{"id":81142,"date":"2014-12-30T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2014-12-30T14:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=81142"},"modified":"2014-12-25T14:49:07","modified_gmt":"2014-12-25T19:49:07","slug":"a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Field Guide to the Ass-End of Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year!<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<p><em>Reading Peter Matthiessen in\u00a0the Everglades.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/377299_t607.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-70008 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/377299_t607.jpg\" alt=\"377299_t607\" width=\"588\" height=\"445\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/377299_t607.jpg 607w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/377299_t607-300x226.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I first encountered Peter Matthiessen in a hurricane, with the roof-flown certainty that we\u2019d never meet again. Just passing through, the memory blurs at 135 mph. I was in the Bahamas reading <em>Killing Mister Watson<\/em>, sweating out a Category 4, trying to concern myself with an Everglades outlaw who produced excellent cane syrup and, in the wake of his murder, a bunch of conflicting yarn-burners. I only made it through the beginning, apparently no further than E.\u2009J. Watson himself, ventilated by thirty-three neighborly slugs upon stepping off his boat and into his own lore. This just after the hurricane of 1910 had wasted Chokoloskee.\u00a0Announced by a comet, the storm upchucked the marl, catapulted Watson\u2019s infant son through the mangroves, and, as Matthiessen had it, \u201cblew the color right out of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">My hurricane merely blew the color out of the TV. With an earful of low-pressure williwaw, I had problems getting all those Watson thoughts inside my head, preparing to duck shard as the windows bowed, wondering if the author\u2019s next word would be my last. Kind of a morbid, if not meteorologic, approach to one\u2019s literature, imagining the final line that accompanies\u00a0you and your velocity\u00a0into the whateverafter, joining LeQuinn Bass (last words: \u201cWell, shit\u201d), the Owl Man of Deep Wood (\u201cFinish it\u201d), Belle Starr (a screech\u2014she was shot in the back, off her horse), and whomever else Bloody Watson managed to ether before it was all said and blown away. The last thing you\u2019d want to read should be the first. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/01\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell\/\">Read More &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! * Reading Peter Matthiessen in\u00a0the Everglades. I first encountered Peter Matthiessen in a hurricane, with the roof-flown certainty that we\u2019d never meet again. Just passing through, the memory [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":330,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16464],"tags":[13602,1886,13601,1826,31,13600],"class_list":["post-81142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2014","tag-everglades","tag-florida","tag-killing-mister-watson","tag-murder","tag-peter-matthiessen","tag-shadow-country"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Field Guide to the Ass-End of Hell<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dave Tompkins on reading Peter Matthiessen in the Everglades.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Field Guide to the Ass-End of Hell by Dave Tompkins\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 30, 2014 \u2013 We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! *\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-12-30T14:00:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/377299_t607.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"607\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"459\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dave Tompkins\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Dave Tompkins\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Dave Tompkins\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/170713707550379a78bfed78d9f038ec\"},\"headline\":\"A Field Guide to the Ass-End of Hell\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-12-30T14:00:45+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/\"},\"wordCount\":307,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/377299_t607.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Everglades\",\"Florida\",\"Killing Mister Watson\",\"murder\",\"Peter Matthiessen\",\"Shadow Country\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Best of 2014\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/\",\"name\":\"A Field Guide to the Ass-End of Hell\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/377299_t607.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-12-30T14:00:45+00:00\",\"description\":\"Dave Tompkins on reading Peter Matthiessen in the Everglades.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/377299_t607.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/377299_t607.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/a-field-guide-to-the-ass-end-of-hell-2\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"A Field Guide to the Ass-End of Hell\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. 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