<![CDATA[Shadow Country (Modern Library)]]>

false <![CDATA[Shadow Country (Modern Library)]]>

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Peter Matthiessen’s great American epic was conceived as one vast mysterious novel, but because of its length it was originally broken up into three books -- Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone. In this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has cut nearly a third of the overall text and collapsed the time frame while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with brilliant rewriting throughout. In Shadow Country, he has marvelously distilled a monumental work, realizing his original vision. Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that obsessed his favorite son. Shadow Country traverses strange landscapes and frontier hinterlands inhabited by Americans of every provenance and color, including the black and Indian inheritors of the archaic racism that, as Watson’s wife observed, "still casts its shadow over the nation." Peter Matthiessen’s lyrical and illuminating work in the Watson narrative has been praised highly by such contemporaries as Saul Bellow, William Styron, and W. S. Merwin. Joseph Heller said "I read it in great gulps, up each night later than I wanted to be, in my hungry impatience to find out more and more." Praise for Shadow Country “Shadow Country is altogether gripping, shocking, and brilliantly told, not just a tour de force in its stylistic range, but a great American novel, as powerful a reading experience as nearly any in our literature. This magnificent, sad masterpiece about race, history, and defeated dreams can easily stand comparison with Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. Little wonder, too, that parts of the story of E.J. Watson call up comparisons with Dostoevsky, Conrad, and, inevitably, Faulkner. In every way, Shadow Country is a bravura performance, at once history, fiction, and myth–as well as the capstone to the career of one of the most admired and admirable writers of our time.” — The New York Review of Books “Magnificent and capacious…. I'll just say right here that the book took my sleeve and like the ancient mariner would not let go. Matthiessen has made his three-part saga into a new thing…. Finally now we have these books welded like a bell, and with Watson's song the last sound, all the elements fuse and resonate….a breathtaking saga.” — The Los Angeles Times “Gorgeously written and unfailingly compelling, Shadow Country is the exhilarating masterwork of [Matthiessen’s] career, every bit as ambitious as Moby Dick.” — National Geographic Adventure magazine “Peter Mattiessen consolidates his epic masterpiece of Florida -- and crafts something even better…[He] deserves credit for decades of meticulous research and obsessive details and soaring prose that converted the Watson legend into critically acclaimed literature….Anyone wanting an explanation for what happened to Florida can now find it in a single novel, a great American novel.” — Miami Herald “Matthiessen is writing about one man's life in Shadow Country, but he is also writing about the life of the nation over the course of half a century. Watson's story is essentially the story of the American frontier, of the conquering of wild lands and people, and of what such empires cost….Even among a body of work as magnificent as Matthiessen's, this is his great book.” — St. Petersburg Times “Shadow Country is a magnum opus. Matthiessen is meticulous in creating characters, lyrical in describing landscapes, and resolute in dissecting the values and costs that accompanied the development of this nation.” --Seattle Times “Shadow Country” is an ambitious, lasting, and meaningful work of literature that will not soon fade away. It is a testament to Mr. Matthiessen’s integrity as an artist that he felt compelled to return to the Watson material to produce this work and satisfy his original vision….a multifaceted work that can be read variously or simultaneously as a psychological novel, a historical novel, a morality tale, a political allegory, or a mystery. -- East Hampton Star “Matthiessen’s Watson trilogy is a touchstone of modern American literature…this reworking…is remarkable….Where Watson was a magnificent character before, he comes across as nothing short of iconic here; it’s difficult to find another figure in American literature so thoroughly and confincingly portrayed.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review, Pick of the Week “Matthiessen has reinvigorated and rejoined the trilogy’s novels…a mosaic about the life and lynch-mob death of a turn-of-the century Florida Everglades sugar planter and serial killer named E. J. Watson — into the 900-plus-page Shadow Country. This is no mere repackaging: Four hundred pages were cut from the novels, previous background characters now tromp to the foreground, and the books’ rangy, Faulknerian essence is rendered more digestible. Deliciously digestible, that is; this is a thick porterhouse of a novel.” — Men’s Journal "The fiction of Peter Matthiessen is the reason a lot of people in my generation decided to be writers. No doubt about it. SHADOW COUNTRY lives up to anyone's highest expectations for great writing." -- Richard Ford "Peter Matthiessen is a brilliantly gifted and ambitious writer, an inspired anatomist of the American mythos. His storytelling skills are prodigious and his rapport with his subject is remarkable." -- Joyce Carol Oates "Peter Matthiessen's work, both in fiction and non-fiction, has become a unique achievement in his own generation and in American literature as a whole. Everything that he has written has been conveyed in his own clear, deeply informed, elegant and powerful prose. The Watson saga-in-the-round, to which he has devoted nearly thirty years, is his crowning achievement. SHADOW COUNTRY, his distillation of the earlier trilogy, is his transmutation of it to represent his original vision. It is the quintessence of his lifelong concerns, and a great legacy." -- W.S. Merwin

2259365

2008

Shadow Country (Modern Library)

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5 6 false false Fri Mar 13 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Feb 18 19:07:08 -0800 2009 Fri Mar 13 10:23:45 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 2 false false Wed May 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Nov 20 05:59:59 -0800 2008 Thu Jul 02 08:17:49 -0700 2009 Shadow Country is actually three books rewritten and meant to be read together to get the whole story of Edgar J. Watson. He was a real plantation owner, one of the early settlers in the area now known as the Everglades. There are many rumors about his life and his death. This book is the fiction...more...]]> 3 1 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Feb 21 09:18:31 -0800 2009 Sat Feb 21 09:20:09 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 1 false false Sat Dec 20 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 20 06:27:35 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 20 06:48:56 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 23 19:22:25 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 23 19:35:13 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Mar 01 11:34:42 -0800 2009 Sun Mar 01 12:04:32 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Jan 21 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 21 12:57:55 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 21 13:16:44 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Jul 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 23 01:30:40 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 23 01:53:01 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Mar 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed May 27 07:17:46 -0700 2009 Wed May 27 07:28:04 -0700 2009
The gimmick of the book is that it essentially retells the same story three times, the life and death of real-life Florida sugar-baron E.J. Watson.

The first book tells the story f...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 20:52:34 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 21:23:37 -0700 2009
Epic in nature, the novel covers the time period of the reconstruction through the great depression. Readers will be ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Mar 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 18 08:50:44 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 18 08:59:03 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jan 08 05:56:41 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 05:57:51 -0800 2009 Shadow Country, a seamless weaving and slimming down of these works, as a masterpiece. As in all his writing, Matthiessen offers a beautiful homage to place—the raw, untamed Everglades of the late 19th century—while ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Jul 26 18:20:21 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 26 19:25:58 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Jan 10 16:20:35 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 23 11:24:32 -0800 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Thu Aug 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 23:59:31 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 09 17:51:51 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Sep 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 12 11:02:51 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 06:34:51 -0700 2009 A novel that begins where it ends, with the death of Edgar Artemas “Jack” Watson. Originally published as three separate novels, Matthiessen’s “new rendering” is often referred to as a distillation of the three novels, and it consists of three parts: 1)...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Dec 25 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 02 10:03:42 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 02 10:07:59 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Sep 02 10:49:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 28 09:07:45 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 02 10:49:47 -0700 2009
This long and enormously interesting book is a reworking of the three separate volumes—a National Book Award Winner—published from 1990 to 1999 into a single book. I haven’t read the original trilogy but if Matthiessen’s goal in the revision was to clarify and coal...more...]]> 0 0 false false Fri Jul 31 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 27 10:50:54 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 27 10:56:55 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jun 18 12:44:29 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 18 12:58:34 -0700 2009 more...]]>