David Shetzline

Who is David Shetzline?

David W. Shetzline is an American author residing in Oakridge, 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. He served as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army, in addition to being a ditchdigger and a student at Columbia University. He wrote in “the Cornell school” of writing in the 1960s with Thomas Pynchon and Richard Fariña. This school of writing has been defined through as having three preoccupations socio-political paranoia, concern with environmental degradation, and awareness of popular culture’s unique impact on the American mind. 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 older literary traditions of that university, such as the literary traditions represented by E.B. White and Hiram Corson.