Trade Paperback
912 Pages, 5.18 x 8 x 1.48 in
November 26, 2008
Random House Publishing Group
081298062X
9780812980622
From the Publisher
2008 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER
Peter Matthiessen's great American epic-Killing Mister Watson, Lost
Man's River, and Bone by Bone-was conceived as one vast mysterious
novel, but because of its length it was originally broken up into
three books. In this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has cut nearly
a third of the overall text and collapsed the time frame while
deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with
brilliant rewriting throughout. In Shadow Country, he has
marvelously distilled a monumental work, realizing his original
vision.
Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the
turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend
of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J.
Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end
at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that
obsessed his favorite son.
Shadow Country traverses strange landscapes and frontier
hinterlands inhabited by Americans of every provenance and color,
including the black and Indian inheritors of the archaic racism
that, as Watson's wife observed, "still casts its shadow over the
nation."
Peter Matthiessen's lyrical and illuminating work in the Watson
narrative has been praised highly by such contemporaries as Saul
Bellow, William Styron, and W. S. Merwin. Joseph Heller said "I
read it in great gulps, up each night later than I wanted to be, in
my hungry impatience to find out more and more."
Praise for Shadow Country
"Shadow Country is altogether gripping, shocking, and
brilliantly told, not just a tour de force in its
stylistic range, but a great American novel, as powerful a
reading experience as nearly any in our literature. This
magnificent, sad masterpiece about race, history, and defeated
dreams can easily stand comparison with Ralph Ellison''s
Invisible Man and Robert Penn Warren''s All the
King''s Men. Little wonder, too, that parts of the story of
E.J. Watson call up comparisons with Dostoevsky, Conrad, and,
inevitably, Faulkner. In every way, Shadow Country
is a bravura performance, at once history, fiction, and myth-as
well as the capstone to the career of one of the most admired and
admirable writers of our time." - The New York Review
of Books
"Magnificent and capacious…. I''ll just say right here that the
book took my sleeve and like the ancient mariner would not let go.
Matthiessen has made his three-part saga into a new thing….
Finally now we have these books welded like a bell, and with
Watson''s song the last sound, all the elements fuse and
resonate….a breathtaking saga." - The Los Angeles
Times
"Gorgeously written and unfailingly compelling,
Shadow Country is the exhilarating masterwork of
[Matthiessen's] career, every bit as ambitious as Moby
Dick." - National Geographic Adventure
magazine
"Peter Mattiessen consolidates his epic
masterpiece of Florida -- and crafts something even
better…[He] deserves credit for decades of meticulous research and
obsessive details and soaring prose that converted the Watson
legend into critically acclaimed literature….Anyone wanting an
explanation for what happened to Florida can now find it in a
single novel, a great American novel." - Miami
Herald
"Matthiessen is writing about one man''s life in Shadow
Country, but he is also writing about the life of the nation
over the course of half a century. Watson''s story is essentially
the story of the American frontier, of the conquering of wild lands
and people, and of what such empires cost….Even among a
body of work as magnificent as Matthiessen''s, this is his great
book." - St. Petersburg Times
"Shadow Country is a magnum opus.
Matthiessen is meticulous in creating characters, lyrical in
describing landscapes, and resolute in dissecting the values and
costs that accompanied the development of this nation."
--Seattle Times
"Shadow Country" is an ambitious, lasting, and meaningful
work of literature that will not soon fade away. It is a
testament to Mr. Matthiessen's integrity as an artist that he felt
compelled to return to the Watson material to produce this work and
satisfy his original vision….a multifaceted work that can be read
variously or simultaneously as a psychological novel, a historical
novel, a morality tale, a political allegory, or a mystery. --
East Hampton Star
"Matthiessen's Watson trilogy is a touchstone of
modern American literature…this reworking…is
remarkable….Where Watson was a magnificent character
before, he comes across as nothing short of iconic here; it's
difficult to find another figure in American literature so
thoroughly and confincingly portrayed." - Publishers
Weekly, starred review, Pick of the Week
"Matthiessen has reinvigorated and rejoined the trilogy's novels…a
mosaic about the life and lynch-mob death of a turn-of-the century
Florida Everglades sugar planter and serial killer named E. J.
Watson - into the 900-plus-page Shadow Country. This is no
mere repackaging: Four hundred pages were cut from the novels,
previous background characters now tromp to the foreground, and the
books' rangy, Faulknerian essence is rendered more digestible.
Deliciously digestible, that is; this is a
thick porterhouse of a novel." - Men's Journal
"The fiction of Peter Matthiessen is the reason a lot of people in
my generation decided to be writers. No doubt about it.
SHADOW COUNTRY lives up to anyone''s highest expectations
for great writing." -- Richard Ford
"Peter Matthiessen is a brilliantly gifted and ambitious writer, an
inspired anatomist of the American mythos. His storytelling skills
are prodigious and his rapport with his subject is remarkable." --
Joyce Carol Oates
"Peter Matthiessen''s work, both in fiction and non-fiction, has
become a unique achievement in his own generation and in American
literature as a whole. Everything that he has written has been
conveyed in his own clear, deeply informed, elegant and powerful
prose. The Watson saga-in-the-round, to which he has devoted nearly
thirty years, is his crowning achievement.
SHADOW COUNTRY, his distillation of the earlier
trilogy, is his transmutation of it to represent his original
vision. It is the quintessence of his lifelong concerns,
and a great legacy." -- W.S. Merwin
From the Hardcover edition.
From the Jacket
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
Peter Matthiessen's great American epic-Killing Mister Watson, Lost
Man's River, and Bone by Bone-was conceived as one vast mysterious
novel, but because of its length it was originally broken up into
three books. In this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has cut nearly
a third of the overall text and collapsed the time frame while
deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with
brilliant rewriting throughout. In Shadow Country, he has
marvelously distilled a monumental work, realizing his original
vision.
Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the
turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend
of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J.
Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end
at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that
obsessed his favorite son.
Shadow Country traverses strange landscapes and frontier
hinterlands inhabited by Americans of every provenance and color,
including the black and Indian inheritors of the archaic racism
that, as Watson's wife observed, "still casts its shadow over the
nation."
Peter Matthiessen's lyrical and illuminating work in the Watson
narrative has been praised highly by such contemporaries as Saul
Bellow, William Styron, and W. S. Merwin. Joseph Heller said "I
read it in great gulps, up each night later than I wanted to be, in
my hungry impatience to find out more and more."
Praise for Shadow Country
"Shadow Country is altogether gripping, shocking, and
brilliantly told, not just a tour de force in its
stylistic range, but a great American novel, as powerful a
reading experience as nearly any in our literature. This
magnificent, sad masterpiece about race, history, and defeated
dreams can easily stand comparison with Ralph Ellison's
Invisible Man and Robert Penn Warren's All the King's
Men. Little wonder, too, that parts of the story of E.J.
Watson call up comparisons with Dostoevsky, Conrad, and,
inevitably, Faulkner. In every way, Shadow Country
is a bravura performance, at once history, fiction, and myth-as
well as the capstone to the career of one of the most admired and
admirable writers of our time." - The New York Review
of Books
"Magnificent and capacious…. I'll just say right here that the book
took my sleeve and like the ancient mariner would not let go.
Matthiessen has made his three-part saga into a new thing….
Finally now we have these books welded like a bell, and with
Watson's song the last sound, all the elements fuse and resonate….a
breathtaking saga." - The Los Angeles Times
"Gorgeously written and unfailingly compelling,
Shadow Country is the exhilarating masterwork of
[Matthiessen's] career, every bit as ambitious as Moby
Dick." - National Geographic Adventure
magazine
"Peter Mattiessen consolidates his epic
masterpiece of Florida -- and crafts something even
better…[He] deserves credit for decades of meticulous research and
obsessive details and soaring prose that converted the Watson
legend into critically acclaimed literature….Anyone wanting an
explanation for what happened to Florida can now find it in a
single novel, a great American novel." - Miami
Herald
"Matthiessen is writing about one man's life in Shadow
Country, but he is also writing about the life of the nation
over the course of half a century. Watson's story is essentially
the story of the American frontier, of the conquering of wild lands
and people, and of what such empires cost….Even among a
body of work as magnificent as Matthiessen's, this is his great
book." - St. Petersburg Times
"Shadow Country is a magnum opus.
Matthiessen is meticulous in creating characters, lyrical in
describing landscapes, and resolute in dissecting the values and
costs that accompanied the development of this nation."
--Seattle Times
"Shadow Country" is an ambitious, lasting, and meaningful
work of literature that will not soon fade away. It is a
testament to Mr. Matthiessen's integrity as an artist that he felt
compelled to return to the Watson material to produce this work and
satisfy his original vision….a multifaceted work that can be read
variously or simultaneously as a psychological novel, a historical
novel, a morality tale, a political allegory, or a mystery. --
East Hampton Star
"Matthiessen's Watson trilogy is a touchstone of
modern American literature…this reworking…is
remarkable….Where Watson was a magnificent character
before, he comes across as nothing short of iconic here; it's
difficult to find another figure in American literature so
thoroughly and confincingly portrayed." - Publishers
Weekly, starred review, Pick of the Week
"Matthiessen has reinvigorated and rejoined the trilogy's novels…a
mosaic about the life and lynch-mob death of a turn-of-the century
Florida Everglades sugar planter and serial killer named E. J.
Watson - into the 900-plus-page Shadow Country. This is no
mere repackaging: Four hundred pages were cut from the novels,
previous background characters now tromp to the foreground, and the
books' rangy, Faulknerian essence is rendered more digestible.
Deliciously digestible, that is; this is a
thick porterhouse of a novel." - Men's Journal
"The fiction of Peter Matthiessen is the reason a lot of people in
my generation decided to be writers. No doubt about it.
SHADOW COUNTRY lives up to anyone's highest expectations
for great writing." -- Richard Ford
"Peter Matthiessen is a brilliantly gifted and ambitious writer, an
inspired anatomist of the American mythos. His storytelling skills
are prodigious and his rapport with his subject is remarkable." --
Joyce Carol Oates
"Peter Matthiessen's work, both in fiction and non-fiction, has
become a unique achievement in his own generation and in American
literature as a whole. Everything that he has written has been
conveyed in his own clear, deeply informed, elegant and powerful
prose. The Watson saga-in-the-round, to which he has devoted nearly
thirty years, is his crowning achievement.
SHADOW COUNTRY, his distillation of the earlier
trilogy, is his transmutation of it to represent his original
vision. It is the quintessence of his lifelong concerns,
and a great legacy." -- W.S. Merwin
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Peter Matthiessen has written eight novels, including At Play
in the Fields of the Lord (nominated for the National Book
Award) and Far Tortuga, and also a book of short stories,
On the River Styx. His parallel career as a naturalist and
environmental activist has produced numerous acclaimed works of
nonfiction, most of them serialized in The New Yorker; these
include The Tree Where Man Was Born (another National Book
Award nominee) and The Snow Leopard (a National Book Award
winner). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters
in 1974.
From the Hardcover edition.