David Gessner Quote
Stegner, for all his striving toward largeness, shared some of Abbey’s bitterness. Of course he, characteristically, framed it in a larger way. He believed that western writing as a whole was ignored, and as he became known throughout his home region he chafed against being considered regional—when considered at all—by the East. I remembered watching a television interview with Stegner where he mentioned that something he had written had not been reviewed or recognized properly. Because it’s provincial? the interviewer asked. Stegner just stared at the poor man, who shrunk as the silence swallowed him. No, Stegner finally replied, because the critics are provincial. Of course. It was the New York critics who were the regionalists and their region was a tiny, crowded island.
Stegner, for all his striving toward largeness, shared some of Abbey’s bitterness. Of course he, characteristically, framed it in a larger way. He believed that western writing as a whole was ignored, and as he became known throughout his home region he chafed against being considered regional—when considered at all—by the East. I remembered watching a television interview with Stegner where he mentioned that something he had written had not been reviewed or recognized properly. Because it’s provincial? the interviewer asked. Stegner just stared at the poor man, who shrunk as the silence swallowed him. No, Stegner finally replied, because the critics are provincial. Of course. It was the New York critics who were the regionalists and their region was a tiny, crowded island.
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About David Gessner
Gessner was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard College where he worked at the Harvard Crimson drawing political cartoons, most notably a drawing of Ronald Reagan urinating on an unemployed man in the gutter, entitled "The Trickle Down Theory". He was awarded his degree in 1983. He is married to the novelist Nina de Gramont.
He is the author of fourteen books that blend a love of nature, humor, memoir, and environmentalism, including Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness and the New York Times-bestselling All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West. His prizes include a Pushcart Prize, the John Burroughs Award for Best Nature Essay, the Association for Study of Literature and the Environment’s award for best book of creative writing, and the Reed Award for Best Book on the Southern Environment. In 2017 he appeared on the National Geographic Explorer show "The Call of the Wild".