Reviews for About a Mountain

The average rating for About a Mountain based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-01-20 00:00:00 Michelle Brown Update 2/16/2012: Wow I just read this Slate article about John D'Agata and his fact checker. Apparently they had heated debates over whether facts matter. D'Agata throws the word 'art' around like some trump-card and was generally acting like an asshole. I don't disagree with his point: facts can be changed in the service of art. However, I don't think D'Agata can justify that what he wrote is art! I read the essay in question (it's actually the last chapter of this here book) and I would say that he didn't change facts in the service of art, but in the service of sensationalism! Besides, his writing style is atrocious. I have no problem with other artists fudging the truth, when they are actually making good art: Ryszard Kapuściński, Geoff Dyer, Gontran de Poncis, etc. Or filmmakers: Herzog, Erroll Morris, Kiarostami, etc. But a hack job like D'Agata? Give me a break! Sorry for the rant, but this article just pissed me off. Original Review: John D'Agata is no writer. He may be smart and he may have his eye on the pulse of new innovative writing and he may even be able to talk intelligently about it, but he is no writer. There is a simple explanation for this. John D'Agata has no ear for language. At this point, you may be flabbergasted. You may be wondering "but Jimmy, how can you say that about someone who is admired by Ben Marcus, Blake Butler, David Ulin and many other innovative trendsetting writers?" Easy, they are wrong. It is easy to be caught up in a provocative subject, presented in an innovative new way. But the sentences! The words! Even the most fact-driven boring newspaper writer should have an ear for language, a sense of how to create rhythm and sounds for a desired effect. Or for the opposite of that effect, to shatter rhythm and sound in an attempt to undermine poetry. But here there is no sustained strategy in either direction. Each sentence clunks against my ear, each syllable losing flight in the dead air. In a book not so much about a mountain, but about a form (the form of a mountain? the form of language?) you would think John D'Agata would try to pay some attention to his words, sentences, paragraphs. This is all the more heinous given that John D'Agata is supposed to be the artful essay writer, as opposed to the un-artful essay writers who care too much about subject matter and not enough about 'style'. And yet, I will take many other essay writers concerned about subject matter over John D'Agata. At least most of them have no pretensions of literary value. And some of them can actually write a good sentence. John D'Agata's sentences, when they are short and declarative are transparent in the way they are trying to build momentum. And yet no momentum is built. The air goes straight out. The rhythm is decidedly off, and the details are trite, even predictable. There is a particular art to writing a good list, of the predictable vs. the unpredictable, the length and rhythm and sound of the words. John D'Agata does not know anything about this art. When his sentences are long, they end up tripping all over themselves. You have a sense that John D'Agata has no idea why he is writing a long sentence over a short sentence or vice versa. You have a sense that he is just throwing "style" on the page when he has no idea what it is, or how it works. And yet I would also argue that this book is completely style-less. Style must exist organically. What we have here is an attempt to write an unconventional essay. But what's evident is that John D'Agata doesn't have that much to say. So he inflates the pages with words, with lists of words that may have associative ties to the subject at hand, in the hopes of hitting an emotional register or two. This strategy might be bearable if John D'Agata could write. Dare I say the word "sloppy"? Yes, there is something sloppy in this mess of a book. I was expecting so much from it because the subject matter was so interesting. Yet John D'Agata manages to take this premise and make it mind numbingly boring, brushing over its surface with his obvious observations. His writing approaches the superficiality of the city of Las Vegas itself. His attempts to relate it back to his life, his mother, the suicide victim, etc. were just that: attempts. I could only feel the excruciating effort in these attempts, not an opening up to the possibility of discovery through language but a feeling of closed-up-ness. There is no excitement, no depth, and no connection to any of the characters or even to the writer's own voice at all. Just for the record, I have nothing against the new essay or the blending of personal and historical, fact and fiction, etc. In fact, I have been reading an anthology that John D'Agata himself edited: The Next American Essay. And I really like some of the pieces so far (Joan Didion's piece in the book does something similar to what John D'Agata is trying to do here, but much more effectively). I even have a shelf of poetic essays. So what I object to is not the form, but how it is executed.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-03-20 00:00:00 Robb Lovre I think I've come a little bit closer to defining what it is I love about great writing -- I love to learn a little something, I love to lose a breath over an ingenious construction of words, I love an author who welcomes me into a room peopled with ideas that surprise me. I love John D'Agata. Like, almost physically. Like, watch out, John, you are right now living in my town, and I could find you. Alright, I tried to be cute and look you up in the phone book, but you're not listed, but I found the listing for your office in EPB, and I could conceivably drive by every day on my way to work if I didn't mind that two mile detour through collegetown traffic. But all that would be silly, because what I really love is his fervent attitude about the essay. D'Agata's essay refuses to follow form; his conclusion refuses to recap his intro, his outline is beside the point; his facts are researched and justified, but their role is more character than bullet point. His pseudo-facts play the straight man, honest and accurate and ridiculous. Plus, on top of this incredible, irreverent essay construction, what he's saying is just as enchanting as how he's saying it. You might say D'Agata got lucky, finding himself in Vegas with a national headline concerning nuclear waste on his left and a suicide on his right, but really, all he did was pay attention. And then he asked a lot of questions. And only now and then did they get answered, but more often than not, the not-answer was answer enough. And the ridiculous things (like creating a warning sign that will survive and communicate for 10,000 years) made him chuckle through the knuckleheads he interviewed, and the sad things (a 16-year-old suicide in the city boasting the highest number of suicides per capita in the country) made him weep poetry. And when was the last time you read an essay that took you to such emotional extremes? Essays aren't supposed to do that, they're supposed to be little theses with facts and logical argument -- no crying. I'm off to read D'Agata's other book of essays, Halls of Fame: Essays, where it seems to me he's doing some Anthony Bourdain-style visits to various halls of kitsch. I'm looking forward to his sharing with me his curiosity, his capacity for wonder, that informs his writing and makes it feel like I'm not learning anything, just staring at his open palms with my mouth agape, wondering what's next.