FIRST LIGHT

The son of an iconic author chronicles his descent into dependency.

Matthiessen (1953-2022), the son of Peter Matthiessen, was born in Paris, surrounded by his father’s clique of literary bohemians and expectations to live up to the esteemed family name. When his parents divorced in 1956, Matthiessen volleyed between their culturally significant social circles but ended up relocating with his mother to New York. His home life devolved as his mother struggled with alcoholism, and he attended boarding school not for the experience but to “remove me from the chaos.” In smooth, crisply vivid prose, Matthiessen describes his time at Columbia studying English literature, during which he entertained a series of misguided trysts with one of his father’s old flames and was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease inherited from his mother that would slowly rob him of his sight. By age 35, the condition severely hampered his lofty ambitions of continuing the family authorial tradition, but he soldiered on and accompanied his father on humanitarian trips to Tibet and Africa. The author often reflects back to his youth in the shadow of his famous father, his Zen Buddhist teachings, and their bonding experiences. He also elaborates on his romanticized perspective of alcohol as the “magical elixir that helped me feel comfortable in the world, a sensation for which I would eventually sacrifice almost anything.” Matthiessen bracingly articulates his adult years spent drinking, almost as a sullen distraction from accepting the deterioration of his eyesight. Alcoholism destroyed his personal life with his wife, who also drank heavily, and working relationships as an editor at the Paris Review and Penguin Books. As his eyesight continued to decline and he committed to rehab, Matthiessen abandoned his literary career in favor of pursuing social work at substance abuse rehabilitation centers. Though hobbled by an inconsistent timeline, the text is an engrossing, emotional confessional made even more poignant by the author’s death from cancer at the age of 69.

A resilient memoir of disease, recovery, and humbling catharsis.