Rick Bass Criticism
Rick Bass, a prominent figure in contemporary American literature, is celebrated for his evocative depictions of the natural world and the complex interplay between humanity and nature. Born in 1958, Bass's work spans short stories, novels, and essays, often set against the vivid backdrops of the South, Southwest, and Pacific Northwest. His lyrical prose and use of magical realism stand out in collections such as The Watch and Platte River, where he reimagines frontier myths, as noted by Christopher Merrill. Bass’s narratives frequently incorporate traditional masculine activities like hunting and fishing, weaving them into complex human relationships and spiritual connections to nature.
Critics such as Charles Solomon have praised Bass's early works, including The Deer Pasture and Wild to the Heart, for their emotive reflections on outdoor life, likening his style to Japanese brush painting. In his transition to fiction with The Watch, Bass employed "magical realism" to explore humanity's bond with nature, though it attracted mixed reviews regarding its cohesiveness and depth.
Bass's storytelling often features characters deeply intertwined with their environments, a theme highlighted by critics like John Skow and Thomas Curwen. His novel Where the Sea Used to Be and other works continue to explore this dynamic, though some critique his work for predictability and simplicity. Yet, Bass's passionate environmental ethos and the emotional depth of his writing secure his place as a significant literary voice.
In addition to fiction, Bass's essays underscore his commitment to environmental activism, notably his efforts to preserve the Yaak Valley. Critics such as Mark Kamine commend his storytelling and vivid descriptions, while others like Perry Glasser acknowledge some narrative predictabilities. His integration of environmental themes with human drama resonates throughout his body of work, offering readers a profound exploration of the natural world and our place within it.
Contents
- Principal Works
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Bass, Rick (Contemporary Literary Criticism)
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Oil Notes
(summary)
In the following favorable review of Oil Notes, Bass is commended for his vivid attention to detail, his honest expression, and his dual vision of life. Oil Notes is the record of a year in the young life of Bass, author of The Watch (1989), a highly praised short-story collection, and a geologist by trade. His purpose in these absorbing reflections is to establish his credentials as an oilman, describe his passion for digging and discovering oil, and pursue the various analogies discovered in a geologist’s view of life.
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Wild to the Heart
(summary)
In the following review, Solomon presents a positive appraisal of Wild to the Heart. Unlike his short stories, which flounder through their oppressively Southern settings, Rick Bass’ essays in Wild to the Heart are crisp, neatly structured and highly entertaining. His first-person accounts of camping, fishing and canoeing capture the lure of the wilderness and the camaraderie of the people who love it. Bass’ spare prose has a studied artlessness reminiscent of Japanese brush painting. The description of the summer afternoon in 'Fish Fry,' when the most important decision the author faces is whether to take off his tennis shoes and socks, captivates the reader with its casual intimacy—while concealing the effort needed to achieve that easy informality.
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Bookmarks
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Lemon praises The Watch, as the work of a talented yet still developing young writer with a strong voice. The Watch, the first collection of stories by Rick Bass, is also primarily about the land and the men who love it. It does everything a first collection by a promising young writer should do—establishes a new voice, stakes out an area of human experience as the author’s own, implies a coherent set of values, and both satisfies and leaves room for development. The voice is finely modulated, totally unsentimental but concerned; the area of human experience explored is our struggle to retain the vitality of our youth—either by reliving it or by retelling it—; the values include a love of nature more persuasive because unspoken and an admiration for whatever is there in us that keeps us vital.
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Slices of Wildlife
(summary)
In the excerpt that follows, Miller positively assesses The Deer Pasture as a lighthearted yet introspective narrative.
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Winter: Notes from Montana
(summary)
Lyon offers a favorable appraisal of Winter: Notes from Montana, noting that it provides good evidence that the Yaak country in northwestern Montana has, in John Muir’s phrase, “grown into” Rick Bass. The book tells the story of slowing down, learning the ropes, and committing to the land.
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Winter: Notes from Montana
(summary)
In the following favorable review of Winter: Notes from Montana, Long examines Bass's work as a contemplation of human civilization juxtaposed with nature.
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Three Generations of Wolf Pack Life
(summary)
In the review of The Ninemile Wolves that follows, Knickerbocker praises Bass's passion for nature and discusses his focus on the correct relationship between man and the natural world.
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The Ninemile Wolves
(summary)
In the following positive review, Rueckert discusses Bass's examination of the unbalanced relationship between human society and wild nature in The Ninemile Wolves.
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In the Loyal Mountains
(summary)
In the review that follows, Dixon positively assesses In the Loyal Mountains, discussing the collection's focus on the survival of the wildness within nature despite human attempts at urbanization.
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Ursa Major
(summary)
In the following excerpt, he presents a negative assessment of The Lost Grizzlies: A Search for Survivors in the Wilderness of Colorado.
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In the Loyal Mountains
(summary)
In the following review of In the Loyal Mountains, he favorably examines Bass's depth of introspection into seemingly mundane, simple human existence and the solace found by humanity in the natural world.
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The Lost Grizzlies: A Search for Survivors in the Wilderness of Colorado
(summary)
In the review that follows, McIvor offers a positive assessment of The Lost Grizzlies, discussing Bass's characterizations and focusing on the way in which Bass and his companions give reverence to the spirituality of the land.
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The Lost Grizzlies: A Search for Survivors in the Wilderness of Colorado
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Branch praises The Lost Grizzlies as an appealing narrative which explores both sorrow and optimism in the battle to conserve American wildlife.
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The Book of Yaak
(summary)
The review below presents a positive assessment of The Book of Yaak, praising its exaltation of the inspirational forces of nature. The Book of Yaak is an urgent plea by a longtime resident to preserve one of the lower 48’s remaining wilderness areas.
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Yakety-Yak
(summary)
Houston is an American author and critic. In the review of The Book of Yaak that follows, she applauds Bass's passion for saving the ecosystem of the Yaak Valley and discusses his inner contentions, especially regarding the use of art to advocate environmental preservation.
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The Book of Yaak
(summary)
In the following favorable review of The Book of Yaak, Huser commends Bass's passion, coherence of motif and place, and effective use of art for the advocacy of wilderness preservation.
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The Wilderness Within
(summary)
In the favorable review of The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness below, Skow praises Bass's use of imagination and his ability as a fiction writer.
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The Call of the Wild
(summary)
In the review that follows, Curwen positively assesses The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness, discussing individual character connection to place and proper character actions in response to various types of pursuits.
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The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness
(summary)
In the following positive review of The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness, Sullivan focuses on Bass's characters and their relationships with nature.
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Where the Sea Used to Be
(summary)
The review below presents a positive assessment of Where the Sea Used to Be. Where the Sea Used to Be is an ambitious and often captivatingly beautiful story, both Bass’s 13th book and his first full-length novel.
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The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness
(summary)
In the review of The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness below, Weltzien offers favorable assessments of “Where the Sea Used to Be” and “The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness,” yet condemns the plot of “The Myths of Bears” as predictable and weak. Weltzien discusses the work as an overview of Bass's work to date.
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Fiber
(summary)
The review that follows presents “Fiber” as another of Bass's repeated attempts at advocating conservation of American wilderness. The review describes “Fiber” as a fierce plea for the preservation of nature, originally published in the anthology Off the Beaten Path: Stories of Place. It highlights the protagonist's efforts to protect the Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana from logging and development, emphasizing Bass's heartfelt message for environmental protection.
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Fiber
(summary)
In the following positive review, “Fiber” is presented as autobiographical fiction. Bass explores the taking of logs from the forest, the essence of taking—and the essence of activism. He summarizes his life: geologist, writer, activist, and cutter of sawlogs. The narrative intertwines autobiography, fiction, and activism, leading readers through the woods of his beloved Yaak Valley while reflecting on the nature of self and the act of taking.
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Brown Dog of the Yaak: Essays on Art and Activism
(summary)
In the review that follows, Jones offers a favorable assessment of Brown Dog of the Yaak: Essays on Art and Activism. This slim volume, which inaugurates Milkweed’s new “Credo” series, expresses the importance of place. It contains the author’s statement of belief, a short biography by series editor Scott Slovic, and a bibliography of the author’s published work. Bass had a pointer named Colter, an extraordinary dog, and Bass succeeds in translating his physical passion into words. Colter’s singleness of purpose, though, is something Bass can only envy as he finds in himself the need not only to write about the natural world but also to become an activist in its defense, particularly of his beloved Yaak Valley in Montana. Reading about Colter and the Yaak is more fun than reading about activism, but Bass confronts the issues seriously and provides much food for thought.
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Oil Notes
(summary)
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Bass, Rick (Short Story Criticism)
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Reclaiming the Frontier: New Writings from the West
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Merrill compares Bass's The Watch with other books about the American West, arguing that they re-imagine the traditional frontier myth.
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The Macho Myth Unmasked
(summary)
In the following review of The Watch, Kamine cites the volume as impressive and praises Bass's well-crafted prose.
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Stories With a Sense of Place
(summary)
In the following review, Willis compares The Watch with two other short story collections, all depicting a strong sense of regional place, and discusses the symbolic significance of animals in Bass's stories.
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Purer Than Everything Else
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Glasser chronicles The Watch as a promising collection by a young author, but criticizes the stories for their predictability and superficiality.
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Review of The Watch
(summary)
In the following review, Saari praises the stories in The Watch, depicting them as mesmerizing. These ten stories introduce a writer of originality who possesses a sense of the bizarre in everyday life. In three of the stories an unnamed narrator recounts his experiences with his best friend, Kirby. Kirby has inherited hundreds of small oil wells from his father, which he is selling off one by one and using the money to live a wayward life of trips to Mexico full of drink and aimless celebration. Kirby has a large bass named Shack living in his swimming pool in the deep end where Kirby has submerged a Volkswagen bug. Neighborhood children try to catch Shack, who takes on symbolic import for the narrator. In another story, “Juggernaut,” the narrator returns to high school to write about his and Kirby's high school geometry teacher, a man who tells outlandish, obviously untrue stories, a club hockey team called the Juggernauts whose play is full of buffoon performances, and a petite, olive-skinned high school temptress the boys lust after. All of these plot lines come together into an absurd, farcical conclusion.
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Platte River
(summary)
In the following review of Platte River, Mort comments that Bass writes beautifully, but that the three novellas included in this volume are spare and thematically unrelated. The review discusses the three stories, highlighting their themes and characters, ultimately suggesting that readers may feel a bit cheated due to the slender nature of the book.
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Author's Tall-Tale Novellas Push Envelope of the Plausible
(summary)
In the following review, Walker declares that the stories in Platte River stretch the boundaries of realist fiction and resemble myth, fable, and the tall-tale.
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Floating Down the River
(summary)
In the following review of Platte River, Tilghman praises Bass's strong sense of place and lyrical voice, but contends that some of his stories lack a strong focus.
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Tolerating the Short Story
(summary)
In the following essay, Buffington discusses various short fiction collections in terms of the principles of the short story form and comments that the three stories in Platte River should be categorized as long stories rather than as novellas.
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Review of Platte River
(summary)
In the following review, LeMonds praises Platte River, commenting that Bass is one of the finest American writers today.
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In the Loyal Mountains
(summary)
In the following review, the critic positively evaluates In the Loyal Mountains, claiming that there is a solid thematic cohesion to the collection. This moving and self-assured collection of 10 stories captures two very different regions of the country, with narrators reflecting on their love for their environments and the price of human isolation.
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A Natural Background for the Mysteries of Life
(summary)
In the following review, Cryer applauds Bass's depiction of natural landscape as a setting for deeper explorations of life's mysteries in In the Loyal Mountains.
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Rick Bass: Lessons from the Wilderness
(summary)
In the following essay, Long highlights the development of Bass's writing career, his writing process, and the intersection of his fiction and environmental activism.
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Two Lands Linked by a Mystical Quality
(summary)
In the following review, Kendall praises Bass's sense of regional place in the stories of In the Loyal Mountains. Impelled by a profound love of the land, the 10 stories in In the Loyal Mountains are a reminder that American literature draws its unique strength from a powerful sense of place. Here, author Rick Bass concentrates on two distinct and contrasting regions, the Delta country of Mississippi and a remote valley in Montana, areas linked only by a mystical quality common to both.
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What the Woods Would Expect of You: An Interview with Rick Bass
(summary)
In the following interview, Bass and Johnson explore Bass's perspectives on the craft of short story writing, his transition between fiction and nonfiction, and his dedication to environmental activism, particularly in the context of his efforts to preserve the Yaak Valley.
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Review of The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness
(summary)
In the following review, the commentator praises The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness, calling the stories appealing, thoughtful, and captivating.
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The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness
(summary)
In the following review of The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness, the critic applauds Bass's graceful prose and the mythological quality of his stories. The review highlights three novellas that explore themes of spirit, enchantment with the land, and the connection between personal identity and nature.
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Review of The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness
(summary)
In the following review, Seaman contends that all three novellas in The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness are “beautifully mystical.” Bass has delved deeply into his love of nature and written three beautifully mystical novellas. These long stories are disorienting at first, so imbued are they with the slow, perfect rhythm of wilderness rather than the measure of clocks and artificial busyness of human existence. His characters, too, are unfamiliar, even exotic in their intimacy with wilderness, their disconnection from society. In “The Myth of Bears,” a shimmering tale as mysterious as the northern lights, a man and a woman live deep in the woods of the Yukon, their isolation rendering them wolf- and bearlike, a transformation echoing Native Americans' profound connection to animals. In the lyrical title story, a young girl senses the spirit of her dead mother in the living rock, the sky, trees, and birds, a gorgeous and resonant metaphor for Mother Earth that Bass uses with great skill and noble purpose, leaving us enthralled yet quietly appalled at our desecration of the “church of the wild.”
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The Scientist is a Romantic
(summary)
In the following review of The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness, Solomon extols Bass's expression of love for and understanding of the natural landscape in which the writer's stories are set.
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The Call of the Wild
(summary)
In the following review, Curwen discusses central themes within the three novellas of The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness.
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Out of Boundaries
(summary)
In the following interview, Bass, Lyons, and Oliver explore Rick Bass's literary influences, the role of environmental themes in his work, and his transition from nonfiction to fiction, emphasizing his struggle with predictability in storytelling and his commitment to preserving both narratives and natural resources.
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Why the Daily Writing of Fiction Matters
(summary)
In the following essay, Bass asserts that fiction writing is important because it sharpens the perceptions and imagination of both the emotional and physical senses, and concludes that fiction has a healing effect on the world.
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Bass's ‘Fires’ and ‘Elk.’
(summary)
In the following essay, Steed discusses the importance of the biblical mythos of fire to Bass's short stories “Fires” and “Elk.”
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Regeneration through Community
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Brinkmeyer discusses Bass along with several other Southern writers who have written stories that take place in the American West and utilize narratives which begin with their characters' flight from the South, and end with the creation of a sense of community that resolves personal and inter-personal conflicts.
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Review of The Hermit's Story
(summary)
In the following review, Seaman comments that the stories in The Hermit's Story are among the best Bass has written. Bass, a passionate, versatile, and increasingly lauded author acutely attuned to the wild and our conflicted relationship with nature, is especially gifted as a short story writer. His newest collection is his most pristine, tender, and transporting yet. Bass uses simple, solid language, building sentences that preserve breathing space around each word like a stacked stonewall reveals the contours of each stone. Beautiful in their magical imagery, dramatic in their situations, and exquisitely poignant in their insights, these stories of awe and loss are quite astonishing in their mythic use of place and the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. Bass' characters endure near-entombments and other in-the-dark rites of passage, struggling toward the light, toward the recognition that they must love each other, the earth, and all its creatures.
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The Hermit's Story
(summary)
In the following review, the critic maintains that The Hermit's Story, as a whole is uniformly excellent and that each story is both lovely and satisfying. The review discusses various stories in the collection, highlighting themes of nature, human relationships, and the emotional depth of the narratives.
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Review of The Hermit's Story
(summary)
In the following review, Coan praises the stories of The Hermit's Story, which he describes as entertaining and thought-provoking. In his new collection, novelist and nature writer Bass focuses a naturalist's eye not only on the frozen lakes and interplay of predator and prey but also on the ebb and flow of human emotions and relationships. The stories, including the title story, explore themes of failed or troubled marriages and lost love, and are recommended for all libraries.
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Hermit's Story Goes Underground to Reveal the Light
(summary)
In the following review, Solomon lauds The Hermit's Story for its use of natural landscape settings as integral components to the stories.
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Reclaiming the Frontier: New Writings from the West
(summary)
- Further Reading