The Snow Leopard

"Largely gone are the dry summaries, the highflown and impersonal plural nouns that have deadened many chapters of Mr. Matthiessen's previous books. A shard of rose quartz, the spores of a cinnamon fern, a companionable mound of pony dung, a dog barking at his pale tent in the moonlight, all may excite him as if this were his first--or at least last--day on earth. On the other hand, except for two or three poignant references toward the end, the interpolations concerning his wife seem not so much insincere as jimmied unnaturally into his diary. Though he must indeed have thought of her with grief and guilt under the circumstances, from falsity of placement and carelessness they do not fit."Peter Matthiessen is the author of 'The Snow Leopard' with ISBN 9780844671284 and ISBN 0844671282.