The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World

Henry Holt and Co, 2011. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/Fine. Peter Matthiessen's copy with his bookplate laid in (your choice whether to affix). Also included is the April 2010 issue of SGI Quarterly: A Buddhist Forum for Peace, Culture, and Education, with an interview with Safina inside and a post-it on the cover with a note that gifts the copy to Matthiessen: "Peter Buddhism and the sea Right up your alley. Best, Carl." Matthiessen read an advanced copy of The View from Lazy Point and lent a blurb to its jacket: "Carl Safina's qualifications as a naturalist, marine biologist, and part-time resident make him the ideal interpreter of The View from Lazy Point; another qualification, of course, is the high quality of his prose, which makes all this fascinating information such a great pleasure to read." These authors were neighbors and friends on Long Island, and close neighbors in their literary and ecological agendas. The View won the Orion Book Award in 2010, and Safina would in 2015 beautifully eulogize Matthiessen for Orion in a piece that begins, "I first encountered Peter Matthiessen's writing when I was around fourteen years old. Id get off the bus at my suburban Long Island junior high school, head to the library before class, and peruse the writing and photography in books like The Tree Where Man Was Born and Sand Rivers and try to imagine a life lived in such wondrous adventures and with such words." Such was Matthiessen's influence on Safina. Eventually they began to spend time together on the Sound, Safina remembers: "When we fly-fished together here on Long Islandwhich is mainly what we did togetherwe also watched and commented on the man seabirds, sea ducks, and migrating shorebirds." Safina also memorialized Matthiessen in Audubon Magazine, recalling his last dinner with Matthiessen and another day when they helped kids haul in silversides on the beach near Lazy Point, and more. These copies of The View and SGI Quarterly symbolize the friendship between these two writers and defenders of oceans, and Safinas striving to keep and catch up with this legend who lived just down the waywhich he has arguably accomplished. Now Safina is a MacArthur Fellow and the Endowed Chair for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook. He wrote the forward to a new edition of Rachel Carsons The Sea Around Us. Print-outs of Safina's recollections of Matthiessen included. In fine condition except for faint foxing on edges of text block, in a fine jacket.