This Is Only a Test (17 page)

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The epigraph is from Adrienne Rich's “Diving into the Wreck” © 2013 W. W. Norton & Company.

These essays have appeared in slightly different forms in the following magazines:

“Bedtime Story,”
Brain, Child
, 2014

“Buckethead,”
Ascent
, 2012

“Death by Refrigerator,”
The Normal School
, 2013

“Dispatches from the Drownings,”
Mid-American-Review
, 2013

“Epistle to an Embryo” (previously titled “Baby's First Disaster”),
Sonora Review
, 2012

“Fabricating Fear,”
The Rumpus
, 2013

“Fifty Ways of Looking at Tornadoes,”
Quarterly West
, 2012; reprinted in
Greetings from Duluth
chapbook, Dzanc rEprint Series, 2014

“Fort Wayne Is Still Seventh on Hitler's List,”
North American Review
, 2011; reprinted in
Greetings from Duluth
chapbook, Dzanc rEprint Series, 2014

“The Girl in the Surf,”
Creative Nonfiction
, 2012

“Goodbye, Tuscaloosa,”
TriQuarterly
, 2011

“Hirofukushima,”
Passages North
, 2015

“The Longest Wait,”
Devil's Lake
, 2012

“Punch Line,”
Brevity
, 2014

“A Test of the Emergency Alert System” (previously titled “This Is a Test of the Emergency Alert System”),
The Offending Adam
, 2011

“To the Good People of Joplin,”
St. Louis Dispatch, Kansas City Star
, 2011

“The Year of the Great Forgetting,”
Hayden's Ferry Review
, 2014

1. Throughout these essays, Hollars often relies upon distinctive structures (tests, lists, epistles, enumerations, and parallel narratives, among others) to recount recurring stories in new ways. What is the effect of these distinctive structures? Do they alter your emotional response? Force you to reconsider these events in new ways?

2. In part I, “Dizzied,” Hollars often repeats the line “I am trying to write my way out of disaster.” How does this repetition reflect on the author's own personal grappling with disasters? Is the repetition a symptom of post-traumatic stress? If so, is writing a means of liberation?

3. In addition to exploring natural disasters, many of Hollars's essays confront disasters of a more personal nature. How do Hollars's essays on fatherhood connect with his essays on natural disasters?

4. Many of Hollars's essays utilize both in-depth research and personal experience. Does one of the two provide more credibility for you? Or rather, how do research and personal experience contribute to the author's credibility in different ways?

5. In essays such as “Goodbye, Tuscaloosa,” “The Changing,” and “The Year of the Great Forgetting,” Hollars examines how we are all at the mercy of our surroundings—that none of us can
ever prepare fully for the uncontrollable hardships of the world. How do these ideas complicate themselves throughout the essays? Does Hollars ever acknowledge the futility of his own efforts as a father incapable of protecting his children against all dangers?

6. The book's title,
This Is Only a Test
, implies that the book's depictions of real-life danger are limited. How do these essays explore authentic danger alongside invented danger? Which of Hollars's fears are real, and which are justified by anxiety?

7. Inherent in many of Hollars's essays are ethical questions: How are we to react while enduring a disaster? What are we to report? What is off-limits? After reading these essays, ask yourself: What are my own views on these questions? Specifically, you might refer to the author's ethical dilemma in “The Girl in the Surf” and juxtapose it with photojournalist Marc Halevi's own ethical dilemma.

8. Both “Fifty Ways of Looking at Tornadoes” and “Dispatches from the Drownings” rely upon numerical lists to incorporate vast amounts of research. To what extent does this simplistic structure succeed in organizing such diverse information? How does the juxtaposition between simplistic structure and complex research speak to the themes expressed therein?

9. In both “Buckethead” and “Death by Refrigerator” Hollars refers to a camp ghost story involving a drowning victim named Bobby Watson. The essays handle the story quite differently. At the start of “Buckethead,” the story is presented as fact. Yet in “Death by Refrigerator” Hollars makes clear that the story is most likely fictional. How do these alternative views affect your reading experience? Do you trust Hollars less or more as a result of his offering various perspectives? More broadly, what do these different versions tell us about mythmaking in general?

10. In “Fort Wayne Is Still Seventh on Hitler's List,” Hollars shares the story of a city's coming to terms with its allegedly impending destruction. Though Hitler never bombed the city of Fort Wayne, the mere speculation that he might was enough to drive the city to action. People speak often of being “frozen by fear,” but in what ways might fear serve to mobilize us in common cause?

11. In “Hirofukushima,” Hollars pairs the parallel narratives of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011. Despite the more than sixty years that separate the events, they are wedded together by the destruction of radiation. However, what separates the stories is intent. While the United States purposefully dropped the atomic bomb in wartime, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was a result of human error. Do these differences in intent change your feelings toward either event? Does Hollars's use of juxtaposition complicate your feelings? If so, how?

12. Throughout the collection, Hollars often relies upon the epistle form to directly address a specific audience (“Epistle to an Embryo,” “To the Good People of Joplin,” “Bedtime Story”). How do these more directed essays speak to you, particularly since you are not part of the named audience? Does this create a sense of voyeurism? A breached intimacy?

13. While natural disasters often strip us of all control, writing an essay is dependent upon the writer's control. How might writing serve as a response to a natural disaster?

14. As the essay collection progresses, so, too, does Hollars's experience as a father. How does the author mature along with these disasters, both those endured and those observed? Does the writing change with the author's maturation?

15. “A Test of the Emergency Alert System” ends with an essay question and three lined pages. Take a moment to try to answer the essay question. How might you respond to Hollars's questions (which, in truth, are less questions than another outlet for the author to express his own fears)? Nevertheless, how will you fill those pages? What disasters have you endured? How might your words serve as your liberation?

B. J. HOLLARS
is author of two award-winning nonfiction books—
Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence, and the Last Lynching in America
and
Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa
—as well as a collection of stories,
Sightings
(IUP, 2013). His hybrid text,
Dispatches from the Drownings: Reporting the Fiction of Nonfiction
was published in the fall of 2014. An Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, he lives a simple existence with his wife, their children, and their dog.