Review
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A Newsweek Best Book of 2014
Praise for Peter Matthiessen:
“You could well school yourself as a young American writer, in
the early 21st century, by reading and then rereading the works
of Peter Matthiessen. But of course he wasn't just a writer's
writer; he was for all readers. He was for the world.” --National
Geographic
“Matthiessen was unique in our literature, a descendant of
Melville and Dostoyevsky who chronicled the heart of darkness at
the center of the American fever dream. … The loss to American
letters is immeasurable.” -- LA Review of Books
Praise for In Paradise:
“Matthiessen’s descriptions are poetic and ifying…he creates
indelible vignettes about what remains and what took place
here. Like the rest of Matthiessen’s vast body of work, “In
Paradise” leads us into questions that define our most profound
mysteries.” –The Washington Post
“The beauty of [In Paradise] comes in [Matthiessen’s] powerful
descriptions. With his command of the language, he can add
something new and profound to that vast library of Holocaust
literature. In Paradise allows Peter Matthiessen to once again
demonstrate that he remains one of our most powerful
writers.”–The Miami Herald
“The conflict between the drama of the self and its surrender in
the shadow of the Holocaust is Matthiessen's bold
subject...powerful.” –New York Review of Books
“Peter Matthiessen's In Paradise is a deeply intelligent study of
Holocaust remembrance…bleakly funny… [and] eloquent” –The Wall
Street Journal
“A fitting coda to [Matthiessen’s] career… Where better to look
for some sort of human essence than in a landscape that embodies
us at our worst?...This is the key message of Matthiessen’s life
and writing -- that we are intricate, thorny, inconsistent, that
the lines between good and bad blur within us, that we are
capable of anything. The only choice is to remain conscious, to
engage with openness.” –Los Angeles Times
“Written with a young man’s energy, In Paradise possesses an old
man’s wisdom, which eschews the presumptions of age and the easy
attainment of certitude." –The Daily Beast
“In Paradise is a fitting final addition to Matthiessen's oeuvre,
in that it combines moral seriousness and imagination grounded in
the world with elegance of expression and a willingness to take
risk.” – National Geographic
“[In Paradise] … provides rare in into the dark magnetism of
a brutal landmark. What drives a survivor to return? What
inspires conflicted visitors to join hands in spontaneous
dancing? Matthiessen’s courage and clarity in addressing this
topic [were] signal virtues of his career.” –Newsday
“Underpinned by an ambitious, near audacious, storyline…
Matthiessen proceeds to set out his fictional stall in deftly
assured fashion….[He] combines restraint with lucid,
compelling yet almost conversational prose. He has an ability to
render a character in a detail or two…All of this craft combines
to make much of In Paradise read like a masterclass in
fiction…stunning.” –The Irish Times
“Affecting and powerful… In Paradise gets at the heart of the
defining tragic enigma of the 20th century… [a] complex and
worthy adieu.” –Jane Smiley, The Guardian
“A moving valedictory for one of America’s most wide-ranging and
poetical writers… Matthiessen’s novel embraces humanity’s endless
capacity to heal and reinvent itself.” – Financial Times
“In Paradise is…contemplative and moving, and in its haunting
story of Holocaust survivors who revisit Auschwitz, we find one
of the last century’s greatest authors penning a book worthy of
his legacy.” –Grantland
“Matthiessen’s writing flexes the same kind of muscularity as
others of his generation—Vonnegut, Styron, Doctorow—but his
devotion to Zen Buddhism results in a spiritual journey that’s
palatable even to the non-spiritual… [his characters] are fully
realized people, and within them are the kernels of horror and
joy shared by all of humanity” –A.V. Club
“Matthiessen can write with ecstatic beauty… In his new novel, In
Paradise, he takes what may be his deepest look yet into the
abyss…Profound and fiercely fresh.”–Tampa Bay Times
"An ambitious tale that tries to do nothing less than achieve
some understanding of 20th century Europe’s defining event, the
Holocaust.”–Buffalo News
“An eloquently written and thought-provoking novel… In
Paradise demonstrates that Peter Matthiessen remained a vital
part of America’s contemporary literary scene, an unflinching
original who continued to write provocative narratives.”
–Counterpunch
“Short and austere… Clements’ story and those of the others are
anguished inquiries, harrowing reassessments and attempts —
emotional, artistic and spiritual — to grasp the ungraspable.”
–Minneapolis Star Tribune
“[In Paradise] deftly and ruthlessly pursues the battles that we
face, both individually and also in dialogue with others, when we
try to engage with horrors that can never be named.”–The Jewish
Book Council
“An earnest, informed, often inful and…subtle novel.”
–Christian Science Monitor
“Contains some of the most frightening and passionate writing of
Matthiessen’s long career … With In Paradise, Peter Matthiessen
has created philosophical and moral cacophony of lasting worth
and, indeed, of a strange power. It belongs on the shelf beside
At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Far Tortuga, and Shadow
Country. Of how many books can that be said?”–Open Letters
Monthly
“The two-time National Book Award–winner doesn’t shy away from
boldly tackling the most profound of subjects… Matthiessen
expertly raises the challenges and the difficulties inherent in
addressing this subject matter, proving…that the creation of art
“is the only path that might lead toward the apprehension of that
ultimate evil . . . [that] the only way to understand such evil
is to reimagine it.” –Booklist (starred review)
"Not a mere recounting but a persuasive meditation on Auschwitz’s
history and mythology...Matthiessen uses scenes of confrontation,
recollection, bitterness, and self-examination to trace aspects
of culture that led to the Holocaust and that still reverberate
today."
–Library Journal (starred review)
"Matthiessen…ponders Auschwitz decades after the Holocaust, in a
novel that’s philosophical, mordant and surprisingly romantic…An
admirable…study of the meaning of survivorship." –Kirkus Reviews
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About the Author
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Peter Matthiessen was the only writer to win the
National Book Award for fiction and nonfiction. A cofounder of
The Paris Review, he was a member of the American Academy of Arts
and Letters and a recipient of its William Dean Howells Award,
among many other honors. He was also a world-renowned naturalist,
explorer, activist, and Buddhist teacher. He died in 2014, just
before publication of In Paradise, in the home on Long Island’s
South Fork where he had lived for more than sixty years.
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