Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight: Sheltering with Thoreau in the Age of Crisis

by David Gessner

Overview

"A powerful and timely book from one of the most provocative and engaging voices in contemporary environmental writing."
—MICHAEL P. BRANCH, author of How to Cuss in Western

When the pandemic struck, nature writer David Gessner turned to Henry David Thoreau, the original social distancer, for lessons on how to live. Those lessons—of learning our own backyard, re–wilding, loving nature, self–reliance, and civil disobedience—hold a secret that could help save us as we face the greater crisis of climate.

DAVID GESSNER is the author of 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. Chair of the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and founder and editor–in–chief of Ecotone, Gessner lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, with his wife, the novelist Nina de Gramont, and their daughter, Hadley.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948814485
Publisher:	Torrey House Press
Publication date:	06/01/2021
Pages:	377
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

DAVID GESSNER is the author of eleven 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 and the prize–winning The Tarball Chronicles. In 2003 Gessner taught environmental writing as a Briggs–Copeland Lecturer at Harvard, and he now serves as chair of the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he is also the founder and editor–in–chief of the literary magazine Ecotone. 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 hosted the National Geographic Explorer show, "The Call of the Wild." Gessner lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, with his wife, the novelist Nina de Gramont, and their daughter, Hadley.

Table of Contents

Why Thoreau Matters Now: Looking Back From the End of the World 1

I March: The New World 15

A Dream of Rewilding 15

Journals 23

The Wireless Woods 33

II April: Building 47

Hard Data and Angels 49

Building the Shack 61

Montaigne in the Age of Trump 77

III Hay: At Home in the Apocalypse 91

An Apocalyptic Reading List 93

Homeless 103

Days of Wings and Water 125

IV June: Civil Disobedience 129

Blackbirds 131

Grizzled 145

Civil Disobedience 175

Solstice 187

V July: Hard Endings 207

Independence Day 209

Friends and Eulogies 217

Death of the Shack 239

VI August: Paying the Price 251

Things That Fly I: Before They're Gone 253

Things That Fly II: Drone Alone 263

The Trickle Down Theory 273

VII September: The Road to Walden 301

Road Trip Henry 303

Floating Homes 319

Walden, and Beyond 335

VIII October: Walking 349

The World in a Walk 351

IX November: The News 359

The News 361

X March: Anniversary 371

Epilogue 373

About the Author 379

Editorial Reviews

"The best illustration I know of Thoreau’s wonderful quip that wealth is 'not possession but enjoyment.' Contrary to the prevalent image of Thoreau the unsocialized, intolerant loner, the figure emerging from Mr. Gessner’s book is, like Mr. Gessner himself, complexly alive, passionately in love with being on this planet."
—WALL STREET JOURNAL

"Gessner vividly recounts his rich daily experiences of wildness…He also admits to wondering if it is too late to save the planet and to raise consciousness about the perils of materialism and anthropocentrism. Yet despite evidence that sometimes overwhelms him, Gessner, like Thoreau, finds hope in every new morning and joy in the world that Thoreau so eloquently extolled. A grateful homage to the iconic naturalist."
—KIRKUS REVIEWS

"A fast–paced but powerful, moving treasure trove of life lessons Gessner divined by spending a year making the best he could of a global tragedy. He doesn't try to make sense of the pandemic—that's impossible. Instead, he assesses what he can learn from his life amid this mess and, by extension, what we can learn from ours."
—WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS

"Like Walden itself, Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight is a bit of a potpourri: part edited journal, part memoir, part nature narrative, part philosophizing."
—WILMINGTON STAR NEWS

"In a dynamic and illuminating exploration of the strange wilderness that has been a year of pandemic-induced seclusion, David Gessner succeeds brilliantly in using Henry Thoreau to make sense of the quarantine, and vice versa. While the signature Gessnerian humor, irreverence, and lyricism are all here, Gessner also offers a profound meditation on how we might live, write, and parent in a bewildering age of global catastrophe. Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight is a powerful and timely book from one of the most provocative and engaging voices in contemporary environmental writing."
—MICHAEL P. BRANCH, author of Rants from the Hill and How to Cuss in Western

"The havoc caused by the pandemic is only a mild foretaste of what climate disruption will bring, not merely for a year or two but for the foreseeable future. To imagine how we might preserve our humanity as the world unravels, you could start by reading this lively, captivating book by David Gessner. Drawn in part from his journal of what he calls ‘this endless night of a year,’ it weaves together memoir, natural history, travelogue, and literary homage to reveal a mind fully awake to our dire situation, yet able to relish birds and books, family and friends, and the living Earth."
—SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS, author of The Way of Imagination

"In Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight, Gessner finds Henry David Thoreau an admirable 'guiding spirit' for his pandemic year. But don't think of this book as a celebration of retreat from hard times or merely learning to live with less. Rather it is a book about engagement with the difficult world, about living with impermanence. A book about friendship with writers living and dead, neighbors, ospreys, skimmers, a floating shack, and a family. Reading this book is a beautiful experience, an antidote to the toxins that dominate the news."
—ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING, author of A Woven World

"It's fashionable today to deride Henry David Thoreau as a privileged white dude mooning around a suburban 'wilderness.' Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight doesn't deny this, but it digs deeper. Does Thoreau have anything to tell us at this vexing moment in history? For David Gessner, the answer is yes: Thoreau becomes a conduit to thinking about friendship, parenting, race, aging, technology, home, climate change, justice, and death. Gessner shows us how, rather than burying ourselves in old books, we might use them to go out and meet the world, in all its wild and broken beauty."
—GINGER STRAND, author of The Brothers Vonnegut

"Gessner is my favorite medium and his work is always a reliable literary Ouija board. He consorts with and interrogates ghosts—Bate, Stegner, Abbey, and Teddy Roosevelt among them—and now he has added Thoreau to the ghostly chorus. These are dark times. This book helps us through."
—JOHN LANE, author of My Paddle to the Sea ​

From the Publisher

2021-03-17
Further evidence that Thoreau offers wise counsel in dark times.

Melding memoir and nature writing, award-winning environmentalist Gessner celebrates Thoreau, whose Walden he discovered at the age of 16, inspiring him to question his values, attend to the natural world, keep a journal, and, as an adult, even build his own solitary writing shack. Now, facing environmental degradation and a global pandemic, Gessner sees Thoreau as his “presiding genius, and guiding spirit.” Examining Thoreau’s enduring relevance, he writes, “in an age of climate change he gets to the root of it: the need to do with less not acquire more. The need to live a moral life despite the risks and the ridicule. And of course the deep understanding of just how much nature can still offer us. Not nature in any vague or high-handed sense but in the physical daily experience of it.” Gessner vividly recounts his rich daily experiences of wildness, including walking, biking, kayaking, and bird-watching in North Carolina, his adopted home for the past 17 years; accompanying environmental activist Rick Bass for a project to save grizzlies; and traveling to Thoreau country—Cape Cod, Concord, and Maine—with his family. “Wildness, unlike wilderness,” he writes, “can be found anywhere.” Writing this book during the first seven months of the pandemic, the author reports the increasing numbers of cases and deaths, statistics that serve as bleak epigraphs to each chapter. As much as he asserts “that staying still and finding home can be exciting, even thrilling,” he admits to feeling low-level depression during “this endless night of a year.” He also admits to wondering if it is too late to save the planet and to raise consciousness about the perils of materialism and anthropocentrism. Yet despite evidence that sometimes overwhelms him, Gessner, like Thoreau, finds hope in every new morning and joy in the world that Thoreau so eloquently extolled.

A grateful homage to the iconic naturalist and a pleasant memoir of wildness.

Kirkus Reviews