In this circuitous, stylish investigation, D'Agata (Halls of Fame) uses the federal government's highly controversial (and recently rejected) proposal to entomb the U.S.'s nuclear waste located in Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas, as his way into a spiraling and subtle examination of the modern city, suicide, linguistics, Edvard Munch's The Scream, ecological and psychic degradation, and the gulf between information and knowledge. Acting as a counterpoint to Yucca is the story of a teenager named Levi who leapt to his death off Las Vegas' Stratosphere Motel. It is testament to D'Agata skillful organization of the book, broken into “Who,” “What,” “When,” “Where,” and “Why,” and his use of a rapid sequences of montages—Levi's suicide is spliced with Orwellian Congressional debates on the stability of Yucca Mountain—that readers will be pleasurably (and perhaps necessarily) disoriented but never distracted from the themes knitting together the ostensibly unrelated voices of Native American activists, politicians, geologists, Levi's parents, D'Agata's own mother, and a host of zany Las Vegans. A sublime reading experience, aesthetically rewarding and marked by moral courage and humility. (Feb.)
Middling wanderings along the Las Vegas Strip and the Nevada desert. With a hat tip to Bill Maher, a new rule emerges from these pages: If you're going to write about Las Vegas and enter gonzo territory, you had better write as well as Hunter Thompson. D'Agata (Creative Writing/Univ. of Iowa; Halls of Fame: Essays, 2001, etc.) doesn't approach those grand heights, and the heart sinks a touch at seeing some of the halfhearted flourishes: "What I'd planned to do was help my mother find her new home. Help her move in. Get my mom settled." Such telegraphy seems to serve no purpose, and the narrative, studded with single-sentence paragraphs, is similarly disjointed to no real effect. As his sense of geography indicates, he's a stranger 'round these parts, though he adopts a local cause celebre in the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste controversy and makes himself a little more at home exploring it. D'Agata takes a roundabout path getting to some of the finer points of that imbroglio, with textbook-like detours-"Cognitive science is the study of how humans know themselves. It explores how we perceive, reason, and interact with the world through the complex negotiation of objects and ideas"-gossipy dishing of local eco-hero Edward Abbey and musings on suicide and mutant fish. Ultimately, the piece has an unfinished, workshoppy feel, and it doesn't deliver significant news about either Yucca Mountain or Las Vegas-yes, the place is an assault on the senses; yes, it makes people unhappy; yes, it's one of the more bizarre locales on the planet. Well-meaning but off the mark. Agent: Matt McGowan/Frances Goldin Literary Agency
"Unquestionably art, a breathtaking piece of writing."
New York Times Book Review - Charles Bock
"Transcendant…This is an empathetic and virtuosic performance that invites us to live more bravely with, and to think about, our uncertainties."
"A beautiful embodiment of what is a central principle of great nonfiction: it’s not remotely about what it purports to be about."
The Millions - David Shields
"Here is the literary essay raised to the highest form of art."
"About a Mountain is about language, catastrophe, communication, impending destruction, and death, but like most great books, these aspects add up to something much larger. Despite its subtle surface, the book has a sensibility and style that emit their own radiation. D’Agata tells his story with such poise and precision that it not only reveals the fragility of words and human life—it possesses the power to pull us in and change the way we think."
"A writer of rare intelligence and artistry . . . John D’Agata is redefining the modern American essay."
"Exquisite…This is what, at its best, contemporary narrative nonfiction aspires to, a story that, like the novel, operates on many levels at once. And in About a Mountain D’Agata has found a nearly perfect nexus to investigate our post-millennial concerns."
Los Angeles Times - David L. Ulin
"Utterly amazing."
"The book’s connections dawn on you like a reverberating rhyme in a poem."
"About a Mountain is as fact-laden as any John McPhee book, but where McPhee works to clarify domains of fact generally understood only by experts, D’Agata focuses on the insufficiency of facts as vehicles for understanding contemporary reality. He draws our attention to the conflicts and gaps in expert opinion and to the terminal slipperiness of facts…and the end result is one of the most convincing metaphors for contemporary American reality that I have come across in any recent piece of writing."
Quarterly Conversation - Mark Lane
"What started as a book about a mountain changes into a book about Las Vegas and suicide and signs and language and death, and it reads like a wonderful and free-flowing improvisation…Our writer has a nearly inhuman depth of perception, and readers can take hope from how, in the face of his uncertainty, D’Agata puts his fine improvisational mind to work, where meaning dissolves into nothingness, where low ceilings are protection from God, where suicides occur by the dozen, where cakes are the size of football fields, and where language is as porous and corrosive as that damn mountain."
"D’Agata has an encyclopedic understanding of the form’s intricate artistry. Moreover, he is a serious thinker who regularly lays down stylish, intelligent sentences.... an engrossing story and an often impressive piece of reporting."
The New York Times Book Review
