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Rating: - A journey of the spirit
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.
Rating: - A Bit TOO Mindful of the Moment
I think that I admired "The Snow Leopard" more than I actually enjoyed it.
After the death of his wife, the author, Peter Matthiessen, joined a naturalist trek in Nepal to investigate the mating habits of blue sheep. His diary became the basis of "The Snow Leopard," which won a National Book Award. There's no question that it deserved the award. The autobiographical parts are moving; the descriptions of landscape and animals are meticulous and sometimes lyrical; even the Zen material, though tainted by New Age superstition, is thought-provoking. The reader feels transported into an alien world -- surely the mark of great travel writing.
That said, Matthiessen's painstaking attention to his physical surroundings overwhelms the human story at too many points for "The Snow Leoaprd" to be a really gripping read. Long stretches are devoted to sensory minutiae: snow crunches underfoot, cold falls from the stars, lichens cover rocks, sunlight illuminates a bird's wing, and so forth. These sections cry out to be skimmed. I heeded this cry.
Maybe Matthiessen stayed true to the spirit of Zen by focusing on what he saw and felt at the moment. However, this literary device robs "The Snow Leopard" of any sense of plot or forward movement. Life may not need a narrative, but books do. Much of this one is a snore.
Rating: - One of the classics of travelogue literature: The Snow Leopard
Thoreaux: Where in all the world is the literature that gives expression to Nature?
Here it is, in Peter Matthiessens's National Book Award Winning "The Snow Leopard". Peter Matthiessen is now a living legend, a prophet of ecological thought and a long time American Buddhist, but in 1973, when the book was conceived he still wasn't so famous. At the age of 46 he decided to trek through the Inner Dolpo region of Nepal with his friend and co-explorer G. Schaller (well known for his studies on the Mountain Gorillas) to study the bharal (Himalayan blue sheep) and to try to get a glimpse of the mysterious and rare snow leopard. From September to December the two men traveled with sherpas and porters from Pokhara, around the Annapurna, the Dhaulagiri, through the Jang-La Pass, to Phoksumdo Lake to the Crystal Mountain and the Shey Gompa Monastery and back, studying the wild life and rutting habits of bharal. While G. Schaller was basically interested in animals, Matthiessen in that period a Zen scholar, utilized the travel expedition to expose his thoughts, exercise his meditation abilities, recall his memories of past experiences (drugs, deaths, remorse and expectations) but most of all to paint with lyrical pen and great descriptive talent his surroundings and the people he met.
This book is a little dated, and while reading it I was reminded of that great chapter of American writing that ties together Pirsing, Castaneda and many others, but none the less it is fascinating and gratifying because it resonates with a transcendent religious feeling of nature. In "The Snow Leopard" the ecological thought that weaves its way in all Matthiessen's works is still not full blown, but this makes the book even more incisive because the perception of his convictions lends a magic atmosphere to the travelogue. The reader has an intuition of the importance of respect of wildlife independently from modern day recriminations on its destruction.
The philosophical/religious aspect is also very interesting, because we can see the fascination of an intellectual American with Buddhist thought. Peter Matthiessen is very generous of his knowledge an puts all his rich Buddhist experience in the text, explaining history, traditions and customs of the Tibetan culture.
Matthiessen is also a very good interpreter of characters, as is evident from his novels. All the people he empathically describes jump out of the page and come to life. The canny and mysterious Tukten (maybe a guiding figure like Dante's Virgilio or a true Bodhisattva) ... Read More
Rating: - Interesting and Compelling Book
The Snow Leopard is slow paced and there is little plot. The book is about a long hike and the author's coming or not coming to terms with his divorce from and the death of his ex-wife. That is really it, but the Snow Leopard took me to a new and better place, one that I can not easily explain. This is one of the best books I have ever read.
Rating: - Boring
I'm sorry. I tried to enjoy this book because it was recommended to me by my favorite author. I found it great to get me to sleep at night and not so great at inspiring me to seek adventure, spiritual or otherwise. I had no idea what this dope-head was talking about.
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