‘About a Mountain’ more about author than Yucca Mountain
“About a Mountain” is only partially about a mountain.
Written by John D’Agata, a creative writing instructor at the University of Iowa, the book is a series of essays led by the headings “Who,” “What,” “Where,” “When,” “Why” and “How.”
I bought the book because I am interested in Yucca Mountain and thought the topic was the primary subject of the essays.
Unfortunately, the book is little more than the musings of a “new person” to Vegas, focusing more on D’Agata himself.
D’Agata helped his mother move to Las Vegas in the summer of 2005. “I didn’t intend to stay,” he tells the reader. But he did stay for the summer. The book begins with Las Vegas’ 100th birthday celebration, the huge Sara Lee cake that eventually fed the pigs at R.C. Farms. He then makes amusing observations about the odd people who are attracted to Las Vegas and who make it their home.
We meet the real estate stereotype “Ethan,” who helps his mother find her Summerlin apartment; his mother’s friends who meet at the Lost Wages bar to watch C-Span who eventually introduce him to the issues of nuclear waste and Yucca Mountain; the teacher who shepherds her kids through the Yucca Mountain Project Information Center; and the gung-ho pro-nuclear guide at the Yucca Mountain Project tour.
D’Agata begins to do research about Yucca Mountain, to interview people and to visit Yucca Mountain itself. Then, about midway through, in long sections titled “Why,” he changes his tack and begins focusing on the suicide of a young man named Levi who jumped from the Stratosphere that summer. At this point, D’Agata begins to write a meditation on why people commit suicide, straying far from the mountain. He lost me at that point.
I have lived in this city for far too long (32 years) and know that odd people are attracted to Las Vegas. Once they get here, they have no money to leave. I am sure that it’s the gambling that sends more people over the edge into despair and suicide. Losing money will do that to you. Other precursors to suicide include drug abuse, alcoholism, fractured families, the high divorce rate and homelessness. Nuclear waste ... well, we’ve lived here with the Nevada Test Site creating a de facto waste dump since 1950. I don’t think Yucca Mountain or the test site drive people to suicide the way that losing all their money does or losing one’s family or livelihood does. What D’Agata fails to realize is that, because of the test site and its oversupply of nuclear waste that will never be placed in canisters in a “secure” facility, Nevadans don’t want any more nuclear waste even if it is “secure.” It’s not driving us to suicide. I fail to see the connection.
Mr. D’Agata, when you come to Las Vegas again to see your mom, how about you use your ironic and amusing talent to describe some of our interesting characters: the large population of homeless literate people who hang out at the downtown library every day, reading everything and anything until the staff kicks them out; or the destitute watching DVDs in the courtyard where misters are provided to keep them cooler in summer; maybe the people who bathe in the fountains or the man I saw yesterday who was combing his beard and mustache with his fingers while looking at his reflection in an office window; or perhaps the people who wash in the park we call “Oscar’s River”; or at the very least the people you see walking the streets of Las Vegas or hanging out at Starbucks. Any of that would be better than "About a Mountain."
