La vita delle rocce

by Rick Bass, Silvia Lumaca (Translator)

Erede della grande tradizione delle short stories, Rick Bass racconta con tocco poetico i sentimenti del mondo rude della provincia americana, in continuo scontro con la bellezza di una natura incontaminata. Storie di desideri, di sentimenti, di sogni – commoventi e impulsive – narrate con dolcezza e lirismo. Descrivendo i sontuosi paesaggi dell’America, Bass esplora la forza della natura e la complessità della società moderna, l’interiorità umana e la frenesia del mondo. In questi tredici racconti torna prepotente il misticismo di questo autore, l’attenzione per le vite dei suoi personaggi, così profondamente umani. Coinvolti da una prosa viva e delicata, condividiamo con i protagonisti di queste storie speranze e illusioni, le luci e le ombre del sogno americano, tratteggiate con incredibile lucidità da un vero maestro.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Nature, Literature, American, Literary Fiction, Environment

262 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Rick Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in Houston, the son of a geologist. He studied petroleum geology at Utah State University and while working as a petroleum geologist in Jackson, Mississippi, began writing short stories on his lunch breaks. In 1987, he moved with his wife, the artist Elizabeth Hughes Bass, to Montana’s remote Yaak Valley and became an active environmentalist, working to protect his adopted home from the destructive encroachment of roads and logging. He serves on the board of both the Yaak Valley Forest Council and Round River Conservation Studies and continues to live with his family on a ranch in Montana, actively engaged in saving the American wilderness.

Bass received the PEN/Nelson Algren Award in 1988 for his first short story, “The Watch,” and won the James Jones Fellowship Award for his novel Where the Sea Used To Be. His novel The Hermit’s Story was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year in 2000. The Lives of Rocks was a finalist for the Story Prize and was chosen as a Best Book of the Year in 2006 by the Rocky Mountain News. Bass’s stories have also been awarded the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Award and have been collected in The Best American Short Stories.

Reviews

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rick Bass, how do you do it.

Just when I thought there could never be more you show me there can never be enough.

Pagans(!!!) and Yazoo knocked my socks off.

Here's the crazy crux of the matter: there are still thousands of readers who haven't experienced this one-of-a-kind author, seriously what are you waiting for?

[Gianni · Rating 5 out of 5]

La cosiddetta scrittura della natura (nature writing) è una cornice che racchiude diversi e disparati filoni narrativi, fino a comprendere anche tendenze new age.
La letteratura ha svolto un ruolo chiave nella rappresentazione della relazione ecologica uomo-ambiente-natura: dono di Dio o punizione divina, contemplazione estatica o paura, visione olistica o antropocentrica, sviluppo armonioso o apocalissi, sono riflessi e rimandi che la letteratura ha registrato dalla sua posizione cuscinetto tra uomo-società e natura-ambiente e che, negli ultimi decenni, ha consolidato caratteristiche proprie, sviluppando anche un originale apparato critico, come l’ecocriticismo.
Anche la narrativa di Rick Bass può essere fatta rientrare nel nature writing; nei racconti di Bass non c’è una visione estatica o puramente estetica della natura. L’attenzione tende a spostarsi dal soggetto all’ambiente che è raccontato non dal punto di vista dell’esperienza personale, ma da un punto di vista oggettivo in cui il narratore si inserisce in un sistema pre-esistente e in divenire, che decreta l’abbandono della visione antropocentrica e della sua superiorità. In molti dei racconti raccolti in La vita delle rocce (ma anche in quelli di Cane da petrolio) la natura e l’ambiente diventano una sorta di contorno funzionale che è solo apparentemente di sfondo, perché i protagonisti, individui o comunità, in quell’ambiente e natura non solo vivono e impattano, ma ne sono quasi soverchiati, rimpiccioliti e resi disfunzionali, come disfunzionali sono spesso anche rispetto a sé stessi, cosicché vita e morte, solitudine ed empatia, malattia e vitalità, disagio e agiatezza diventano parte del ciclo naturale della vita. Esemplari, da questo punto di vista, sono i racconti La vita delle rocce, che dà il titolo alla raccolta, L’albero blu e Una guida alcolica al Perù e al Cile, che hanno gli stessi protagonisti raccontati in momenti diversi della loro vita, o Capre, in cui la compenetrazione tra uomo e natura è così marcata, che non si tratta mai di un ambiente incontaminato, ma l’impatto antropico si manifesta anche con il degrado e la contaminazione disseminati quasi senza soluzione di continuità ai margini tra le periferie urbane e l’ambiente naturale,

”Qui l'aria era impregnata dell'odore di plastica bruciata, vapori di benzene e toluene che a ogni respiro aderivano al palato, e il nebbioso cielo notturno luccicava dei bagliori blu, rosa e arancione delle luminescenze dei di scarico gettati da un migliaio di ciminiere. Lo sfolgorio del commercio sbiadiva dietro le nostre spalle e dietro di noi, e spesso ci trovavamo a guidare attraverso quartieri che sembravano sprofondare nel suolo nero - di concime e di torba - come schiacciati dal peso immenso delle esigenze produttive delle industrie piazzate su quel terreno spugnoso: gigantesche cisterne e serbatoi idrici e vasche chimiche, strane pieghe intestine e spirali di alluminio ossidato torreggiavano sopra di noi, strisciando tra le vestigia dei boschi come i serpenti che abitano la notte.
Garzette nivee e aironi notturni passavano in mezzo alle fiamme, o così sembrava, e fluttuavano serenamente tra gli sbuffi di smog come in un sogno di beatitudine”

È singolare la scelta di Mattioli di raccogliere in questo volume solo alcuni dei racconti della raccolta originale pubblicata nel 2006, inserendone altri provenienti da raccolte diverse. Pagani, molto bello, è finito nel precedente Cane da petrolio e Fiber, che sembra essere tra i racconti più citati di Bass, è stato escluso.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first time I read this, the title story was not the one that grabbed me. Now, it’s the one I think of the most, the one that keeps drawing me back over and over.

Same for “Her First Elk.” I must be growing older. That is not a bad thing.

- - -

April 2011:
Excluding Fitzgerald, as you do to make it a fair fight, my favorite short story for years has been “The Watch” in Rick Bass’s The Watch . I’ve been curious what would finally pose a threat on that score and now I know. I’ve read “Pagans” and “Goats.”

[Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am always looking for a new short story writer to try out. I came across Rick Bass as highly recommended by several GR friends. This was my first collection of his stories. I had several different reactions to them. Certainly one of those reactions was enjoyment. Rick Bass is a talented writer. I was impressed at the variety in the stories. I think my favorite was Her First Elk. I enjoyed reading about Jyl in that story and then reading about her again later in the title story, The Lives of Rocks. Rick Bass tells you enough about the characters to get you intrigued, but never enough to satisfy. Both in terms of the characters and the events, you are left wondering, which I love. There are naturalist and environmentalist aspects to many of the stories, which I think is one of the unique characteristics of Rick Bass as an author. While these aspects of the stories are not what attracted me to him, I can certainly appreciate them. However, I reserve my greatest respect for the writer that wraps whatever he or she wants to say so tightly into the plot and characters that you have to think beyond your initial impressions to grasp that message and appreciate what the author is saying and has accomplished. Rick Bass achieves this in some stories, but in others it is as if the message was painted separately from the rest of the story and distracts the reader from the story. I will definitely read more of Rick Bass, though. He has earned more of my time.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm both a short story and Rick Bass fan. This one didn't quite trip the endorphins sensors to the same levels of his other works I've read. There were some great stories in there no doubt ("Pagans", "The Lives of Rocks", and "Goats" were the strongest in my view) but somehow the collection didn't quite feel as strong. I think for me they lacked the same human comparisons I've seen at play before in his writing (as a whole).

A bit more introspective and perhaps more personal to the authors background? Also, while still on display, slightly less nature/landscape focused. The writing did vary quite a bit which I liked. Long, detailed, multi directive thoughts and sentence structures in some stories contrasted with very direct almost inconclusive wanderings in others. Still I'm drawn to anything he writes, but for the uninitiated I think "The Watch" is a more perfect introduction.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this a 4 because of the story: "The Lives of Rocks". It's more of a novella than a short story(approx. 60 pages).

[Andy Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

One thing I especially like about Rick Bass is how he portrays secondary characters with such authenticity. Two stories in this collection show this so well.
In "Her First Elk" a young woman, Jyl, hunts for elk three years after her dad died. She successfully shoots a large elk who lives long enough to run into property marked no trespassing. Jyl follows the elk where she is confronted by two bachelor brothers who own the Montana ranch where she stands. They are at first hard, then outright laugh at her when they see she has no idea of how to clean the elk, bringing only a pocketknife. But they slowly come around in their own way, teaching her how to clean the elk, bringing her into their home, cooking her dinner and letting her spend the night. Bass ends the story telling the reader how that one night had a lifelong impact on all three.
"The Lives of Rocks" is told by a single, older woman who is fighting cancer while living in a remote house along a river. She is lonely. She takes to carving small wooden boats and sending them down the river with stories and messages tucked inside. Two children from an even more remote home down the river retrieve them and visit her. She knows of the family, they keep to themselves and are always working to maintain their subsistence life. They cut firewood for her and talk of their lives, while the story focuses on the woman's life and battle against cancer, the interest turns to the two children who are fascinated by the woman's stories and example of a life different than their own.
All the stories in this collection are good, but I found myself enjoying the Montana stories more than the Houston stories, which would be consistent with Bass himself who left his life as a geologist in polluted and crowded Houston for the mountains and forests of western Montana

[Graham Catt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title story is especially wonderful.

[Johnnie]

Highlights include: every story.

Probably one of the best Rick Bass short story collections I've read so far.

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book alongside Wendell Berry’s Selected Poems, and they share more than brown, somber, and serious covers. Both older white gentlemen in different parts of the country that love the country, and love the landscape, and know it intimately. I think Bass even quoted Wendell Berry in his stories. I read much of his nonfiction, this was the first fiction I have tried. I appreciated it, I really did, but nothing took my breath away. My favorite nonfiction author, Annie Dillard, also couldn’t make a leap to fiction for me. I hated hers, actually. I didn’t hate these stories, but they are of a rugged, rodeo and farm flavor that I can’t relate to, and I think that is what I am most drawn to in fiction, the feeling of connection. Many of the stories felt very autobiographical, so it is hard to distinguish fiction from reality.

One of those memoir-styled stories was Fiber, and it ended with a plea to help the Yaak valley, where the author lives and is active in the fight to preserve it. It is heartbreaking.

” I am going to ask for help. I have to ask for help. This valley gives and gives and gives. It has been giving more timber to this country for the last fifty years than any other valley in the Lower Forty-Eight…The valley cannot ask for anything-can only give- and so like a shell or husk of the valley, I am doing the asking, and I am the one saying please, at the same time I am also saying, in my human way, fuck you. Somebody help. Please help the Yaak. Put this story in the president’s or vice president’s hands. Or read it aloud to one of them by firelight on a snowy evening with a cup of cider…and outside, on that snowy night, the valley holding tight to the eloquence of a silence I can no longer hear over the roar of my saw.”

In Titan, about a young boy’s seaside vacations: “There are so many different types of gluttony. Even now, just as when I was child and without responsibility, I can lie on my back in the tall grass of autumn and stare at the clouds, an adult with not a thought in my head; and when I stand up, hours later, I will still be ravenous for the sight of those clouds, and for the whispering of the grass, and when I go to bed that night I will still be hungry for the memory of the warmth of that late-season sun, even as, in the moment, I am enjoying the scent and embrace of darkness, and the cooling night.”

[Tobaccoandpeppermint · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each story contains rich characters and a full world. Explorations of grief and loss are anchored by the comforting presence of nature. I loved this book.

[Garlan ✌ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a big Rick Bass fan, but this collection wasn't as appealing as some of his others. Bass has always been an environmentalist, and this set of stories heavily reflect his activism. He acknowledges as much in one of the stories; how he has traded his "art" for "activism". There are still some very good stories, some good paragraphs and sentences, but overall, I found the collection lacking a bit. If you're not acquainted with Bass' writing, I'd recommend either The Watch, Platte River, or In the Loyal Mountains first. They contain some superb writing IMO.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rick Bass is a favorite...These stories are very touching, bizarre, mystical. One in here is a fantasy of environmentalism...Weird almost David Lynch "log-man" episode...Another is an exquisite story of an ill woman who builds delicate boats that she sails down mountain streams to fundamentalist children. Rick Bass - even though I squirm sometimes - can do no wrong in my mind.

Finished this the other day...Title story is worth whole book, IMHO!

(I also think the cover is beautiful...How I generally choose books)

[Alisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second collection of Rick Bass stories. He does do man (or woman) in nature very well. My favorite was "Her First Elk" which was so visceral and beautiful and shocking and sweet. Sometimes when the stories become more fabulist, I am left behind: life and nature are so amazing, must the amazing and strange things be so strange? But, mostly beautiful and well worth the read.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow...this is some of the most beautiful and stirring writing I've ever read. The author is so in-tune with nature and the quality of human emotion. I felt so at ease and refreshed after each story...I'm really looking forward to reading more of his work.

[Evan]

"More and more I'm trying not to look back at who I was, or even who I am, but at the land itself. I am trying to let the land tell me who and what I am — trying to let it pace and direct me, until it is as if I have become part of it."

[Travis McGuire · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful collection of stories. Rick Bass really delivers with this book, the prose dances with songs of nature and life and passion, so much so that the characters remain vibrant even weeks later. It's quite rare I rate a book five stars but this one definitely deserves it.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title story is as exquisite as it is heart-crushing, and probably my new favorite from Bass.

[bob walenski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I usually don't enjoy collections of stories as much as a novel, they sometimes seem undeveloped and confusing and make more of a mishmash of themselves by the time i've finished them. This was not the case with this set of 10 stories by Rick Bass. Each story was separate, but created a clear and impressive picture of developed characters in a specific time and place.
I especially liked the title story, which also happened to be the longest, though any of the 10 can easily be read in a sitting. In 'The Lives of Rocks' a cancer patient is recovering from a surgery, alone and isolated, but for a pair of neighboring children, who befriend her and help her cope in her weakened state. Both the narrative and the observations Bass makes are memorable and poignant. The story and the characters haunted me afterwards. The same was true of the opening story, ' Pagans', where two high school Seniors and a female junior make a trio of friends with a universal story of growing up. As they are transitioning from youth to adulthood, they discover and question love, friendship, time and memory. Bass digs into things to such an amazing depth that he creates tangible moods and stories that not only resonate, but stick to you. In 'Her First Elk' a young girl kills her first animal for food, and the spirit and togetherness in the wild, the help of neighbors and the work of life in the outer fringes are brought into crystal clarity.
These stories are set in southern Texas, near Houston, polluted and ravaged by industry. Or they are set in the Yaak Valley in northwestern Montana, as pristine, wild and natural as a place can be. But in either case, I found these characters jumped off the pages and into my soul, despite my only catching a glimpse of each in a brief portrait. The stories read as both simple narrative, compelling and interesting in plot alone. But they also read brilliantly as metaphors, mostly about growing up, life and death and the gradual infringement of the industrialized wasteland into nature. Bass clearly hopes his writing will help preserve and protect the natural and the wild.

[Molinos · Rating 3 out of 5]

The lives of rocks no es que no me haya gustado. No voy a ser injusta, era imposible que llegara al nivel de Winter, pero no me ha enloquecido. Es una colección de relatos en la que me cuesta encontrar el hilo común. Iba a escribir «relatos apegados a la tierra» pero no todos lo son, iba a escribir «relatos de juventud» pero también los hay de gente mayor, «ambientados en Texas» pero algunos lo están en el valle del Yaak en Montana. ¿Qué tienen en común entonces? ¿Hay una vida de las rocas en todos ellos? No lo sé. No lo veo. Contrariamente a lo que podría pensarse, porque su narración en primera persona en Winter me maravilló, aquí funcionan mejor los que son en tercera persona, las historias de otros que Bass nos cuenta. Me han gustado especialmente dos que tienen como protagonista a Jyl, que en el primero de los relatos que protagoniza, Her first elk, es una joven que acaba de perder a su padre y sale a cazar. En el segundo, que es el que da título al libro, es ya una mujer mayor, enferma de cáncer que entabla una relación de amistad con unos niños que viven con su extraña familia en una cabaña en un valle cercano.

«Her father had been gone for twenty years now. Her father had never known her diminished. Were she and he like two different mountains, she wondered, slightly different kinds of stone through which the same river of time ran, or were they like two braids or forks of a river separating – running across, and cutting down into, the same one mountain, the same one face and body of stone?»

Otro par de relatos, más autobiográficos, muy pegados a Winter también me han gustado mucho. El resto, no te voy a engañar, sin más. Los he leído con gusto, con interés pero sé que no son para todo el mundo. ¿Significa esto que voy a dejar de leer a Bass? Para nada. Una vez en ese olimpo, no me queda otra que seguir persiguiendo el resto de sus libros. Nuestra relación es para toda la vida. (Y si pasas por una librería y encuentras un libro de Rick Bass, ya sabes, cómpramelo)

[Frabe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Raccolta di racconti, perlopiù su tematiche ambientaliste, alcuni buoni, altri noiosetti... Menzione speciale per il racconto intitolato "Titano", e soprattutto per il passo che commenta così l'estinzione delle "rane giaguaro" e con essa, più in generale, la perdita di biodiversità in atto:
"Quale altro meraviglioso fenomeno svanirà nel corso delle nostre vite, diventando un giorno solo memoria e storia, racconto ed eredità, e poi frammenti di storia e di eredità, e poi niente, soltanto vento?"

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think The Watch is his masterpiece, but these short stories are good. You can tell he's a bit more settled and comfortable professionally and personally, and I think that's why there isn't the same sort of angst and depth to these as to some of his previous work. There are definite gems here though, and I'll keep digging deeper into his works.

Recommended for anyone who has ever built on a flood plain.

[Kathy Cowie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had this one on my pile for a while, now I wonder why I waited so long. A beautiful collection, with so many great stories—I think the title story and Goats were my favorites, but so many others moved me. Literal trigger warning if you are against hunting, as the depiction in Her First Elk is fairly graphic. Bass renders the story with such purity and grace, though, I wouldn't skip it.

[P.J. Lazos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many of the wild areas he writes about, Rick Bass is a National Treasure. Bold, descriptive and intelligent, these stories come from an unsettled heart that knows what's at stake. There is a sadness that runs through these stories, yes, but also hope living behind the sadness.

[John Scardamaglia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid 4. Many short story collections rely on one (or maybe two) really good pieces. There were four or five here that I admired. I haven't read Rick Bass in quite a while, but I might have to go back and look again at some of his other work...

[Alessandro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tutte le novelle di questa antologia sono di livello sorprendentemente alto, il tratto comune è, oltre all'ambientazione (gli Stati Uniti rurali), la vena di malinconia che attraversa i fatti e i personaggi. Se devo citare un racconto che più degli altri mi ha colpito, dico "Coach".

[Gabej · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful prose.

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve already written enough about how Bass has only reminded me of the ghastly patriarchal resurgence (? or continuance) of the 1990s. I defer to those comments, which hold fast here.

[Suzan Flanagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A modern Thoreau! I love his work.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories!!! *swooning*