Peter Matthiessen's Magnificent "The Snow Leopard"

If you are interested in the ways and means of factual writing, as I am, Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard is a must read. Yet for many years, I resisted it. Why? Because it has the reputation of being about a spiritual quest. I’m not a spiritual person. I consider myself a realist. I’m allergic to magical thinking. 

There is a lot of Zen in The Snow Leopard. But it’s only one strand in the book’s rich fabric. Other strands are nature, travel, and adventure – all of which I relish. The Snow Leopard is an unforgettable account of a gruelling expedition that Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller undertook, in 1973, into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard.

Four things I love about The Snow Leopard:

1. It’s written in the first person major.

The book is an account of personal experience, which, for me, is the most real form of writing. Apparently Matthiessen’s use of “I” in The Snow Leopard was a departure from his usual approach. Maggie Doherty, in her “Rambling Man” (The New Yorker, October 20, 2025), says,

But what truly distinguishes the book is its personal nature. From early in his journalistic career, Matthiessen had abhorred the use of the first person, which he associated with a “National Geographic style of expedition writing,” sensational and unserious. In “The Snow Leopard,” however, he lets the “I” lead the way, offering access to his inner life, even as he questions the entire concept of the self. 

2. It’s written in the present tense.

No verb form conveys immediacy better than present tense. Matthiessen’s use of it in The Snow Leopard is inspired! Here are some examples:

I sit back in straw and dung warmth against the sunny stones. A brilliant black-red beetle comes, and a husky grasshopper, rubbing its fiery legs. A crow flaps to a cedar by the river, and the crow’s wings, too, are filled with the hard silver light of the Himalaya.

GS lingers and I keep on climbing, then pause to drink and wash in a mountain brook. Greenfinches come, and a hawk flies down the valley. Asters and everlasting, lavender and white; the soft humming of a bumblebee consoles me. Sitting awhile on a warm rock, I enjoy the view of Yamarkhar as it comes into the sun. At this season, the flat roofs are bright with the fire colors of the harvest, which will sustain the inhabitants through the long winter – yellow squash, red peppers, bronze tobacco, a red millet, maize, and hemp, which is used for twine and cooking oil as well as marijuana. 

The path enters a narrowing ravine that climbs to a higher cleft between boulders, and the cleft is reached at the strike of the rising sun, which fills this portal with a blinding light. I emerge in a new world and stare about me. A labyrinth of valley mounts toward the snows, for the Himalaya is as convoluted as a brain.

3. It’s structured as a diary.

Each chapter is a day in the journey, beginning on September 28 and ending on December 1. I love this type of structure – chronological, sequential. The journey determines the shape of the narrative. To me it’s the most natural (and real) form of narrative – much preferable to thematic structure. 

4. It brims with wonderful descriptions of nature.

This, for example:

At a canyon bend stands the headman of Tarakot, who wears Hindu puttees and carries no pack of any kind. He is pointing at the bouldered slopes across the stream. “Na!” he cries. “Na!” Then he goes on. A pale form jumps across a gully, followed quickly by six more; the animals move up a steep slope to a haze of green between the rocks and snow. I watch them climb until, at snow line, they are swept up and consumed by clouds that have rushed up the valley from the south: this wonderful silver-gray-blue creature in the bharal, the blue sheep of the Himalaya – in Tibetan, na – that we have come so far to see.

And this:

Higher, where the snow has melted, a hill fox jumps from tussock grass and runs to a group of rocks, then turns to watch. Its black points and rich red coat are set off by a frosty face and chest and an extraordinary long thick tail, dark brown and black with a white fluffy tip; the tip remains visible long after the creature’s glowing colors sink among the stones.

Joy Williams, in her “ ‘A Fury of Dark Energies’ ” (The New York Review of Books, September 24, 2026), says that Matthiessen’s “greatest attribute as a writer” was his “keen attention to the natural world.” Based on my reading of The Snow Leopard, I’d say she’s right.

Credit: The above portrait of Peter Matthiessen by Andrea Ventura is from Joy Williams' " 'A Fury of Dark Energies' " (The New York Review of Books, September 24, 2026). 

The Art of Quotation (Part III)

Portrait of Madonna by Andrea Ventura

Joanna Biggs, in her superb “ ‘Give Me Joy’ ” (The New York Review of Books, May 23, 2024), a review of Mary Gabriel’s Madonna: A Rebel Life, writes,

The image of the whore was crystallized in Susan Seidelman’s 1985 movie Desperately Seeking Susan: Madonna played the eponymous Susan, strolling East Seventh Street and eating cheese puffs like an “indolent, trampy goddess,” as Pauline Kael put it in The New Yorker. 

The quote is from Kael’s “Passion” (The New Yorker, April 22, 1985; included in her wonderful 1985 collection State of the Art), in which she says, “Nobody comes through in the movie except Madonna, who comes through as Madonna (she moves regally, an indolent, trampy goddess)....” 

Kael’s “indolent, trampy goddess” is very good. Biggs’ “eating cheese puffs like an ‘indolent, trampy goddess’ ” is brilliant! Biggs takes Kael’s phrase and makes it her own. 

Postscript: Biggs’ piece contains another inspired line: 

Halfway through Sex there is a beautifully composed, and hot, picture of her leaning over a full-length mirror masturbating, watching her own cheeks bloom pink with orgasm. 

I nominate that as the best sentence of 2024 (so far). Biggs is one of today’s best critics. I’d like to see more of her in The New Yorker. 

Best of 2021: Illustrations

Here are my favorite New Yorker illustrations of 2021: 

1. Sam Alden's illustration for Ann Patchett's "Flight Plan," August 2, 2021 (see above);

2. Andrea Ventura's portrait of Tom Stoppard for Anthony Lane's "O Lucky Man!" (March 1, 2021);

3. Javi Aznarez's illustration for Ruth Franklin's "Into the Void" (September 13, 2021);

4. Cristiana Couceiro's illustration for Joshua Yaffa's "Five-Month Plan" (February 8, 2021);

5. Javier Jaén’s illustration for Gary Shteyngart’s “My Gentile Region” (October 11, 2021);

6. Pola Maneli's portrait of Pharoah Sanders for Hua Hsu's "The New Thing" (March 29, 2021);

7. Golden Cosmos’s illustration for Daniel Alarcón’s “The Collapse of Arecibo” (April 5, 2021);

8. Jorge Colombo's illustration for Rivka Galchen's "Better Than a Balloon" (February 15 & 22, 2021);

9. Toma Vagner's illustration for Alex Ross's "Grinding Bass" (December 13, 2021);

10. Cecilia Carstedt's portrait of Adele for Carrie Battan's "Imperfect Union" (December 6, 2021).

Stephen Jay Gould's Brilliant "Curveball"

Stephen Jay Gould (Portrait by Andrea Ventura)

I just finished reading Gideon Lewis-Krauss’s "Force of Nature," a profile of psychology professor Kathryn Paige Harden, who works in the field of behavior genetics. Harden thinks that in predicting life outcomes, we should pay more attention to our genes. I agree. But I have a question? What does Harden mean by “intelligence”? Does she talk in terms of “high IQ” and “low IQ,” and, if so, what does she mean? I like the idea of multiple intelligences. Howard Gardner, in his classic Frames of Mind (1983), identifies seven: linguistic, personal, spatial, musical, bodily, logical, and artistic. A kid may struggle at school but excel at the hockey rink. What is his or her IQ? Charles A. Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve (1994) espouses a single, general measure of mental ability. Here’s what Stephen Jay Gould, writing in The New Yorker, had to say about that:

However, if Herrnstein and Murray are wrong about IQ as an immutable thing in the head, with humans graded in a single scale of general capacity, leaving large numbers of custodial incompetents at the bottom, then the model that generates their gloomy vision collapses, and the wonderful variousness of human abilities, properly nurtured, reemerges. We must fight the doctrine of The Bell Curve both because it is wrong and because it will, if activated, cut off all possibility of proper nurturance for everyone’s intelligence. ["Curveball," November 28, 1994]

Gould demolished The Bell Curve. I wish he were here to assess Harden’s new theory. 

Mid-Year Top Ten 2021

Julian Master's photo for Nick Paumgarten's "It's No Picnic"

It’s time for my annual “Mid-Year Top Ten,” a list of my favorite New Yorker pieces of the year so far (with a choice quotation from each in brackets):

Best Reporting Piece

Nick Paumgarten, “It’s No Picnic,” March 1, 2021 (“At Hamido, the evening was mild, and the curve was still more or less flat; happy to be around people other than our families, we sat at a large table on the sidewalk, in the open air, sharing platters of bran-grilled orate, grilled octopus, fried sardines, baba ghanoush, and beers of our own bringing. Was all of this reckless? Probably”).

Best Personal History Piece

John McPhee, “Tabula Rasa: Volume 2,” April 19, 2021 (“I did not know Charlie Howard well, and the impact of his death stopped there. Not so with Julian, whose future has remained beside me through all my extending past. That is to say, where would he have been, and doing what, when? From time to time across the decades, I have thought of writing something, tracing parallel to mine the life he would have lived, might have lived. A chronology, a chronicle, a lost C.V. But such, of course, from the first imagined day, is fiction. Actually, I have to try not to think about him, because I see those arms reaching forward, grasping nothing”).

Best Cover

Mark Ulriksen, “Hoop Dreams in New York” (May 10, 2021).

Best Critical Piece

Peter Schjeldahl, “Home Goods,” February 15 & 22, 2021 [“My first Frick crush, some fifty-plus years ago, was Ingres’s Comtesse d’Haussonville (1845), the lady in blue satin who raises a finger to a pulse point on her throat as if her beauty were a self-charging battery”].

Best “Talk of the Town” Story

Adam Iscoe, “Back at It,” March 15, 2021 (“Quintana, a five-year veteran of the concession stand, wandered behind the candy counter. He found a thirty-five-pound bag of popcorn kernels in a storage closet. ‘At one point during the pandemic, I bought popcorn, just to try to relive the experience,’ he said, as he poured buttery salt powder along with the kernels into a popcorn machine. ‘It wasn’t the same.’ A minute later: pop-pop-pop. ‘Yeah, this is it,’ he said. Pop-pop-pop. ‘This is movie-theatre popcorn!’ ”).

Best Illustration

Andrea Ventura, “Tom Stoppard,” for Anthony Lane’s “O Lucky Man!” (March 1, 2021).

Best “Goings On About Town” Review

Hannah Goldfield, “Tables For Two: Dame,” January 25, 2021 (“Tucked beside them, in their charming paper boat, was a wedge of lemon; the faint perfume of malt vinegar hovered in the air”).

Best newyorker.com Post

Rachel Syme, “Fashion Was Back at the 2021 Oscars,” April 26, 2021 (“Amanda Seyfried’s epic, voluminous Armani Privé tulle trumpet gown was the bright red of a heavily syruped cherry snow cone”).

Best Sentence

Microtonal tunings, electronic processing, and rough string attacks engender ferocious climaxes. – Alex Ross, “Wind Songs” (March 1, 2021)

Best Paragraph

I know the neighborhood so well—know the old Hartford Courant building, the countless vape shops, the Hamed Fabric, with its clearance sale, the Money Change/Weed World/NY Gift & Luggage, and Daytona Trimming, with its boas—on account of the carrying, and then the strollering, and then the very slow walking, and then the normal-paced walking of these same streets year and again with this child of mine. When she was a baby, the only way to reliably get her to fall asleep was to push her round and round these blocks in her stroller. Amid the honking, shouting, and backfiring, and the music coming from the Wakamba bar, her eyes would close, then stay closed. – Rivka Galchen, “Better Than a Balloon” (February 15 & 22, 2021)

Best Photo

Jerome Strauss, “Cherry Blossoms,” for “Above & Beyond” (April 19, 2021)

Best Detail

Esposito’s has a take-a-number ticket dispenser. The slips of paper come out like interlocking Escher frog tiles. – Rivka Galchen, “Better Than a Balloon” (February 15 & 22, 2021)

Best Description

Frilly segments of baby bok choy are wilted in hot water until tender but still crunchy, then covered in steamed pickled garlic, fried garlic, and the house “brown sauce,” made from mushrooms, rice wine, and soy sauce. Skinny, slick florets of gai lan, or Chinese broccoli—which Lee describes as “kind of like if broccoli rabe and asparagus had a baby”—twist themselves around fat, nubby rice rolls tossed in charred scallions and black vinegar. Longevity noodles—coated in a blend of roasted garlic, shallots, chili, ginger, and fermented black beans—are strewn with both bok choy sum (a flowering bok-choy variety) and sweet, delicate pea leaves. – Hannah Goldfield, “Tables For Two: Fat Choy and Spicy Moon” (March 22, 2021)

Seven Memorable Lines

1. As a mot juste for “The Progress of Love,” I nominate “silly.” – Peter Schjeldahl, “Home Goods” (February 15 & 22, 2021)

2. The British nude is as real as the British breakfast. – Adam Gopnik, “The Human Clay “ (February 8, 2021)

3. In vain, I searched the eyes of passing scooterists for some inter-modal camaraderie, but I found only a shared sheepishness. – John Seabrook, “Scooter City” (April 26 & May 3, 2021)

4. Morandi drains our seeing of complacency. He occults the obvious. – Peter Schjeldahl, “Movements of One” (February 1, 2021)

5. For her fond biographer, Frankenthaler’s art delights the eye, as it was designed to, and that’s enough. Enough? It’s everything. – Adam Gopnik, “Fluid Dynamics” (April 12, 2021)

6. The cage matches of Eros and Mammon that are fairs leave me dyspeptic, even as I avail myself of a generously supplied V.I.P. pass because wouldn’t you? – Peter Schjeldahl, “A Trip to the Fair” (May 24, 2021)

7. Nothing goes well in a piece of writing until it is in its final stages or done. – John McPhee, “Tabula Rasa: Volume 2” (April 19, 2021) 

November 23, 2020 Issue

Three striking artworks in this week’s issue:

1. Sergiy Maidukov’s portrait of Grace Jones for Sarah Larson’s “Podcast Dept.”

2. Naila Ruechel’s photos for Hannah Goldfield’s “Tables For Two: EMP To Go."

3. Andrea Ventura’s portrait of Paul Celan for Ruth Franklin’s “A Word, a Corpse.”

Maidukov and Ventura are established New Yorker illustrators. I’ve long admired their work. But Ruechel’s bold, color-drenched photography is new to me. I look forward to seeing more of it in the magazine. 

Where Have All the Great "New Yorker" Illustrators Gone?

Riccardo Vecchio, "Bill Knott" (2017)

It pains me to say this, but New Yorker illustration isn’t as consistently interesting as it used to be. I miss the brilliant work of Luis Grañena, Robert Risko, André Carrilho, Edward Sorel, Ralph Steadman, Jorge Arevalo, Riccardo Vecchio, Marcellus Hall, David Hughes, Gerald Scarfe, Laurie Rosenwald, Edwin Fotheringham, Conor Langton, Marc Aspinall, Kirsten Ulve, among others. 

Remember this great Ralph Steadman?

It’s from James Wood’s “A Fine Rage” (The New Yorker, April 6, 2009), a critical essay on George Orwell.

Remember Edward Sorel’s wonderful flying, letter-shedding, double portrait of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop for Dan Chiasson’s “Works on Paper” (The New Yorker, October 27, 2008)?

Here’s a beauty by Luis Grañena, from Anthony Lane’s “Command Performances” (The New Yorker, November 21, 2010), a review of Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech.

Remember the superb David Hughes portrait of Les Murray in Dan Chiasson’s “Fire Down Below” (The New Yorker, June 4, 2007)?

And who could forget the marvelous André Carrilho portrait of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé that appeared in “Goings On About Town,” June 27, 2011)?

And how about Conor Langton’s eye-catching, fractured-faced, multi-hued seance for David Denby’s “Under the Spell” (The New Yorker, July 20, 2014), a review of Woody Allen’s Magic in the Moonlight)?

I could go on and on – so many inspired images to pick from. But in the last few years the overall quality has slipped. There are still pearls to be found [e.g., Riccardo Vecchio’s “Bill Knott” (2017); Andrea Ventura’s “Jenny Erpenbeck” (2017); this year’s Bendik Kaltenborn portrait of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen], but not as abundantly as before. 

Best of 2017: Illustrations

Bendik Kaltenborn, "RJD2" (2017)

Here are my favorite New Yorker illustrations of 2017:

1. Bendik Kaltenborn’s “RJD2,” for Matthew Trammell’s “Night Life: New Routes” (January 9, 2017).

2. Riccardo Vecchio’s “Bill Knott,” for Dan Chiasson’s “The Fugitive” (April 3, 2017).

3. Riccardo Vecchio’s “Fernando Pessoa,” for Adam Kirsch’s “Voices from the Void” (September 4, 2017).

4. Edward Sorel’s “Sketchbook: Whack Jobs” (September 11, 2017).

5. Andrea Ventura’s “Jenny Erpenbeck,” for James Wood’s “Strangers Among Us” (September 25, 2017).

6. Bob Staake’s “Philip Kerr,” for Jane Kramer’s “The Plot Thickens” (July 10 & 17, 2017).

7. Tom Bachtell’s “Michel Houellebecq,” for Lauren Collins’ “Sideline” (June 19, 2017).

8. Vincent Mahé’s “The Tank,” for Alex Ross’s “Tank Music” (July 24, 2017).

9. Gizem Vural’s “L. A. Rhapsody,” for Alex Ross’s “Classical Music: L. A. Rhapsody” (March 20, 2017).

10. Byron Eggenschwiler’s “The Dead,” for Hilton Als’s “Memento Mori” (December 4, 2017).