{"id":35257,"date":"2016-10-04T15:16:06","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T21:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=35257"},"modified":"2023-11-14T09:49:05","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T15:49:05","slug":"a-nuclear-alphabet-for-downwinders-michael-mclanes-trace-elements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/a-nuclear-alphabet-for-downwinders-michael-mclanes-trace-elements\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nuclear Alphabet for Downwinders: Michael McLane’s Trace Elements"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"trace_elements\"<\/a>Whatever librarian catalogued Michael McLane\u2019s chapbook \u201cTrace Elements: Mapping the Great Basin and its Peripheries<\/em>\u201d gave it the call number QC913.2.A8<\/em>, which is Library of Congress code for Meteorology\u2014Atomic energy, including radioactive fallout<\/em>. This slim literary work sits on library shelves near scientific works like Human Exposure to Particulate Debris from Aerospace Nuclear Applications<\/em>, and Radiation Exposure of Sheep Which Died Following the 1953 Nuclear Tests in Nevada<\/em>, and that seems like a good place for a work of creative nonfiction dedicated, \u201cfor all downwinders, nuclear or otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

The word \u201cmapping\u201d in the subtitle is a bit misleading, though. The book is not, in fact, a map but rather an alphabet book, counting down from the letter \u201cZ\u201d in reference to the countdown before a rocket launch. Each letter of the alphabet offers up a word related to atomic testing in the western United States along with a short essay. \u201cZ\u201d stands for \u201cZephyr,\u201d the god of the west wind, but is also a reference to the wind that carried radioactive fallout toward the \u201clow-use segment of the population\u201d living in Utah. Since military brass deliberately waited for the wind to shift away from more densely populated areas before detonating nuclear tests, it was not exactly accidental that the downwinders were standing \u201cdownwind\u201d when the bombs went off.<\/p>\n

McLane clearly considers the form of the book to be essential since \u201cA\u201d at the end of the backwards alphabet stands for a self-referential \u201cAbecedarium.\u201d Consider the possible meanings: Usually an ABC book is for children, a primer to provide moral or religious instruction in the guise of teaching literacy; alphabetizing is a standard way of organizing or indexing a reference work; and ABC books are also a kind of word game to be solved both by the author and the reader in order to puzzle out what commonality connects arbitrary letters. McLane tells us that, \u201ctypically, abecedarian are merely practice,\u201d which is to say, the bombing of the American West was done in the name of testing, framed as a basically harmless exercise in preparation for another, supposedly more real nuclear Armageddon that would, presumably, take place elsewhere on another map. Never mind that real wind really did deposit cancerous nuclear fallout on real people living in the American West.<\/p>\n

Over time the nuclear history of the American West has taken on mythic qualities as a tale about hubris in the classical meaning of a tragedy caused by arrogant human beings seeking to become godlike and ultimately punished by offended gods. McLane has dug obsessively into this history to pick out strange anecdotes and hair-raising ironies, and indeed the gods are always there in the background, watching. I hope it is not a spoiler to say that McLane has a clear moral intention in this work, presented in the guise of teaching nuclear literacy. \u201cOccasionally,\u201d he writes, \u201can alphabet explodes.\u201d<\/p>\n

As other abecedarian reviewers have observed, any alphabet book is only as good as its weakest link \u2013 the problematic letter \u201cX.\u201d McLane\u2019s X stands for itself, an X that is literally painted on the ground as a target for pilots to drop their nuclear payload. X also stands for \u201cX marks the spot,\u201d a fairly conventional choice that becomes sinister in context; \u201cIf an X is present, we say there<\/em>, we say something<\/em>. If it is missing, we jump to conclusions, we say there<\/em>, nothing<\/em>. This is the origin of the term \u201cregion of sacrifice,\u201d the designation given to the Great Basin, an area that encompasses wide swaths of Nevada and Utah.\u201d So the X on the map (or lack thereof) becomes an essential key to understanding McLane\u2019s alphabetic lesson.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d say this particular ABC book passes the X test with flying colors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Michael McLane<\/em>
\nTrace Elements: Mapping the Great Basin and its Peripheries<\/em>
\nElik Press <\/em>
\n2015<\/em>
\n 23 pp.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael McLane is the man behind the Utah Book Festival, which this month is bringing authors and book lovers together across the state. But he’s also a writer, and in this companion piece to our podcast on Trent Alvey, Amy Brunvand takes a look at McLane’s Elik Press publication Trace Elements: Mapping the Great Basin and its Peripheries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1518,"featured_media":35258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2589,35],"tags":[2824,1394],"class_list":["post-35257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews-literary-arts","category-literary-arts","tag-elik-press","tag-michael-mclane"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-08 10:50:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/trace_elements.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35257"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71207,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35257\/revisions\/71207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}