David Gessner
CULLOWHEE–– WCU’s Ninth Annual Spring Literary Festival wraps up today with readings from two very interesting environmental writers and North Carolina’s past two Poet Laureates.
David Gessner, who teaches at UNC-Wilmington, will get things started at 4 p.m. in the University Center Theater by talking about his latest book, The Tarball Chronicles, which began as a series of blog posts from the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP oil spill.
Gessner’s writing career bridges the gap between literary, academic, and blog genres. His essay, “Those Who Write, Teach”, appeared in the NY Times Magazine’s College Issue in 2008.
Here’s the opening lines:
Five years ago I gave up the full-time writing life and became the kind of domesticated writer known as a professor. I was not shot with a tranquilizer gun, tagged and shipped off to a university. I underwent this conversion more or less of my own free will, drawn by the lure of health insurance, salary and security. and highlights the tension between artist and professor.
Gessner’s blog, Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour, is a funny mix of literary, environmental, and pop topics, sprinkled with YouTube essays and good writing. Gessner’s focus on the changing nature of his art is ever present.
“What is blogging but writing without editing?” a friend asked me. Of course that friend is an editor. Bill and I are not looking to put editors out of business, and we still work quite happily with them, but there is a real pleasure in the autonomy, and speed, of having an idea, committing it to (virtual) paper, and hitting the little “publish” button, occasional typos (me more than Bill) and all.
All of the tension of Gessner’s genre-bending has been brought to bear on his latest book, which transcends the idea of environmental journalism and draws on the tradition of the American road narrative, pitting one man’s soul against the vast natural expanses of our country.
Gessner’s take on his project:
Last summer I traveled down to the Gulf of Mexico to write about the oil spill and bird migration for the Natural Resources Defense Council. As I stayed in the Gulf the original article grew into a series of blog posts– http://www.onearth.org/intothegulf –and those posts gradually grew into a book, The Tarball Chronicles. In the end, the writing was not just about the oil spill itself, but about larger connections: connections between how we have chosen to live and the consequences of those choices; between what we are doing now and our future; between our need for fuel and our love of nature; between the need for sacrifice and the love of luxury. (I will attach a short section below that I wrote about northern gannets to give you a sense of what I mean.)
At the same time, I wanted the posts to be blunt, funny, and emotional. I had never defined myself as a journalist before, but the story I was seeing, quite different than the national story, seemed to demand a fast, angry journalistic take. I quickly saw the great discrepancy between the national story, told in broad strokes like something out of Boy’s Life, and the real story on the ground. I sought out locals and explored local places, trying to bring readers along for the strange dark ride as I birdwatched, boated, flew, drank, ate, talked, listened and swam my way through the Gulf. I saw ospreys nesting above a tarball clean-up area and watched beautiful white ibises near Haliburton road. I spent a night in a fish camp on the bayou just a few miles from the encroaching oil, talked my way into a helicopter ride out to the rig with the Cousteau film team, and stared down oiled pelicans—a heartbreaking sight– in the Fort Jackson re-hab center.
The resulting book is a strange mix: part nature book, part new journalism, part adventure story. Though the darkness is laced with humor there is an overtly moral element to the book. I felt I was going someplace different, and I find myself still there. There is no time for pussyfooting around, no time to follow the literary rules, or any rules that get in the way of the work of the world. Rather it’s time to face directly the way we are living and there’s no place for that like the Gulf.
From 5:30 p.m. festival attendees will be treated to a reception at the Illusions Cafe featuring the poetry of Fred Chappell, Cathy Smith Bowers, and Kathryn Stripling Byer. Chappell and Byer are North Carolina Poet Laureates.
At 7:30 p.m. NY Times best-selling author Alan Weisman will read from his nonfiction book, The World Without Us, which tells the story of the earth’s environment free from the pressures created by humans.
Listen to his interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation: Science Friday here.
