David Shetzline
{{Short description|American author (born 1934)}}
{{infobox writer
|name=David Shetzline
|birth_name=David W. Shetzline
|birth_date={{birth year and age|1934}}
|birth_place=Yonkers, New York, U.S.
|occupation=Author
|education=Cornell University (BA)
University of Oregon
|spouse=Mary F. Beal
}}
David W. Shetzline (born 1934, Yonkers, New York) is an American author residing in Marcola, Oregon.
Shetzline received his Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University in 1956 and his masters in literature from the University of Oregon in 1997. His dissertation was entitled "Quantum Dialogues: The Rhetorics of Religion and the Metaphors of Postmodern Science (English, 2000). He served as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army, in addition to being a ditchdigger and a student at Columbia University.Books: Memories of Grandeur, Time (Apr. 12, 1968). He wrote in "the Cornell school" of writing in the 1960s with Thomas Pynchon and Richard Fariña.Review, Deford at http://www.versechorus.com/deford.html {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717194341/http://www.versechorus.com/deford.html |date=2011-07-17 }}, last viewed 06/22/2010. This school of writing has been defined as having three preoccupations (1) socio-political paranoia, (2) concern with environmental degradation, and (3) awareness of popular culture’s unique impact on the American mind.Gene Bluestein, "Tangled Vines, a review of Vineland by Thomas Pynchon," The Progressive (54:6)(June 1990) at 42-3; Douglas Cooke, Pursuit of the Real, And Escape from Reality at http://www.richardandmimi.com/beendown.html#return1, last viewed on 06/15/2010. In addition to Pynchon and Fariña, the Cornell School would also include Mary F. Beal, to whom Shetzline was married. The Cornell School could also be said to include, or be influenced by, Vladimir Nabokov and Kurt Vonnegut. It stands in contrast to Cornell's older literary traditions, such as the literary traditions represented by E.B. White and Hiram Corson.
In 1968, Shetzline signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War."Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" January 30, 1968 New York Post
Primary Fiction
His first work, DeFord, was published in 1968.{{cite magazine|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,941311,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081214141506/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,941311,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 14, 2008|title=Books: Dispirited Warriors|date=1969-08-08|magazine=Time|accessdate=20 May 2010}}; William H. Pritchard, 'Review: Fiction Chronicle; DeFord by David Shetzline,' The Hudson Review (21:2)(Summer, 1968), pp. 364-376 DeFord is dedicated to the memory of Fariña.Summary of Richard Fariña's at Cornell at http://www.richardandmimi.com/cornell.html#classmates, last viewed 06/21/2010. Reviewing DeFord, author Thomas Pynchon wrote, "What makes Shetzline's voice a truly original and important one is the way he uses these interference-patterns to build his novel, combining an amazing talent for seeing and listening with a yarn-spinner's native gift for picking you up, keeping you in the spell of the action, the chase, not letting go of you till you've said, yes, I see; yes, this is how it is."Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr., Book Endorsements at http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_blurbs.html {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150414091442/http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_blurbs.html |date=2015-04-14 }}, last viewed 06/19/2010. DeFord was a seminal contra use{{what?|date=April 2025}} of geography as a metaphor.Paul Pintarich, "A Fan’s Notes: September Song," Oregon Magazine (June 2010)(noting Shetzline’s use of direction as a metaphor).
Heckletooth 3 followed the year after DeFord, and was noted as a lead text in the new ecology movement of the 1970s.Jeremy Garber, Nonfiction Review: 'Gimme Refuge' by Matt Love, Nestucca Spit Press in the News, The Oregonian (May 8, 2010). Of Heckletooth 3, The Whole Earth Catalog wrote, "[t]here are some writers and books that I only hear about from others. William Eastlake is one. So is David Shetzline, notably for his forest fire novel Heckletooth 3. Ken Kesey went on about it to me years ago. And last week Don Carpenter firmly put the book into my hand. Well they’ve got my agreement. My summer logging the Oregon woods tells me that Shetzline has the work right, the fire and the men right. He especially has the language – Oregon laconic. It’s an introspective action-novel about virtue. I mean, about detail."The Whole Earth Catalog (Summer 1975) at 155.
Other works
A short story, "A Country of Painted Freaks" appeared in the Paris Review in 1972.David Shetzline, "A Country of Painted Freaks," Paris Review (No. 54)(Summer 1972), Shetzline also conducted the critically acclaimed memoir interviews of William Appleman Williams in 1976, entitled Typescript: A Boy from Iowa Becomes a Revolutionary.Paul Buhle and Edward Francis Rice-Maximin, William Appleman Williams: The Tragedy of Empire (1995) at 256, 285.
In the 1970s he was a regular contributor to the CoEvolution Quarterly edited by Stewart Brand. CoEvolution Quarterly: No. 7, Fall 1975, pp.102-104; No. 9, Spring 1976, p. 35; No. 10, Summer 1976, pp. 114-115; No. 20, Winter 1978, 136-137; No. 21, Spring 1979, p. 110
Network
Shetzline was friends with both Fariña and Pynchon.David Hajdu, Positively 4th Street, The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña (2001) at 45 As Shetzline noted regarding the relationship between Fariña and Pynchon, "I think Tom recognized that Richard had a magic with language, that he was genuinely gifted, and I think Tom recognized that Richard worked with his gifts, he worked consciously to hone them. Tom always hung back. You didn't find out much about his writing from him, but he was always complaining that he wasn’t getting enough writing done, and that is the tip-off that somebody is absolutely haunted as a writer. Richard knew Tom was as serious about writing as he was. I think Pynchon was also fascinated with Richard's effect on women, which was powerful. Pynchon developed a capacity to appeal to women who would then sort of go after him."Id. at 45. In the foreword to Greening the Lyre, David Gilcrest described Shetzline as "a true artisan of the pen and fly rod, has earned my respect and thanks as an exemplar in all things philosophical and anadromous."Acknowledgements, David W. Gilcrest, Greening the lyre: environmental poetics and ethics (200).
He is currently{{when?|date=April 2025}} an organizer of the Wickes Beal Studio, in Oregon.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [http://cdeemer2007.blogspot.com/2009/01/whatever-happened-to-david-shetzline.html The Writing Life II: Whatever happened to David Shetzline?]
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Category:American tax resisters
Category:Cornell University alumni