The Bookworm: About a Mountain
About a Mountain, by John D’Agata. 236 pages. W.W. Norton & Company. 2010.
“What we’re dealing with here,” explained Bob Halstead, a nuclear waste consultant for the state of Nevada, “is an exercise in planning for a nuclear catastrophe that is fundamentally rhetorical. It’s theatrical security, because the preparations that are being made by the Department of Energy have no real chance of succeeding. They satisfy the public, however, because they’re symbols of control. Ten thousand years sounds like a long time, right? But in terms of actually doing what that mountain needs to do, ten thousand years is useless. This waste is going to be deadly for tens of millions of years.” (Page 68.)
On super hot days like this it is nice to sit inside, in the comforts of air conditioning, and polish off a good book (especially when one has as big of a reading queue as mine; yeesh!). That is exactly what I did yesterday afternoon with About a Mountain.
Though the federal government abandoned the idea of using Yucca Mountain as a repository for nuclear waste since the book was published, About a Mountain provides a fascinating, well-written, and at times exasperating and funny account of the who, what, when, where, why, and how regarding the project, especially in regards to America’s Mecca of gambling and debauchery right next door: Las Vegas. D’Agata, who teaches at the UI’s Nonfiction Writing Program, covers all the relevant and outrageous facts — and then some.
Despite the title, though, About a Mountain is not necessarily all about Yucca Mountain, which was a surprise to me. It is more akin to a personal account of D’Agata’s interest, connection, and research journey. After moving his mother to Las Vegas sometime around 2002 or earlier (it is very hard to tell using the book’s timeline), D’Agata learned of the Yucca Mountain project and, judging from the book, became obsessed with it. He decided to live in Vegas and take it in; fittingly, the book is full of relevant asides about the city — so many, in fact, that at times I thought a better title would have been About a City. D’Agata mentions the city’s connection with the mafia, its irony, its obsession with image and attraction, and its national-leading suicide rate (“They kill themselves in Las Vegas so often, in fact, that you have a better chance of killing yourself if you live in Las Vegas than you do of being killed there…(page 136)”). D’Agata recounts his volunteer service for the city’s suicide prevention hotline and writes a disturbing amount about Levi Presley, a 16-year-old who jumped off the observation deck of the Stratosphere.
Most of the book, though, is truly about a mountain. It includes startling and downright frightening facts about nuclear energy and its toxic byproduct. I was not a fan of nuclear energy before reading this book and am now a lifelong opponent having finished it. D’Agata interviewed many of those involved with the Yucca Mountain project and cited many studies regarding the feasibility of using it as a long-term repository and the methods for storing nuclear waste. Basically, nothing would work — which is scary because we are producing nuclear waste every day and have no place to store it safely. As a matter of fact, no country has ever been able to safely store nuclear waste.
D’Agata — a writer seemingly smitten with run-on sentences and intolerably long lists — spends a substantial chunk of time writing about the warning sign that was to be placed at the entrance of the mountain — a sign that was intended to last for 10,000 years. The federal government assembled a panel of experts from fields such a linguistics, geography, art, biology, psychology, and ethics and asked them to make what would be the world’s most important sign, keeping our predecessors from exploring Yucca and exposing themselves to deadly radiation. Ten thousand years, though, is an extremely long time, so many of those involved thought it was near impossible to make a sign that would not only convey the purpose and importance of Yucca thousands of years into the future but also physically survive the punishment of 10 millennia. The futility seemed to be a nice metaphor for the project as a whole.
About a Mountain was incredibly interesting. Though the narrative jumps abruptly in a number of places, and the endless asides seem to spiral out of control, it is an excellent book that I recommend for all interested.
Words I did not know: All definitions are courtesy of my MacBook dictionary. Lanais: “a porch or veranda.” Aberrant: “departing from an accepted standard.” Creosote: “a dark brown oil distilled from coal tar and used as a wood preservative.” Vitrify: “convert (something) into glass or a glasslike substance, typically by exposure to heat.” Mensa (or “MENSA,” as it appeared in the text): “an international organization founded in England in 1945 whose members must achieve very high scores in IQ tests to be admitted.” Semiotics: “the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.” Lucite: “a solid transparent plastic made of polymethyl methacrylate (the same material as Perspex or Plexiglas).” Caliche: in this instance it is used to mean “an area of calcium carbonate formed in the soils of semiarid regions.” Colliculus: “a small protuberance, esp. one of two pairs in the roof of the midbrain, involved respectively in vision and hearing.” Gestalt: “an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.”
