Reading this brought to mind Susan Sontag’s On Photography, or at least what I remember of it/what I imagine it as saying, having read it a number of years ago. Not to say that they have anything in common or anything, but. What I imagine Sontag saying is something about the act of photography causing an incision between the realities of the viewer and the viewee. The photographer becomes the camera and the subject an object. What occurred to me reading this is that the same logic can apply just as well to writing about the act of photography - in examining photography, you loose the ability to do photography. This is a bit of a silly criticism of Sontag, but I think it points its finger towards ideas around non-fiction as a whole - writing about an experience, and especially planning to write about an experience, will color that experience, make it less Authentic.

And that is what I started thinking about towards the beginnings of this book, as Matthiessen lines up shot after shot of Nepali life and nature. It feels factual and honest, of course, but a bit unreal or hyperreal or just possessing an artistic perspective that is coloring between the lines, that is representing a journey and events that are sketched out ahead of time.

But then, where is the issue there? I read relatively little nonfiction, and what I do read tends to be interesting stories people have found or been. This is a story that is trying to become - and from that perspective, it needs to be a story not merely by Matthiessen, but of Matthiessen.

And then so after the first couple of chapters, it becomes that. Maybe it always was, and I just missed it. But it is a sweet story of Matthiessen, his relationships with family, his relationships with Buddhism, nature, and science, with the mountains. A beautiful backdrop to a nice little story and the people along the way. There is no grand odyssey here, no driving plot, technically there is some conflict (will Man triumph over Nature? will he get home in time for the Thanksgiving he promised his child?) but that is not really in focus. Just a nice little (long) vignette of a man trying to do what he knows how to do.