Ebook At Play in the Fields of the Lord, by Peter Matthiessen

Ebook At Play in the Fields of the Lord, by Peter Matthiessen

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At Play in the Fields of the Lord, by Peter Matthiessen

Ebook At Play in the Fields of the Lord, by Peter Matthiessen

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Review

“Inventive and extremely well-written. . . . Incredibly moving. . . . A remarkable performance.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Matthiessen has produced, in expertly crafted and sometimes deeply affecting prose, an entertainment full of glittering color, nose-to-nose conflict and heroic gestures.” —The Washington Post Book World “A work approaching the highest art, of the most serious purpose.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch “A haunting novel. . . . A sardonic wit and a huge fund of compassion illuminate its pages.” —Newsday “A brutal yet compassionate narrative . . . that will remain long in the reader’s mind.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

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From the Inside Flap

Set in the South American jungle, this thriller follows the clash between two misplaced gringos--one who has come to convert the Indians to Christianity, and one who has been hired to kill them. Now the basis for a major motion picture.

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Product details

Paperback: 373 pages

Publisher: Vintage (December 3, 1991)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0679737413

ISBN-13: 978-0679737414

Product Dimensions:

5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches

Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.2 out of 5 stars

95 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#80,689 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Like all Peter Matthiessen's works this is deep and insightful. To me he is one of the best authors in the last hundred years. Some cannot get into his writing however. Once the reader lets go and allows the idiom to overcome him the reader is not merely reading any more but becomes part of the story. I have read At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Far Tortuga and Shadow Country and was not able to put any of them down. Having spent time in the jungle, in Caribbean Central America and living in South Florida made it even easier for me to visualize his descriptions. Any mature serious reader cannot help but be left stunned by his writing. If you have not read Peter Matthiessen you have not read the some of the best of American Literature.

I read this book twice, in 1989 in Africa and in 1996 in Brazil, then I spent five years among the Yanomami Indians and was able to experience many of the things described in the story. I recently listened to the audiobook version and found it moving, fascinating and thought-provoking. Anthony Heald does a great job with voices and accents, speaks the Spanish parts well and does a good job rendering the Niaruna language. As a story, it is brilliantly told; Matthiessen's prose is vivid and his characters are richly crafted. The events are as tragic as anything in Shakespeare, but they are close to real life in their dimensions and horror. I have met many missionaries like the ones in this book, and a few mercenaries like Wolfie. The descriptions of life in the Amazon are precise and accurate; the book's depictions of indigenous peoples are marvelously evocative. No other book that I've read paints a clearer picture of the conflict between civilization and nature.

I have previously read and reviewed four other books by Peter Matthiessen, all of which I thought were fine books and to which I gave four stars. But I never quite thought of them as works of pure genius, not until I read this book. Here, Matthiessen's writing is so exquisite, nuanced and daringly spot-on that one scarcely knows how to describe it. He writes like an an angel or dæmon swooping down upon the South American jungle landscape and deep into the inner lives of those who populate it with a searing lyrical torch. I've never read anything quite like it.The setting could not seem more banal or clichéd: hypocritical evangelists, a jaded Catholic priest, primitive Indian tribes, a corrupt Spanish officer etc. But Matthiessen sets them all to dancing through dark and light, death and life in this book.He describes the Spanish cathedral as seen though the eyes of a Protestant missionary's wife thus:"Though she knew no Latin, the priest's ritual voice in the unearthly light evoked half-memories of illuminated manuscripts, of fat abbeys and round-pated monks, fair countrysides and far cathedrals against towering windy skies crossed by dark birds."and he describes the jungle as seen by a missionary thus:"He had wandered into a cathedral of Satan where all prayer was abomination, a place without a sky, a stench of death, vast somber naves and clerestories, the lost cries of savage birds - he whooped and called, but no voice answered."But, most of all, he describes the world as seen by Lewis Moon, the anti-hero of the book, with a frightening, magical sharpness, as when he parachutes into the jungle here:"He blinked, in tears; he was alive again, laughing idiotically in the clean sunlight of the upper air, legs dangling and swaying like the legs of a rag doll, drifting, drifting down through the great morning, in a wild silence like the wake of bells."I quote so extensively because it's simply impossible to convey the power of the book without putting its unearthly lyricism on display. Matthiessen is also a naturalist, of course, and his descriptions of the environment are as precise as his writing is ensorcelling, as profound as the depths to which he takes the readers into the souls of his characters.I don't know what else I can say save to urge every lover of literature to please, please don't let your life end without first reading this coruscating work of highest art.

The plot is engaging. I thought most of the characters were believeable and the main ones were pretty intriguing. I agree with another reviewer who said the character of Huben is too two-dimensional.Matthiesson uses a bad crutch in order to make one of the protagonists interesting: he makes many other characters unduly fascinated with him. They discuss him endlessly with no other objective but to help the reader understand how fascinating he is.Spoilers after this.The reason I didn't love it was Moon and his subplot. He wasn't as interesting as the author seemed to think. And his plot doesn't mean anything, not even that his story was pointless. I guess his journey downriver was meant to be lyrical in a ghastly way, but by then I thought the character had been worn thin.The ending felt kind of flat to me. Quarrier starts out as an interesting character, but his story doesn't quite do much. I sympathized with him, because his internal dynamics are interesting and I remember he was played by Aidan Quinn in the movie, and Quinn is pretty cool!The title does more than suggest a theme, it's part of a thesis: that people like missionaries who think they are truly helping vulnerable groups are often, in fact, really just trying to live out their own fantasies. Instead of working the fields of the lord, they're playing in them, enacting their own psychodramas if you will.I think this is nicely set up in most characters' stories, but I was left without a very strong impression on the subject. The end didn't entirely realize the setups. Because it kept me intrigued to the end, I'm rounding up my rating to four stars.

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