LRR: What sparked your passion for nature writing?ĭG: I would say when I moved west at age 30, both Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner were big inspirations in writing about nature. There’s another quote, too, that I really like: “Good writers make outlines, great writers throw them away.” In my early days, I made a lot of outlines and was very organized, but now I go more on intuition and follow the flow of things. There’s the famous Frost line, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader,” which I very much believe in. Then, when I get to the desk, I like to let it go where it’ll go. The planning comes through in my journal notes and when I scribble down things to myself. Then I’ll come back and type up those things and edit. When I’m burned out on typing away on my computer, I go down for walks along the river because I lean on a quote that Churchill was fond of, “A change is as good as a rest.” I speak things into the tape recorder so I get the energy of the walk and try to convey my voice. I do my early morning work at my computer at my desk. LRR: When writing, do you sit and think through every word, or do you write freely?ĭG: Lately I use my recorders so that I can write while I’m walking. It’s interesting that you can see humor and monologue’s intensity colliding with Thoreau and the nature writing that creates a combination in me where in some ways, I feel like My Green Manifesto was my Portnoy’s Complaint. I have to say Mad Magazine and “SNL” were also influences.

Other satiric writers like Vonnegut also influenced me.

A less obvious influence on my work is Phillip Roth, who gets a bad rep these days for writing blatantly about sex, but I like the humor and energy in his sentences. Not long ago I went to Walden Pond with my then six-year-old daughter and my wife, who pointed at where cabin had been and said, “That’s where the house of the man who ruined daddy’s life was.” In other words, I think she was saying that Thoreau sent me in the direction of nature, nature writing, and non-conformity. Long River Review: Did any other particular writer(s) inspire you? Who are your influences?ĭavid Gessner: Well, I think if you look at what I call my literary family tree, you can see where certain things in my work came from. LRR was able to catch up with him prior to his lecture. On March 1, 2012, David Gessner, the author of eight books and the Editor in Chief of Ecotone, visited UConn as part of the Edwin Way Teale Lecture Series.

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