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| Author: Peter Matthiessen
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $4.16
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New (39) Used (43) Collectible (2) from $4.16
Avg. Customer Rating:  66 reviews
Sales Rank: 52530
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0140255087
Dewey Decimal Number: 599.74428
EAN: 9780140255089
ASIN: 0140255087
Publication Date: August 4, 1987
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: ***PLEASE NOTE*** Graded to Amazon Guidelines. Scuffed edges. clean text tight binding shelf wear on cover large crease on back cover a couple of pages are slightly bent .
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| Customer Reviews:
 Can a book generate a karma all its own? This one does. February 8, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
The Snow Leopard is not just a book, rather a marvelous mental holiday one can return to as often as one needs, like a literary hitchhiker, to get away from the modernity and electronic technology that swamps us. Matthiessen illuminates the mystery and silence of the Himalayas, and the human need for nature and it's transformational powers.
I read this book every year, and for two years taught it on a college level to over 500 freshman. Yes, freshmen, at 7:00 a.m., who have never even seen snow.
Being a public college and teaching a book with overtly religious themes, I suggested they skip over the "Buddhist bits" if it did not interest them, and stick to the journey, paying attention to PM, George Schaller and the mixed bag of porters and Sherpas who guided them. Funny thing when you tell students not to read something, they go right for it.
To my amazement, they got it. They understood Matthiessen's flaws: the drug use, failed marriages, parental doubts about leaving family once again to pursue "nothing" in one of the remotest places on earth--the Land of Dolpo, where lamas rule and people obey. Students are intimate with the concept of to work for the sake of work; be it one foot in front of the other on a trail in Nepal, or their own path of study; these young people easily saw how humans transforms themselves through their work and passions. They were also quite politically savy, impressed by the results of this remarkable and timeless journey into the heart of the wilderness where it's okay to get lost, make mistakes and fail.
Readers should not ignore the after affects, literal shock waves, both literary and political which came out of this simple journey between a writer and field biologist, who submitted his report on the wildlife numbers to Kathmandu who ten years later created the Shey-Phoksumdo National Park, the largest preserve in Nepal. The snow leopard still lives and is protected because PM and GS walked that path, and more importantly freely shared their observations, not just writing within their fields, but about themselves as human beings and the role human beings play in protecting or destroying what's left of our environment.
Matthiessen much deserved the National Book Award for Contemporary Thought in 1980, and many people do not know The Snow Leopard was to be the cover story for the New York Times Book Review the Sunday the pressmen went on strike for the first and only time in it's history. The review was never run. It did not become the best seller it seemed destined to be, given the glowing reviews of the time.
It has become a cult classic instead, with a karma all its own. It's okay not to "get it" all the first time you read it. It unfolds, like a lotus blossom.
Zen and the art of wildlife biology November 27, 2006
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
After the death of his wife, Matthiesen joins a friend (George Schaller) on a fall expedition to Nepal to study the rut of a rare sheep/goat (the classification of the species is one of the subjects of the research). Matthiesen has been studying Zen Buddhism for several years, and is interested in the area both for its wildlife and for its Buddhism. This book consists of (heavily edited and revised) journal entries that tell the story of his journey. He gives us both a travel story and meditations on Buddhism. The interplay between the two work very well.
Several of Matthiesen's own Quests are revealed as the book goes on, and many end up having Zen lessons. Many of these have the kind of resolution that you might expect if the book were fictional, in that some are Too Perfect for a Zen novice. Yet they are entirely believable, and I suspect that the degree of poetic license here is not too great.
If those two paragraphs have convinced you to read the book, stop right here. If not, I'll summarize some of the Zen lessons - - but be advised that several spoilers follow.
Matthiesen wants to see a snow leopard but never does. However, when he splits up from his partner, his partner sees the leopard.
Matthiesen wants to visit a particular "monastery" to visit a particular lama. He ultimately visits the monastery and later learns than he has already met the lama.
He wants to learn Buddhism from the Buddhists who serve as the expedition porters, but not too surprisingly they aren't very Buddhist at all. Also not too surprisingly, he learns the most from the least likely candidate, who is not trying to teach him anything at all. (I actually think that Matthiessen is wrong about this porter, but the literary point is what Matthiesen thinks he learned from him.)
And again, not surprisingly, in the end Matthiesen does find what he is not looking for.
If you're part of a reading group, you might try this one alongside Catherine Reid's "Coyote: Seeking the Hunter in Our Midst." Both books interweave a story about the natural world with an intensely personal journey. As I discussed in my review of "Coyote," I think Reid fails, while Matthiesen succeeds. In part, this reflects the fact that Matthiesen has a strong spiritual core, though a seemingly weak, Zen core. He has no chip on his shoulder. Matthiesen is also traveling more interesting terrain than Reid (Nepal versus western Massachusetts). His recurring stories of goals not reached are also more interesting than Reid's more linear narrative.
Despite its strengths, Matthiessen can be an exasperating companion at time. He has Great White Hunter attitudes toward the porters. He has abandoned his son shortly after his wife's death, and does not keep promises to his son about his return. He can be self-indulgent, as is true of many people on a spiritual quest. He's not as self-critical as he might be, but honest enough to give us the rope with which to hang him if we want to do so.
Finally, if you're interested in the Himalayan region, this is one of the best travel narratives that I've read. It has richer characterization and a stronger sense of setting than the more spartan account in, say, "Seven Years in Tibet." It's a page turner and worth reading more than once.
In my rucksack forever... November 24, 2006
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
When I'm not carrying this book, it's carrying me.
These are the mountains of your heart.
 Matthiessen's strange book October 31, 2006
14 out of 22 found this review helpful
In "The Snow Leopard" Peter Matthiessen takes a long length of rope and
proceeds to hang himself.
- As implied by his own words, the man is a
Primadonna: a large ego, easily bruised. Not your ideal
trekking companion.
- He abandons his son when he needs him the most, then
milks the situation for dramatic effect.
- His ex-wife's cancer death gets similar treatment.
- He prints her incredibly bad poetry to show what a
wonderful person she was. Shouldn't he as a writer
have at least some aesthetic judgment?
- He catches a fleeting glimpse of an animal but can't
quite make out what it is. Matthiessen's conclusion: It's
the Yeti!
- One of the Nepalis in the group is a liar, a rouge
and a thief. Matthiessen has been warned about him, but is
impressed by the man's countenance and suspects he may
be a guru sent to enlighten him. There follow several
predictable incidents with the 'guru'. But Matthiessen in his
New Age fog assumes that the master is testing him, to
check if he can see past facades. Later he actually
takes the man to a trekking agency and gives him a
glowing reference! Pity the poor trekking group that hires
this scoundrel based on Matthiessen's recommendation.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Nevertheless,
the book is recommended as an exercise in reading
between the lines: What the author says; what really happened.
 A Journey into the Heart of the Himalayas September 9, 2006
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
Peter Matthiessen's "The Snow Leopard" operates on several levels. It is the narrative of a 1973 journey by Matthiessen and zoologist George Schaller, accompanied by a team of sherpas and porters, into a remote region of Nepal to search for the rare snow leopard of the title. On another level, it describes Matthiessen's struggle to come to grips with his wife's recent death of cancer. On a third level, it is the author's exploration of his Buddhist faith in an environment ideally suited for mystic experiences.
"The Snow Leopard" is superbly well-written. This reviewer particularly enjoyed Matthiessen's very personal account of the 35-day approach march into northern Nepal, passing through an ancient, austere and isolated mountain culture. The team's journey took them across a series of snow-choked high altitude mountain passes to reach a remote valley in the Dolpo region under the "Crystal Mountain." Matthiessen has a gift for describing the people, customs, and wildlife he encounters along the way, and the team's struggles with food, shelter, and route-finding in the high mountains.
It is clear from the narrative that Matthiessen came to regard the expedition as a spiritual journey. The lengthy descriptions of the Buddhist faith in its various manifestations may have limited appeal for many readers, but experienced hikers and trekkers will appreciate the mountain environment in which the author felt compelled to explore the limits of his faith. Of equal interest is what Matthiessen learns in his interactions with his sherpas and other Nepalese, simple mountain folk who live very much in each moment.
Matthiessen's 1973 ideas about drug use, anthropology, and politics look fairly dated from the perspective of 2006. The narrative would have benefited from additional illustrations beyond the single photo provided in the text.
This book holds up extremely well as an exemplar of travel literature. "The Snow Leopard" is highly recommended to those with an interest in the Himalayas and the mountain culture found there.
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