African silences

Format:

Book

Title:

African silences

Author:

Matthiessen, Peter author

ISBN:

9780679400219

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication:

New York : Random House, [1991]

Physical Description:

225 pages : maps ; 22 cm

General Note:

Maps on endpapers.

Contents:

Prologue -- African silences: Senegal, Gambia, Ivory Coast (1978) -- Of peacocks and gorillas: Zaire (1978) -- Pygmies and Pygmy elephants: the Congo basin (1986) -- Epilogue.

Summary:

Author's account of his travels in Western Africa in 1978 and in Eastern Africa in 1986 tells of the vanishing worlds of Africa and what is replacing them.

"Through his eyes we see elephants, white rhinos, gorillas, and other endangered creatures of the wild. We share the drama of the journeys themselves, including a hazardous crossing of the continent in a light plane. And along the way, we learn of the human lives oppressed by bankrupt political regimes and economies, and threatened by the slow ecological catastrophe to which they have only begun to awaken"--Publisher's description.

Personal Subject:

Matthiessen, Peter-Travel-Africa.

Matthiessen, Peter. (OCoLC)fst00001713

Subject(s):

Natural history -- Africa.

Human ecology -- Africa.

Naturalists -- United States -- Biography.

Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

Africa -- Description and travel.

Geographic Term:

Africa -- Description and travel.

Genre:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... McMinnville Public Library	960.4 MATTHIESSEN	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Salem Main Library	916 Matthiessen 1991	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

African Silences is a powerful and sobering account of the cataclysmic depredation of the African landscape and its wildlife. In this critically acclaimed work Peter Matthiessen explores new terrain on a continent he has written about in two previous books, A Tree Where Man Was Born -- nominated for the National Book Award -- and Sand Rivers. Through his eyes we see elephants, white rhinos, gorillas, and other endangered creatures of the wild. We share the drama of the journeys themselves, including a hazardous crossing of the continent in a light plane. And along the way, we learn of the human lives oppressed by bankrupt political regimes and economies, and threatened by the slow ecological catastrophe to which they have only begun to awaken.

Author Notes

Peter Matthiessen was born in Manhattan, New York on May 22, 1927. He served in the Navy at Pearl Harbor. He graduated with a degree in English from Yale University in 1950. It was around this time that he was recruited by the CIA and traveled to Paris, where he became acquainted with several young expatriate American writers. In the postwar years the CIA covertly financed magazines and cultural programs to counter the spread of Communism. While in Paris, he helped found The Paris Review in 1953.

After returning to the United States, he worked as a commercial fisherman and the captain of a charter fishing boat. His first novel, Race Rock, was published in 1954. His other fiction works include Partisans, Raditzer, Far Tortuga, and In Paradise. His novel, Shadow Country, won a National Book Award. His novel, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, was made into a movie.

He started writing nonfiction after divorcing his first wife. An assignment for Sports Illustrated to report on American endangered species led to the book Wildlife in America, which was published in 1959. His travels took him to Asia, Australia, South America, Africa, New Guinea, the Florida swamps, and beneath the ocean. These travels led to articles in The New Yorker as well as numerous nonfiction books including The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness, Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons of Stone Age New Guinea, Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark, The Tree Where Man Was Born, and Men's Lives. The Snow Leopard won the 1979 National Book Award for nonfiction. He died from leukemia on April 5, 2014 at the age of 86.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

A journey through Equatorial Africa to study the fate of elephants and other wildlife produces a somber chronicle of irrevocable loss, relieved only by noted naturalist and novelist Matthiessen's lucid prose and concluding intimations of some redress. Matthiessen, a frequent traveler to Africa, began his investigation with a visit in the late 1970's to Senegal, Gambia, and the Ivory Coast, where the encroaching Sahel, unbridled hunting, and burgeoning populations had almost destroyed the elephant and wildlife population as well as the indigenous forest. As Matthiessen accompanied naturalists through the few preserves, often run-down and small, it became clear that the situation was even more grave than anticipated--``the animals are so scarce that they have no reality in daily life.'' It was a loss that went beyond conventional needs for preservation, for these animals have been the traditional totems and protectors of the clans. In 1986, Matthiessen returned to study the forest elephants of Gabon and Zaire, an area where ``a great silence'' descended after the depredations of the slave trade ended, allowing elephants to increase. But more recently, local wars and the enormous demand for ivory have ended this growth. In these equivalents of the Amazon rain forest, Matthiessen and his companions met pygmies, observed gorillas, and established that there are indeed two distinct kinds of elephants: forest and savannah, with a large intermediary hybrid group that wanders between the forest and grassland. The recent ban on ivory offers some hope of preserving the elephant, a species that, excepting fire and man, has ``more impact on habitat than any force in Africa.'' There are the usual incidents and frustrating run-ins with local bureaucrats, but Matthiessen offers much more: a moving and never-sentimental evocation of loss to both man and beast, infused with sympathy and realism. Vintage Matthiessen.

Library Journal Review

Matthiessen's previous travels in Africa have been largely confined to the East, described in The Tree Where Man Was Born ( LJ 12/1/72) and Sand Rivers ( LJ 3/1/81). In this account of three trips to Central and Western Africa, Matthiessen reports on the almost total devastation of wildlife in Senegal, Gambia, and the Ivory Coast and describes an exhibition searching for the rare Congo peacock and gorillas in the Virunga Mountains of Zaire. Matthiessen's disgust for the government, ruined landscape, and many of the people he found in these countries makes for uncomfortable reading. Especially engrossing is his ``African Silences'' chapter in which he accompanied ecologist David (Jonah) Western to the Central African Republic, Gabon, and Zaire to survey populations of the forest elephant and visit the Mbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest. Matthiessen's delight in the Mbuti and his cautious optimism about the effects of the recent ban on ivory trafficking somewhat softens his otherwise grim message about the fate of the people and wildlife of Africa. Recommended for college and public libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/91.-- Beth Clewis, J. Sar geant Reynolds Community Coll. Lib., Richmond, Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.