In this episode of Biographers in Conversation Lance Richardson chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen.
Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:
- Lance Richardson approached the biography with a central thesis question: how did Matthiessen develop his unique sensibility that allowed him to move fluidly between science and spirituality, treating them as complementary rather than mutually incompatible worldviews?
- The biography’s unauthorised status liberated Richardson to tell the unvarnished truth without contractual obligations to polish Matthiessen’s legacy.
- Richardson’s methodology prioritised archival evidence over potentially fallible memories, deliberately presenting conflicting accounts from sources rather than reconciling them artificially, which he considers fiction and a biographical pitfall.
- How retracing Matthiessen’s trek to Nepal’s Crystal Monastery enabled Richardson to viscerally understand the elemental spaces where Matthiessen shed ego and responsibilities to access his most authentic self.
- Richardson deliberately avoided portraying Matthiessen as a unified self, instead showing how his fractured personas were all manifestations of the same restless search for meaning and true nature.
- The biography’s ethical framework prioritised truth-telling about Matthiessen’s serial infidelities and neglect while giving substantial narrative space to Maria Matthiessen and other women to speak in their own words, resisting the biographical tradition of relegating wives to background roles.
- The epilogue’s focus on Matthiessen’s Zen teachings about death and essential mind provided closure for a biography about a fundamentally unresolved life.
