Acid West: Essays

by Joshua Wheeler

A rollicking debut book of essays that takes readers on a trip through the muck of American myths that have settled in the desert of our country's underbelly

Early on July 16, 1945, Joshua Wheeler's great grandfather awoke to a flash, and then a long rumble: the world's first atomic blast filled the horizon north of his ranch in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Out on the range, the cattle had been bleached white by the fallout.

Acid West, Wheeler's stunning debut collection of essays, is full of these mutated cows: vestiges of the Old West that have been transformed, suddenly and irrevocably, by innovation. Traversing the New Mexico landscape his family has called home for seven generations, Wheeler excavates and reexamines these oddities, assembling a cabinet of narrative curiosities: a man who steps from the stratosphere and free-falls to the desert; a treasure hunt for buried Atari video games; a village plagued by the legacy of atomic testing; a showdown between Billy the Kid and the author of Ben-Hur; a UFO festival during the paranoid Summer of Snowden.

The radical evolution of American identity, from cowboys to drone warriors to space explorers, is a story rooted in southern New Mexico. Acid West illuminates this history, clawing at the bounds of genre to reveal a place that is, for better or worse, home. By turns intimate, absurd, and frightening, Acid West is an enlightening deep-dive into a prophetic desert at the bottom of America.

The Light of God --
Children of the Gadget --
After the Fall --
So Let All the Martians Come Home to Roost --
Truth or Consequences at the Gateway to Space --
Before the Fall --
Raggedy, Raggedy Wabbitman --
Living Room --
Things Most Surely Believed --
The Glitch in the Videogame Graveyard --
Keep Alamogordo Beautiful --
A Million Tiny Daggers

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Memoir, History, Short Stories, Audiobook, Americana

416 pages, Paperback

First published April 17, 2018

About the author

Joshua Wheeler is from Alamogordo, New Mexico. He teaches creative writing at Louisiana State University.

Reviews

[Hank Stuever · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another one I'd round up to 3.5 stars. Liked and sort-of-liked, and will admit to skimming through in parts, when the author just would not get to it. As far as the creative nonfiction genre goes, I do like that Joshua Wheeler writes with a commitment to fact (endnotes! footnotes!) as well as a literary flair. That's the great combination and when it works, it's the best kind of reading.

I also began my career writing about New Mexico, albeit for a newspaper, which may seem like an entirely different ball of wax, but not really -- I was also nuts for the place (and remain nuts for it), finding stories in every part of the state, not just everything north of Albuquerque, but also (and perhaps especially) Wheeler's "SNM" (Southern New Mexico). The bomb, the Holy Spirit, the alien encounters, the white sands, the truth and the consequences. I enjoyed a trip back there through Wheeler's words, which, unlike the back-cover summary, I did not find to be so "rollicking." I guess the publisher/marketing department was hoping for something more adventurous and wild; because "thoughtful" simply won't do?

Favorite essay here: "Living Room." And not to sound like a broken record, because I write this in so many reviews of nonfiction books, but here I go, with one more reminder that less really can be more. One less piece in this book, or 10-20 percent less from each piece, and I might have moved through it more swiftly and enthusiastically. This is not the same as saying the book needs editing -- it's clearly had that and I'm sure the author sweated and pared and pruned these essays through many drafts. It's a much harder question of knowing when too much is enough, or that the material is not shouldering the word-count. And it's an arbitrary response, for sure, from reader to reader.

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of essays about New Mexico, I found this entertaining and unique. Wheeler explores all the people, places, and stories that make New Mexico what it is. There are some oddities and interesting facts although parts of it I felt lagged. Overall an enjoyable experience though.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got a bit bogged down by this book in the middle (I wondered if some of them could have been combined a bit) but overall enjoyed these essays, all set in New Mexico, about different topics related to the area. There are essays on atomic testing, death row inmates, grandparent eulogies, and free-falls from space, but all very based on this space and the type of people drawn to live in it.

3.5 stars

Thanks to the publisher for providing access to this title through Edelweiss. It came out April 17, 2018.

[Lauren]

Have to read this! I grew up in Southern New Mexico too.

[Alysa H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Very good collection of incisive, impressive writing. I liked this book a lot, though I would vociferously disagree with the official description leading with "rollicking". This book is the opposite of rollicking; it's almost unrelentingly grim. The moments of humor here and there are welcome, but tend to be black. Once my expectations were violently removed by the first essay, I was able to approach the rest in a more apt fashion. I would at least agree with a later assertion in the official description of the book as "intimate, absurd, and frightening."

Wheeler obviously writes from a place of complicated love for his hometown of Alamogordo, New Mexico, and transports the reader there, or at least into caring about what goes on and has gone on there. Each piece, be it discussing the atomic test sites, UFO enthusiasts, the death penalty, buried video games, Spaceport America, or other topics of local interest and import, is more or less a slam dunk in itself. The majority (all?) of these essays have previously been published elsewhere, but collecting them in this way gives them a weight they deserve and certainly attracts new readers such as myself.

Overall, however, it runs a bit too long, and a handful of the pieces -- each long in themselves -- either tread familiar ground, have a slightly off tone, or seem less thematically relevant to the whole. The essay on atomic testing in NM is very good, but probably won't bring much to students of the subject. The bit about Wheeler's great(great?)-grandfather settling in town is intentionally designed to read more like fiction than non, but since its the only thing in the book that's non a straight-up essay it's rather jarring in a not-great way. The piece towards the end that is set mainly in Ciudad Juárez rather than in NM feels totally out of scope and out of place among the rest and would have been better left out, in my opinion, and perhaps saved for some future collection of essays about contemporary Southwestern USA more broadly, and not about the area directly around Alamogordo, lying 100 miles north.

Upon learning that Wheeler works as a creative writing teacher, my first thought was something along the lines of "Wow, those are some lucky students." It makes me hopeful about the future of creative nonfiction to know that some teachers are actively producing work like this. I hope Wheeler keeps at it -- the writing and the teaching -- and I look forward to reading more of his work as it appears.

** I received a Review Copy of this book via NetGalley **

[manasa k · Rating 5 out of 5]

so wonderful and vibrant this is one of my favorite essay collections i’ve ever read. really hits right at the intersection of my cowboy persuasions and my fascination with the oddities of american life. wheeler writes about everything from baseball imperialism to the death penalty to a child’s belief in aliens to the atomic bomb and all of these feel so interconnected in a way i think is rare in a book of collected writing. u can see the love wheeler has for new mexico pouring from every page. just sardonic enough in the right places. reminiscent of pulphead by john jeremiah sullivan. objectively children of the gadget is the best essay in here (blinded projectionist who just pulls the lever on apocalypse jesus fuck!) but i really also loved the glitch in the videogame graveyard and because im a sucker for memory pieces…living room was a perfect 20 pages. but everything in here is worth reading and reading again.

[Shirley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Joan Didion of southern New Mexico. 3.5/5

This was the 21st century pick for Southwest History Book Club and definitely the least favorite selection overall.

Book club member: "I kept skipping ahead when I felt like he was jerking me around."

Everyone else: "THAT'S THE WHOLE BOOK!"

It's definitely not my usual style, but, sadly, it has some of the better published descriptions of the plight of downwinders that I've read so far. One of the book club members found the juxtapositions in the initial chapters too upsetting (baseball and drone warfare), but isn't that the point? Strange connections abound and they particularly shine in the baseball and ET game essays. Not far from the excavation of dumped Atari games, you have a museum dedicated to the shroud of Turin. Welcome to Alamogordo.

There's Alamogordo, Truth and Consequences, Roswell, and also the borderlands, with a long essay taking place mostly in Juarez at the end.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. I was motivated to finish this. Completed 75 % but the last essay on Juarez is just a rambling discourse on dispossessed mentally ill victims of cartel violence led by a cult leader. Why?

This collection was an ordeal. Author needs an editor. Good writing but doesn't know when to end it. Too much rambling and going off on tangents. I live near his beloved Alamogordo and enjoyed his insights on culture and history of the area but I don't think I will ever touch him again- and he just published a novel, which motivated me to read this first effort.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great book about things that I mostly find uninteresting. Points off for the DFW-style footnotes.

[Khris Sellin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays about New Mexico, where the author is from, and some of them are hilarious and some achingly sad. All captivating.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, Joshua Wheeler can WRITE. This short story/essay collection would be notable just due to it's wonderfully weird subject matter - the bizarre reality of life in Southern New Mexico, home of the Trinity Site, Roswell, Spaceport America, and a hundred thousand Atari games buried in a dump. But Wheeler's fantastic writing style and voice takes it to another level, evoking the dusty, sun-scorched desert delirium (as well as brief forays into other worlds, including a capsule in the sub-stratosphere, a death-row cell in prison, and an asylum on the outskirts of Juarez, Mexico) in a witty, poetic, unique way. Well done.

*Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC, provided by the author and/or the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[Lori Gibbany · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the beginning of this book I thought I would never finish it but am so glad I stuck with it. Even though the stories seemed random and some crazy they all seemed to check out as true and interesting. It totally fed into my ADD and information seeking brain.

[Casey Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fire.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

** I received a copy of this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway. **

This book of essays is grim. Insightful, extremely well-written, with flashes of humor, but almost dark for most of it. This is NOT a criticism! The darkness and 'realness' of the stories is exactly what made them so readable and relatable (even for someone who not only has never lived in the southwest but who knows very little about the southwest). While some of the essays went on a bit longer than they may have needed to, overall this was a fascinating look into the day to day of everyday life in the American southwest and it is definitely worth reading!

[Elle Maruska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing good essays is hard. It's hard to strike the necessary balance between personal and universal, between telling a story and making a point, between what's in your head and what's in your gut. Good essays have to be grounded in both the individual experience of the author and in more generalized concepts so the reader can feel welcome, feel invested. And this collection walks that balance beautifully, stitching together the author's family history with the tidal surges of local, national, and international history. The author writes about South New Mexico, a place not many of us have ever visited or even thought about that much but by engaging with events that ripple all the way across the world-- the first atomic bomb detonation, Virgin's "Spaceport" built on former ranchlands, the exhumation of legendary buried video game cartridges--the local and the global become intertwined, inseparable.

There is a palpable sense of grief pervading most of the essays in this collection: grief for the dead and dying, grief for a city and its murdered multitude, grief for the poison unleashed by the birth of the atomic age, grief for what's forgotten, what desperation forces the brain to cling to, what is passed down in the blood and bone and stories of a family. But there's no nihilism here, not really. There are reminders that faith doesn't necessarily have to be about religion but about the land, the existence of others, the hope that maybe small things can make small changes, that small stories about forgotten people can bring dignity even in the midst of overwhelming pain.

Highly recommend this book

[Nick Moran · Rating 5 out of 5]

WELL, ALRIGHT.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked these essays so I can’t explain why it took me 6 years on-and-off to finish this book.

David Foster Wallace would have loved your footnotes about Richard Branson bro

[Pop Bop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Welcome to Southern New Mexico

I know and love Truth or Consequences, Socorro, Bosque del Apache, the Very-Large-Array, Alamagordo, Cloudcroft, and Sunspot, so I was totally up for this collection of essays. It delivers on its promise, but it's also so much more.

This has been blurbed as a collection of "rollicking" essays that capture oddities and curiosities native to Southern New Mexico. Well, I guess in a way that's right, but that also just makes the book sound like an extra-funky "Roadside" travel guide. This book is much more ambitious, multi-layered, and rewarding than that.

Wheeler seems to have mastered the art of laid back next-level New Journalism. Writers like McPhee and Wolfe pioneered that style, but they still felt mostly like reporters, though opinionated ones. Wheeler's book is more personal. It's based on his roots in the area and his intimate and authentic knowledge of the people and the places and events about which he writes. He is more ironic, more pointed, less whimsical, and more deadpan earnest than would be an author aiming mostly at entertainment. He can also be extremely funny, but that may be the liquor talking.

This book is intended to make very clear points - at the outset, about the effect the detonation of the "Gadget", (the code name for the very first atomic bomb ), at the Trinity site had on "downwinders" in Southern New Mexico, and about what it meant for the world, and about the generations of dead and dying New Mexicans who were sacrificed to that test. Other favorite essays address topics like UFO believers, (Roswell is in Southern New Mexico), buried Atari video games, and Spaceport America. The essays share a few aspects - Wheeler is generous in writing about local people, he's wary of government, he's tolerant of ambiguity, he looks at every topic from a variety of angles, and he's willing to follow his intuition. And he's perfectly happy to declare "shenanigans" when warranted.

Sure some of the essays are overlong. Some thoughts are repeated. A few essays don't fit into the Southern New Mexico theme very well. But these are minor quibbles. At the heart of each essay, Wheeler seems devoted to, paraphrasing his words, "trying to differentiate the terrible from the awesome". If that strikes you as at all interesting, then this collection might be just what you want.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won a free copy of this book as part of a Goodreads First-reads giveaway. I am offering my honest review.

I was excited to read Joshua Wheeler's collection of essays, Acid West, because I love place-writing and seeing the way a local geography and culture is expressed in words. At first I was disappointed in the way that these essays, mostly set in Southern New Mexico, seemed to be about anything but the place itself: space jumps, drone pilots, weapons testing, aliens. However, the more I read, I came to realize that it is exactly these outside forces, what Wheeler may call the "uncanny," that give the locale of Alamogordo its bizarre, outlandish, and otherworldly feel. In many ways this is not "place writing" but "displacement writing."

Two of the essays stuck out to me as especially good. The first, "Children of the Gadget" explores the tenuous relationship the "downwinders" of atom bomb testing have with their country and their forgotten place in history. It would make for excellent reading in high schools. The other essay I really enjoyed, "The Glitch in the Videogame Graveyard," brilliantly weaves together the concepts of virtual reality, archaeology, religion, and the exploitative power of corporations - it's really quite impressive.

In his other essays, Wheeler is skilled at mining his place for fascinating stories - drone pilots practicing over baseball fields, acupuncture in the Catholic Churches of Mexico, the conversion of a death row inmate - but some of these essays felt like a slog to get through. To be fair to Wheeler, this may come down to my own preference in writing style. Wheeler writes these essays in what I suppose I would call "modern creative writing" style - begin with a trying-desperately-to-be-original simile or adjective, sprinkle in some f-bombs for color, include every meticulously-researched coincidental connection to the topic at hand, point out the flaws in a belief system or viewpoint, but then end with a "who really can say?" conclusion.

I would recommend the two essays mentioned above to everyone. The rest will be of interest to those in the Southwest and students of the essay form.

[Briley Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, I'm finally saying I'm finished with this book - it's a collection of short stories, and I haven't read them all but I have read most. The ones I didn't read were because they were a bit too much for me to handle emotionally.

Let me explain - this book is called acid west, since the a trippy, surreal theme that takes on the subject matter of the southwest, specifically New Mexico. Some of the short stories were a real trip - dreamlike and mesmerizing, leaving you with a sense of awe, slight confusion, and wonder at the world and how everything is interconnected in strange ways. Some of them were more of a BAD trip - ghoulish descriptions of decaying human forms and of the darker parts of humanity. Although I admire this as a genius stroke of writing (seriously, the writing is so so good), some of those bad trips were a bit too much for me and I had to move on.

Overall, really really good though - Children of the Gadget is probably one of my favorite essays I have ever read!

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book while looking for another author’s collection of essays. It was published in 2018 and the stories are about Southern New Mexico, the part of New Mexico where the atom bomb was tested and UFOs have an annual festival in Roswell. The author Joshua Wheeler teaches creative writing in Louisiana but grew up in New Mexico. The best essay in this book is Children of the Gadget about the long term effect of nuclear fallout on the Hispanic community. With the release of the Oppenheimer movie, this subject though a terrible tragedy has become relevant again. I kept wondering why the author hasn’t published more books, and I think it’s because the essays in this book were too long. The book should be re-edited and published again, or more people need to read it.

[Gayle · Rating 4 out of 5]

You learn about New Mexico and how it was the first area to test the nuclear bomb in the U.S. Cancer rates of course are higher in parts of New Mexico but people were not known to live in some of the areas that fallout affected, or so thought the military. The state built Spaceport America with the hope of Virgin Galactic launching from that site. With the real estate bust and delays by Virgin Galactic nothing much has happened there. You learn of barren land in some areas and hopes and heartbreak of people. A very interesting read to learn about the background of New Mexico.
I got this for free in a Goodreads Giveaway.

[Gabriel Thurau · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be purchased if not only for the essay "Living Room", which beautifully blends autobiography, confabulation, creative writing, and that sweet, sweet connective force of an essay format.

The rest was really something too. I'm considering moving to Louisiana and applying for Grad school just to take Wheeler's classes.

To me, it takes a special talent to capture so many interesting snippets of a state - and to intermingle investigating journalism with fragments of his own Alamogordo soul.

Hope that the next collection of essays (or that Apocalypse novel in the cabinet of his mind) has the same quality of writing.

[Pearse Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew I was gonna get an Impossible-Owls-style FSG essay collection, but let me tell you that actually this is better than Impossible Owls. If often gets caught on the texture and ridges of the entire piece, tripping it up, and I didn't love the final essay, but some of these amazed me. Wheeler's ability to connect the dots through space and time, and his ability to elevate details to meaningful through this former skill results in some stunning, moving passages. "Children of the Gadget" is the clear winner here, I think.

[fire_on_the_mountain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly a study in contrasts-- a fairly free-wheeling romp through the weird and abnormal of southern New Mexico, , but one that is rooted in real-world experience and research completed with rigor and accountability. Which I l0ve! Now, not every essay really lit my world on fire, and I think it overall trends to some of that MFA over-writing that I just don't really get down with, but that's just a stylistic and taste thing. Overall, even when I wasn't feeling it thematically, Wheeler's strength as a writer carried me through.

[Kaylynne Hatch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually read this book about a year or two before I ever even considered moving to New Mexico. I enjoyed the meandering walk that the author takes through his different experiences. The sense of place throughout the book is fantastic - many small windows into bit and pieces of the Southwest.

Having moved to NM and having now been to some of the places the author talks about - the vibes match up.

If you ever find yourself driving from Santa Fe or Albuquerque to Alamogordo - it’s a good listen too.

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a bit higher expectations than this book of essays could fulfill, as I'm all in on explorations into the weïrd southwest. Wheeler goes on a bit too long in a lot of these essays, and he strikes the self-serious shamanic tone that many denizens of the southwest think is part of their birthright. Wielded correctly, it feels like the voice of the earth of America rising up and issuing declarations, but at times it does feel like a promising writer overshooting their shot a bit.

[Rob McFarren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engrossing essays that encompass the past, present, and curious culture of Southern New Mexico. Bringing to life much of the starkness, beauty, and oddity of region, this collection brings to life a human element of the well known history (Trinity & The Gadget), future (Spaceport & Virgin Galactic), and present (humanity and struggles, border with Juarez, etc.).

I flew through this one.

[Chaz · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book... Run-on sentences that span hundreds of words. Footnotes that go for PAGES. And, on top of that... It's BORING.

This.
Book.
Sucks.

I just do not have the patience. I am too old to waste my time on garbage like this.

[Lisa Houlihan]

I connected with the first essays more than with the later ones because by the later ones the repetition of “in the year of our lord” had ceased to read as deadpan and begun to read as ... pleading? But they were all interesting.