[Martina]

Peter Matthiessen, Author and Naturalist, Is Dead at 86

Peter Matthiessen, a roving author and naturalist whose impassioned nonfiction explored the remote endangered wilds of the world and whose prizewinning fiction often placed his mysterious protagonists in the heart of them, died Saturday. He was 86 and lived in Sagaponack, N.Y.

He had been treated for acute leukemia for more than a year. His death came as he awaited publication of his final novel, “In Paradise,” on April 8.

Mr. Matthiessen was one of the last survivors of a generation of American writers who came of age after World War II and who all seemed to know one another, socializing in New York and on Long Island’s East End as a kind of movable literary salon peopled by the likes of William Styron, James Jones, Kurt Vonnegut and E.L. Doctorow.

Article about his life -- http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/bo...-at-86.html?hp