Matthiessen's work can be compared to any number of precursors. The evocation of the humid South American wilderness in At Play in the Fields of the Lord, where humanity is quickly reduced to the level of jackals, is reminiscent of a strain in literature appearing in such diverse creations as Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947) and John Huston's motion picture version of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Matthiessen's dependence on native speech in Far Tortuga recalls Mark Twain; the rich diversity of his prose suggests Faulkner. Perhaps the most pertinent comparisons, broached even by early reviewers, are to Conrad and Melville. For example, Matthiessen's third novel Raditzer, a lean and disturbing tale, can be read as a peculiar inversion of Billy Budd (Melville, 1924), where the title character (also a sailor) is destroyed not because of his intolerable goodness, but because of his equally intolerable repulsiveness...