Atomic Fact and Fiction
When the Washington Post reported on plutonium contamination at a uranium-processing plant in my home region in western Kentucky, once again I seized on a story that had a personal connection. First, I wrote a nonfiction piece for the New Yorker about the fallout from the nuclear fears suddenly stirred up in Paducah, Kentucky. And then, feeling the limits of journalism, I wrote a novel inspired by this situation so close to home. Yet I deliberately set the novel, An Atomic Romance, not in Kentucky but in an indeterminate place in the heart of the country, in order to suggest that nuclear mischief could take place anywhere in America. It is a threat that affects us all. I didn’t want it to be dismissed as something out in the boondocks.
But the novel is a romantic comedy. It’s all about dancing, I think. Spinning, whirling, and dancing are central images: flocks of birds, centrifuges, minds and moods, the Artie Shaw big-band tune “Dancing in the Dark.” The title An Atomic Romance is a celebration of the life force in the face of indeterminacy and chaos. That’s dancing in the dark, one of the most exciting phrases I know.
—BAM