with the cooperation of her husband, who, when asked in
court why he didn't protest this affair so you should
have seen the last one, he said, at least this
guy was kind of upperclass. He was a minister. You know,
this is his wife, the minissa was having an affair.
So it was kind of a Moliere story. And I
(09:49):
did that story. I worked on it actually with Ben Bradley,
later became the editor of the Washington Post, and we
worked out together and put that in New York and
that was it, a long long time ago.
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