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I bought this (a) because I had wanted to read about snow leopards and (b) because the cover of the edition I have indicates it won both the American Book Award and the National Book Award. What does intrude, however, and annoy, is the overuse of allusions to other literary works and the many attempts buttress poor thinking and analysis with poorly thought out interpretations of results of research in (obviously misunderstood) other areas. Well, it's not about snow leopards--at least not in the 80 pages I could manage to slog through--but no one promised me it would be, so fair enough.What the book seems to be is a series of shallow meditations hung on a metaphoric frame of a journey. The ostensible topic of the writing is Buddhism and sundry "eastern" forms of religious belief and mysticism(s): the things Matthiessen writes about, however, are actually mid-20th century Western translations of or interpretations of "Eastern 'philosophy'." At least in the pages I read, he has nothing interesting to relate about these topics.The prose is not particularly smooth, but it does not really intrude on the reading experience. (Whenever writers who are not physicists start alluding to developments in 20th century physics, you can be pretty sure they don't know either physics or the topic at hand).Now, note well that I quit reading the book: maybe I am completely wrong, and the author's intent was to have the experience of reading the book reproduce a difficult spiritual journey, with the boring, unrewarding, pointless slogging coming first and the payoff later. I skimmed later sections of the book, however, and didn't see any hints of a payoff.Don't bother with this book.
There is not much more I can add to this review that others have not covered. I would highly recommend it.The book did lose one star for it's very wordy descriptions of the Himalayan environment. I am not a student of Zen Buddhism, but the author's explanations of the origins, myths, and whatnot of several types of Buddhism is very interesting to read. This book works on several levels, as a spiritual text, travelogue, and naturalist text. I suppose the author had a lot of time to minutely explore his surroundings, but it does not make for good reading, especially since he doesn't do a very good job of painting a detailed picture. However, don't let that stop you from reading what is one of the best travel books ever written.
This is my favourite book of all time. I am in simple awe of the way Mattheissen uses language in this book. Poetry in a prose form.
I loved this book so much that I selected it as the first choice in our blog post on NileGuide (www.nileguide.com) about Top 50 Adventure Books of All Time (http://blog.nileguide.com/2009/01/21/top-50-adventure-books-of-all-time/). It's one of the few works of literature that has ever inspired me to underline passages and re-read them later. It's a journey of discovery on multiple levels, set against the most inspiring backdrop imaginable --- the Himalayas. The severity of the landscape only serves to amplify the author's message, and in some respects, it's central to the message itself.
The author never does find the snow leopard but his journey in the Himalaya helps him to begin to find himself and discover the meaning of life -- through the life and example of the simple folk he encounters, especially his sherpa. The author thinks and writes like a poet. His language and imagery are extraordinary. This is a book not to be missed.
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