Novelist Matthiessen to Discuss Plight of Tiger

Novelist Matthiessen to Discuss Plight of Tiger
BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY
Rice News Staff
February 19, 1998

The world’s tigers symbolize all that is being lost in the course of man’s
destruction of natural habitat, said Peter Matthiessen, a novelist and essayist,
who will deliver a lecture at Rice about the plight of tigers.

Matthiessen is perhaps best known for his book "The Snow Leopard,"
which received the National Book Award. He is one of the founders of the quarterly
literary magazine "The Paris Review."

When asked why tigers are important or why anyone should care about them, Matthiessen
said, "They are a metaphor for the wild. They are symbols of the disappearing
wilderness."

Matthiessen will deliver a lecture titled "The Last of the Tiger"
at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 24 at McMurtry Auditorium in Anne and Charles Duncan
Hall. The Interdisciplinary Efforts in Environmental Education and Research
lecture series is sponsored by the Provost’s Office and the Center for the Study
of Cultures. The event is free and open to the public.

The situation of the tigers is desperate, said Matthiessen, who spoke from
his Long Island home during a recent phone interview. Tigers need huge territories
that support large game. When humans begin to kill off the game, tigers will
kill humans for food. Then humans begin killing the tigers. The toll on tigers
has been great.

Walter Isle, Rice professor of English, called Matthiessen "one of the
major writers of our time."

He continues to write fiction and in November published his most recent work,
"Lost Man’s River" (Random House 1997).