Author: Dylan Bos-Dowlen
Professor Martha Ronk and the English and Comparative Literary Studies (ECLS) department hosted John D’Agata, the renowned lyrical essayist, at Occidental last Wednesday, as a part the author’s book tour.
D’Agata read the end of his new novel/nonfiction hybrid “About a Mountain,” in which he protests the storage of nuclear waste in Las Vegas’ Yucca Mountain and chronicles the last days of 16-year-old suicide victim Levi Presley. D’Agata’s book represents a new style of novel that blends the styles of memoir, nonfiction and fiction.
Before his reading, D’Agata briefed the students on what he described as his own strange writing style.
“Do not be afraid to laugh at the absurdities, though by no means feel I am pressuring you to laugh,” he said.
D’Agata began to write about Yucca Mountain when his mother moved to Las Vegas, where the book takes place. D’Agata’s personal interest was piqued when he heard of a proposal to dump nuclear waste on Yucca Mountain, which is in close proximity to his mother’s Las Vegas home.
For over 20 years, the mountain, which is located about 80 miles from the city, was used as a depository for radioactive waste, but the practice was halted in 2009, according to The Chicago Tribune.
Between D’Agata’s discussions of Yucca Mountain and nuclear waste, his book contemplates the final activities of a suicide victim. The day after the author spoke with a troubled teenage boy on a suicide hot-line, Presley killed himself, and D’Agata hypothesizes throughout the novel that the two may have been the same person.
D’Agata graduated from the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop with a masters in fine arts in poetry and later went back to the University for an MFA in creative nonfiction. D’Agata also wrote “Halls of Fame” and “The Lost Origins of the Essay” and edited “The Great American Essay.”
Out of great respect for his innovative writing style, Ronk and the ECLS department brought D’Agata to Occidental as an inspiration for students, she said. “He has been a singular force in reviving current interest in the essay form – a form designed to explore, meditate and follow one’s thoughts,” said Ronk.
Ronk described D’Agata as a writer capable of reviving the genre of essay writing in American nonfiction. Annie Dillard, a famous American author, credited D’Agata with “redefining the modern American essay.”
Professor Ronk encouraged her students from her Creative Writing classes to attend the talk to further their own abilities. “For writers, he is an excellent model: He revises obsessively, writes beautifully and as one of my students said, ‘I was bowled over, speechless,'” said Ronk.
Students who attended the reading commented on D’Agata’s blending of nonfiction and memoir in his commentary of the tenuity of the future. “Both of his investigations [Yucca Mountain and Levi Presley] operate as metaphors to reveal how fragile our sense of knowledge really is,” Jordan Anacker (first-year) said.
D’Agata’s book “About a Mountain” is available for sale at the Occidental Bookstore.
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