Rick Bass

Skip the Sunday analysis and read this instead. Wrecking Ball is a raw, gutsy, and beautifully written deep dive into football as a last refuge for the working-class man. Bass turns his own hard-hitting experience into a powerful essay on race, faith, and the simple, painful love for a game that just won’t let go. It’s one of the best books you’ll read this year, regardless of the genre.

This beautiful essay mixes the author's deep appreciation for wolves and for the western spirit with facts about wolves in the United States (largely a story about their extermination). It's also a record of the reappearance of the wolf in Montana in the early 1990s, Montana's fight to keep them in Glacier National Park and a profile of the men and women of various federal agencies charged with protecting endangered species.
Bass's essay isn't exactly balanced--he's clearly rooting for the show more wolves--but it also takes into account the feelings of ranchers and sportsmen. Make no doubt, livestock is killed by wolves and the wolves pay the price pretty quickly in terms of death or relocation. Overall, the story of The Ninemile Valley pack includes much heartbreak, yet still the wolves survive.
This edition is a gorgeous, small press hardcover with charming illustrations at the start of the chapters. Bass manages to make his account of the incidents both objective and personal; the writing is beautiful and philosophical. show less

This is my first time reading Rick Bass and I’m pretty glad to have found him. Bass writes really well about people, and nature. Both are difficult to do. There is magic in the stories, a hint of the tall tale, a touch of myth. A giant bass that lives in a sunken Volkswagen in a deep backyard pool. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how deep.” A man with a bad heart that decides to ride a moose. Things like that.

His characters are sometimes young men needing a friend and looking show more up to older men. Or older men needing a friend. Or men in love with unobtainable women. He even touches on the difficulty of attaining success as a writer. “Most people stop wanting to be a writer around the age of 16.”

There’s a sense of sweetness and the wonder of life. Here’s a sentence from Mississippi, a story of love of a state, and a fat girl: “When she kissed you it was like going swimming in the ocean on a hot day with a bunch of people standing around applauding.” show less

I went in blind. I had never heard of Rick Bass before stumbling on this little collection. The high rating and title intrigued me.. and I'm glad I gave this a chance. From the title story onwards I was hooked, eager to see how his short vignettes would cascade or bloom. His sentences are punchy and terse but with a slowed rhythm that captures Nature and human emotion well.

My favorite three stories are "Swans", "Two Deer", and "The Hermit's Story". Whether the story touched upon love, show more death, forgiveness, fate, or reflection there was no sense of falsehood. Most of the stories felt like a rare story you'd hear by chance at a bar in a small town.. lucky enough to listen attentively and in awe, then become the wind that spreads them further and further away from the source. show less