Tamrart: 13 days in the Sahara

Stuart Wright, 1984. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. Lily Hamlin. Association copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper to Peter Matthiessen: "For Peter, All friendly greetings, Eleanor, Xmas, 1984." A standout association between fellow National Book Award winners: Eleanor Clark, whose husband was Robert Penn Warren, won in 1965 for the nonfiction book The Oysters of Locmariaquer. Matthiessen's At Play in the Fields of the Lord was a finalist for an NBA the following year, but he did not win until the Snow Leopard in 1979, and then Shadow Country in 2008. Matthiessen and Clark both wrote evocatively about the sea and its catch, and Clark wrote an advanced blurb for Far Tortuga that appears on its jacket: "Peter Matthiessen's most beautiful book. It goes very deep, with endless subtleties there s a feeling all the time of its being written by the sea. A wonderful creation." Moreover they were friends, running in the same Long Island-Connecticut circles. In Reading My Father, Alexandra Styron recalls the scene: "Mum and Daddy [William Styron] had established a nice group of friends in the area John and Mary Cheever were just over the border in Ossing. Robert Penn 'Red' Warren and Eleanor Clark lived forty-five minutes away in Fairfield. Sometimes, a few of their New York friends came over weekends. My parents enjoyed filling the house with interesting people, and the parties were lively, though things could sometimes get a little out of hand. 'The amount of bourbon that went down was beyond belief' is how Peter Matthiessen remembers it." A wonderful association. Fine book in fine jacket. Also laid in is a slip reading "This book is sent to you with the compliments of Gary Fisketjon." Fisketjon rose to become the Editor and Vice-President of Knopf Publishing.