His first work,
DeFord, was published in 1968.
DeFord is dedicated to the memory of Fariña. Reviewing DeFord, author
Thomas Pynchon wrote, "What makes Shetzline's voice a truly original and important one is the way he uses these interference-patterns to build his novel, combining an amazing talent for seeing and listening with a yarn-spinner's native gift for picking you up, keeping you in the spell of the action, the chase, not letting go of you till you've said, yes, I see; yes, this is how it is."
DeFord was a seminal contra use of geography as a metaphor.
Heckletooth 3 followed the year after
DeFord, and was noted as a lead text in the new ecology movement of the 1970s. Of
Heckletooth 3,
The Whole Earth Catalog wrote, "[t]here are some writers and books that I only hear about from others.
William Eastlake is one. So is David Shetzline, notably for his forest fire novel Heckletooth 3.
Ken Kesey went on about it to me years ago. And last week Don Carpenter firmly put the book into my hand. Well they’ve got my agreement. My summer logging the Oregon woods tells me that Shetzline has the work right, the fire and the men right. He especially has the language – Oregon laconic. It’s an introspective action-novel about virtue. I mean, about detail." ==Other works==