For a Little While: New and Selected Stories

by Rick Bass

Long considered one of the most gifted practitioners of the short story, Rick Bass is unsurpassed in his ability to perceive and portray the enduring truths of the human heart. Now, at last, we have the definitive collection of stories, new and old, from the writer Newsweek has called "an American classic."

To read his fiction is to feel more alive-connected, incandescently, to "the brief longshot of having been chosen for the human experience," as one of his characters puts it.These pages reveal men and women living with passion and tenderness at the outer limits of the senses, each attempting to triumph against fate. Bass provides searing insights into the complexity of family and romantic entanglements, and his lush and striking language draws us ineluctably into the lives of these engaging people and their vivid surroundings. The intricate stories collected in For A Little While--brimming with magic and wonder, filled with hard-won empathy, marbled throughout with astonishing imagery--have the power both to devastate and to uplift. Together they showcase an iconic American master at his peak.


Table of Contents
Selected Stories (pp 3 - 342)
    Wild Horses
    In Ruth’s Country
    Red Fish
    The Watch
    The Legend of Pig-Eye
    The History of Rodney
    Fires
    Field Events
    The Hermit’s Story
    The Fireman
    Swans
    Elk
    Pagans
    The Canoeists
    Goats
    Her First Elk
    Titan
    The Lives of Rocks

New Stories (pp 343 - 468)
    How She Remembers it
    The Blue Tree
    Lease Hound
    The River in Winter
    Coach
    An Alcoholic’s guide to Peru & Chile
    Fish Story

Acknowledgments

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Audiobook, Essays, Nature, American, Literary Fiction

480 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2016

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

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

ATTACK OF THE GOODREADS LIBRARIANS!!!

Yet another, was listed as a short story and now any and all reviews for all stories smushed into a review under the collection of those stories, WITHOUT telling the reviewer and WITHOUT noting what story was being reviewed. So now I have no clue which story this review was about AND no mention of Levar Burton reading it on his podcast. Which is taking credit away from him, since I would never have been exposed to the story at all were it not for him.

Zero stars to the GR Librarians. Still 2 stars for the story, since I DO remember it, I just don’t remember the title of it since the GRL weren’t kind enough to leave the title or note on the review it’s been altered from its original form.

I’m debating if I should remove the stars on this review, since they weren’t for the whole book, just one story in it, but I’m going to leave it for the time being. Not fair to the book, but if that’s how GRL want to play, then why should I try to ruin their fun?

Review for the story, the title of which I can’t remember and don’t feel like looking up, below.

Didn’t like it. Didn’t get it. No point. And why the EFF did she START A FOREST FIRE?!? And the MC never ASKED her WHY?!? And he said, it was only some wild grass. WTF?!? 2, didn’t completely hate it, stars.

[Kirk Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a fan for some time, but this collection has 18 of his very best short stories and it is pure reading pleasure. That is, as long as you appreciate the outdoors and you enjoy adventure. (Who could say no to that?) It does also have 7 New stories as an added bonus. You might collect four of his other books, or you might purchase this one book and have his very best!

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The rules for dating Mormon girls were simple. No coffee; no long hair.
No curse words; one kiss. That was about it. It was simple. Anyone could do it.

Utah is an odd state—the most beautiful, I think—because it is one thing but also another. It is red and hot in the desert—in the south—while the north has the cool and blue forests and mountains, which smell of fir and snow. And like so many things, when seen from a distance, they look unattainable.
My uncle and I were not Mormons. We lived in southern Utah, Uncle Mike and I and the rest of the town of Moab.

For A Little While is a collection of twenty-five short stories by Rick Bass. There are several that were top notch. Nearly all of his stories are nostalgic, often nature driven or specific to a locale. Most of the stories lack significant dialogue or even a plot. A tough road when writing fiction.

In Ruth’s Country, Redfish, The Legend of Pig-eye, and Pagans are the jewels in this collection in my opinion.

In Ruth’s Country is my favorite story hands down. A lot of emotion and angst. Young man starts dating Mormon girl named Ruth down in Moab. His job that summer is to drive the cattle so there is a lot of spare time for the two out on the range. Ruth eventually becomes pregnant, they soon thereafter have a brush with death in a rollover auto accident. She won’t talk to him any more and tells him the baby isn’t his. The story ends with him reflecting on how hard it must have been for her to end it like that.

Redfish. A young man is fishing with his friend Kirby who has a real drinking problem. Nice story of standing by a friend who has some real psychological difficulties after breaking up with his girlfriend.

The Legend of Pig-Eye is perhaps Bass’ most famous story. A young boxer comes up in the shadow of the legendary boxer Pig-Eye. Nostalgic and heavy on southern sentiment.

Pagans. This story is heavy on nostalgia. Richard and Kirby are in high school and best friends. They spend much of their time outside school exploring the the Sabine River where they find an old dredging crane to which they first attach their car and later attach a bathyscaphe for thrill rides. There is also Annie their mutual friend and who they are both romantically interested in. After graduation, they all lose touch but they each remember those days on the Sabine as the best time of their lives.

So when Bass sets his stories in places like Moab that I have visited frequently or when he writes about young people in love I find that these stories resonate. The remaining stories either lacked drama for me or the story and setting weren’t that intriguing.

3.5 stars. I absolutely love Bass’ non-fiction work, especially Winter Notes from Montana which detailed his move to and his first winter in rural Montana. It was heavily centered on the wilderness around him and the quirky residents.

With the exception of a couple of wonderful stories in this collection, I think of Bass more as a stellar non-fiction nature writer.

[Jenny Shank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published: 26 February 2016, Dallas Morning News

If any contemporary writer of short fiction deserves to take the victory lap symbolized by a collection of selected stories, it’s Rick Bass, who has published seven books worth of stories and novellas, many of which have been honored with inclusion in prize anthologies.

For a Little While gathers 25 of Bass’ strongest stories, including seven new tales, into a collection that should win Bass new fans while inducing his admirers to re-evaluate what they thought they knew about this versatile and sensitive writer whose fiction thrusts relentlessly fallible humans against the astounding and confounding forces of nature.

I had already read most of these stories, even the new ones, which I sought out in the literary magazines that first published them. I considered myself a kind of authority on his fiction. But one of the marks of a rich, layered, rewarding story is that you can read it at different ages and stages of your life and be struck by distinct facets of it, and perhaps derive an entirely new meaning from it.

This phenomenon hit me over and over again as I read For a Little While, whose stories have more to give than can be gleaned in one reading. Maybe a good story is like a rock, always changing its impact on the reader as life sediments are deposited, heated, cooled and eroded over the years. “No rock is ever finished, all stones are continually being remade,” Bass writes, in The Lives of Rocks, “until they vanish from the face of the earth.”

One thing I thought I knew about Bass was that he mainly set his writing in the Montana wilderness. Bass was born in Fort Worth, grew up in Houston, studied petroleum geology at Utah State University, and worked in that field in Mississippi before moving to the remote Yaak Valley of Montana in 1987. But although I’d pegged Bass as writing about elk-shooting hermits living without indoor plumbing in the Rocky Mountain West, this collection is roughly evenly divided between stories set in Montana, Texas and Mississippi, with plenty of stories set in suburbs instead of the forest.

Bass’ nonfiction is more often set in Montana — maybe the distinction is that a writer chooses where to set his nonfiction, but his subconscious chooses where he will set his fiction, and formative experiences carry an outsize weight.

Yes, there are a few stories featuring craggy hermits and the field-dressing of ungulates, but I think I might have missed the real point of these the first time I read them. Bass’ characters never shoot an elk just for the sake of shooting an elk. Most of the time, they do it for sheer survival, as does a newcomer to a rugged Montana valley in “Elk,” who convinces a local to help him bag his winter meat and endures a comedy of errors as they stalk, kill and try to transport an elk. (“And so we moved across the valley, slowly, as if in some eternal meat relay.”)

We first meet Jyl in “Her First Elk” as a skittish teenager who’s just lost her father, trying to fend for herself in the wilderness. She shoots an enormous elk, and some competent elder outdoorsmen take pity on her and teach her how to dress it. Bass writes that Jyl is “remembering these things, a grown woman now woven of losses and gains.”

Jyl returns in the enchanting novella, “The Lives of Rocks,” in which we learn that those losses include a bout with cancer she’s just emerging from. Chemotherapy saps her strength to prepare for the winter or do little else but carve wooden boats, which she sets sail “to provide entertainment and even a touch of magic for the hardened lives of the Workman children living downstream from her.”

Two of the children from this off-the-grid, evangelical family receive her boats, and turn up to provide her company and help. In this story, Jyl spares the life of perhaps the only deer she’ll be able to shoot in her weakened condition, but the children bring her meat.

In all these stories, game provides sustenance, but also communion between weaker, younger or less experienced people and those with the strength and skills to help.

Bass’ Texas stories often feature young men or children thriving in the freedom and ignorance of their youth, as in “Pagans,” a story about three teenagers who find “a rusting old crane half sunk near the estuary of the Sabine River, salt-bound, a derelict from gravel quarry days,” and repeatedly ditch school to return to this poisoned waterway and while away their afternoons. “They had found a lazy place, a sweet place, to hang out, in the eddy between childhood and whatever came next.” These teens are too young and in love to read anything ominous into the deformed aquatic life they find in the river.

The Mississippi stories can be Southern Gothic as all get-out, including “The Watch,” about a fading competitive cyclist who helps the isolated owner of a country store recapture his runaway, elderly, alligator-wrestling dad who has escaped into the Bayou.

Written in prose that sounds lovely even when describing “scablands of lukewarm coal water and rivulets of toxic runoff,” Bass’ stories emphasize the bonds between spouses, parents and their children, neighbors and friends, and delve the intense longing for connection in people living alone or in wavering marriages.

The stories are varied in subject and setting, but they are united in their emphasis on the fleeting nature of our lives and of the stages within them. Being young, being in love, being healthy and raising young children, states that seem without horizon at the time, are all ephemeral interludes in the evolving bedrock of our lives. Bass savors the sweet beauty of these moments, while considering the rue over the missed opportunities embedded within them.

Jenny Shank’s novel, “The Ringer,” won the High Plains Book Award. Her short story “L’Homme de Ma Vie” will appear in the new issue of Barrelhouse.

http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/...

[Eleanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rick Bass is all but unheard of in this country. In America, when I worked as a bookseller in high school, we would sell a couple of his books every month or so, but it has taken his name a long time to reach these shores. Pushkin Press’s collection of selected and new short stories from his pen is one of the best books I have read for a very long time; I’m hoping that it helps him make his name here, and I’m also going to be tracking down more of Bass’s work, for the beauty of his writing on the sentence level as well as the beauty of his ideas.

He writes mostly about people in the South and West and Southwest: the deserts of New Mexico and Texas, mountainous or forested regions where hunting and logging are part of daily life, Alabama during the oil boom. These are places where people live near to the earth. Bass stands out, as a writer of such places, because he does not allow for despair or tragedy to intrude into a story where it has no right to be. Again and again, he creates situations where people are vulnerable—lonely, desiring love, reaching out for something, asking. Many of them reminded me of Flannery O’Connor’s setups, but whereas O’Connor will inevitably tip the story into scorn at grotesquerie and what seems like a kind of mean-minded divine punishment for presumption, Bass’s touch is gentle, generous, loving.

In “Field Events”, one of my favourite of the stories, two brothers who excel at the shot put adopt an enormous young man called A.C., intending to train him to greatness. Their sister, Lory, is a miserable schoolteacher: her students are disinterested and often cruel to her, and she is chronically depressed. She falls in love with A.C., and he with her: his hugely muscled body cradling her tiny frame in a sitting room armchair when she can’t sleep. If this were O’Connor, you would be bracing yourself hard, waiting for the point at which A.C. mugs Lory and abandons her, crushing her heart. But that point doesn’t come. Bass is more interested, I think, in observing the strangeness of reality than in creating a philosophical structure, and that makes his stories more beautifully, lopsidedly convincing.

And he can imbue his prose with a weightiness that, somehow, does not embarrass. He describes the natural world—trees and game and snow—in vivid, serious detail. “Her First Elk” is a story about a young woman named Jyl whose first solo hunt kill is an elk stag. Hunting, for her, is tied up with the memory of her beloved father, now dead. She is helped to skin and cure the elk by two elderly brothers, Ralph and Bruce. There is a mythic element to this story that would not feel out of place in a Cormac McCarthy novel, but look how much less irritating Bass is than McCarthy:

"Bruce poured a gallon jug of clean water over Ralph’s hands and wrists to rinse the soap away, and Ralph dried his hands and arms with a clean towel and emptied out the old bloody wash water, then filled it anew, and it was time for Bruce to do the same. Jyl marveled at, and was troubled by, this privileged glimpse at a life, or two lives, beyond her own—a life, two lives, of cautious compentence, fitted to the world; and she was grateful to the elk, and its gone-away life, beyond the sheer bounty of the meat it was providing her, grateful to it for having led her into this place, the small and obscure if not hidden window of these two men’s lives."

The prose uses some of the same tricks as McCarthy’s, but uses them sensibly (the mild archaism of “anew”; the faint ecclesiasticism of “into this place”), and we feel not daunted or halted but let in, like Jyl, to a small and obscure window. I am so grateful to Rick Bass for writing these stories, I cannot tell you. He has written novels, too; I will be seeking them out.

[Paula Hagar · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give this collection of short stories 10 stars, I would. I have long loved Rick Bass's stories and essays, and this is quite possibly THE single best book of short stories I've ever read. The scope of the subjects and character development and the spectacularly beautiful writing of every single story boggles my mind. I was surprised and delighted by each and every story in this collection, and often had to just sit and breathe for a few minutes after finishing a story.

For sure my all-time favorite short story of his is "The Hermit's Story." How someone could create a story with such an eerily unearthly setting is beyond me, but I never tire or cease to be delighted by this story in particular. It took me several weeks to make my way through this big book, and now I feel bereft having finished it.

[Chrysten Lofton · Rating 5 out of 5]

5.0⭐ “She spread her arms out across the ice as if she were resting on a crucifix.”
**spoilers**

If you’re here, and you’re following my reviews, thank you for rolling with me. We’re on episode 28 of Stitcher’s LeVar Burton Reads, and we’re gifted with Fires by Rick Bass.

Holy Shit.

Another homecoming read for me. I go out of my way to find/read stories like this. There’s something addicting about stories that superimpose themselves to the senses. You can smell this story. You can hear it. It takes you out of time and touches something deep in the consciousness.

I absolutely loved the characters and their intrinsic relationship. I think the little ‘hedgehog’ was symbolic for something these two characters wanted, but weren’t necessarily in the place to go after. Like their romantic tensions, they could see it, they could get close, but getting close was all they could do.

The barrier between the hedgehog and the curious humans was the house.
The barrier between these two people and their curiosity for one another was a time limit.

I think that’s why when she was alone at night and restless, she was asking him if he’d seen it. It was subconsciously a way of reaching out to him in defiance of the time limit. The question underneath the question might have been, can you see me beside you?

I love how this story was richly sensual without necessarily being sexual. It's a lost art in this day and age.

I agree with LeVar that it was meditative. I’ll be listening to this one more than once.

Thanks for reading, and If you wanna chat about the latest LBR episodes, hit me up in the comments and come meet up with us at LeVar Burton Reads: The Community on Facebook.
- 📚☕♥

[Daniel M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a Little While. Rick Bass (2016) A collection of Rick Bass short stories from the past 40 years. Vivid, evocative, set in the wilderness and examining the inner lives of those people who inhabit the woods and backcountry. His characters are hunters who take an elk with care, thinking of themselves as part of the land and the cycle of life. He has wonderfully evocative language that reminds me of a Barry Lopez short story. Bass describes places that few of us have ever seen, and some of them are frankly difficult to believe are real, but are emotionally real nonetheless. (I’m thinking of his story “The Hermit,” where two people slip beneath the frozen surface of a drained lake and explore the mysterious world below the ice shell above. I don’t think this can really happen the way he describes, but the imaginary setting feels real, and makes for a distinctly wild place that’s neither reality nor fiction, but a kind of magical realism that’s very North American.)

Bass has a special place in his heart for the immensely strong and self-reliant. Even his wounded characters have an incredible strength and resilience at their core. Wonderful writing.

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rick Bass writes good stories. This book contains all of his best work along with some new stories and will be the definitive collection of his work for many years.
It was good to read 'Fire' again, the story of two people trying to carefully get the most from a relationship that cannot last. Rereading 'The Hermit's Story' with its wonderful, almost visual, descriptions and its carefully rendered tale of walking under a roof of ice reminded me how stories and storytelling define us. And the new stories are equally good, filled with characters struggling to do their best, beautiful, vivid descriptions, and moments of quiet intensity.

This is an excellent collection, an excellent introduction to Rick Bass's stories. It will be released in early March.

[M. Sarki · Rating 2 out of 5]

What you had to remember about cutting cattle—and it was a thing Uncle Mike had often told me—was to pretend that you were capable of being in two places at once: where the cow was going, and where it wanted to go.

Though Rick Bass himself considers his greatest strength being his short fiction, for me his essays are far superior. Bass writes a very good story in his essays and his work feels and sounds important to me. These fictions, unfortunately, do not. In fact, I felt I was wasting my time so I set them down. Perhaps one day I will return to this "selected" collection. But I doubt it. Meanwhile, hat's still off to Rick Bass and his environmental advocacy and personal memoirs that in many ways completely knock my socks off.

[Sally Drake · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I started this collection I wondered how it took me so long to read Rick Bass but then I realized that sometimes you discover writers exactly when you are supposed to read them. I loved every single word of this stunningly beautiful, evocative, and quietly powerful collection. By far the best in the genre of 'nature writing' that I have read but even better were the characters--good, strong people struggling with the complications of mid-life, transitions, relationships with family, jobs, the environment. Bass' writing is extremely humane and sympathetic, never overwrought or melodramatic. He is now firmly on my list of favorite American writers.

[Benjamin Rubenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

One day during my residency at the Stonecoast MFA program, Rick Bass--my workshop instructor at the time--said Raymond Carver's short story titled Cathedral was "perfect." I think some of these are perfect. They're not a collection of short stories in the typical sense--there is no character or landmark that ties them together. But, they all take place in or have elements of nature. This doesn't surprise me given my interactions with Rick and my knowledge of his background living out west and formerly working as a petroleum geologist.

What does surprise me is how--I'm guessing--relatively few readers know of Rick (at least compared to the latest thriller-of-the-month fiction writer) considering his writing is beautiful and sensational. I found this paragraph on his biography page of his website...this is insane:

Rick Bass’ fiction has received O. Henry Awards, numerous Pushcart Prizes, awards from the Texas Institute of Letters (in fiction, creative nonfiction, and journalism categories), fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lyndhurst Foundation, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, nominations for Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards, and a Pen/Nelson Algren Special Citation, which was judged by Robert Penn Warren, and a General Electric Younger Writer’s Award. He has had numerous stories anthologized in Best American Short Stories: The Year’s Best. The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons At Home in Montana (Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt), a book about fathering daughters in the wilderness, has been excerpted in O, The Oprah Magazine. His nonfiction has been anthologized in Best American Spiritual Writing, Best Spiritual Writing, and Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Science Writing.Various of his books have been named New York Times as well as Los Angeles Times Notable Books of the Year, and a New York Times Best Book of the Year. A collection of short fiction, The Hermit’s Story, was named a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, and another collection, The Lives of Rocks, was a finalist for the prestigious Story Prize, as well as a Best Book of the Year by the Rocky Mountain News. His most recent nonfiction book, Why I Came West, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of a 2011 Montana Arts Council Artist’s Innovation Award.

Besides the beautiful scenes of nature ever-present in all these stories, I also found many (most? all?) of them to hold powerfully sad endings. But sad endings that make you think, and feel grateful. His stories featuring characters in ill health really make me feel grateful.

If you're into short stories, this is a must-read. Many of these have been published in the kind of publications most readers would kill to be featured in once, let alone as many times as Rick's stories have been featured--publications like The Atlantic, Esquire, The New Yorker, GQ, Ploughshares, and The Paris Review. Rick's writing is sensational. Some proof:

Elizabeth and I put fireflies in empty mayonnaise jars, screw the lids on tight, and punch holes in the tops. We decorate our porch with them at night, or we line the bed with them, and then laugh as we love, with their blinking green bellies going on and off like soft, harmless firecrackers, as if they are applauding.

He got better, of course—learned his craft better—learned it well, in time. No one was hurt. But there is still a clumsiness in his heart, in all of their hearts—the echo and memory of it—that is not too distant. They’re all just fuckups, like anyone else, even in their uniforms: even in their fire-resistant gear. You can bet that any one of them who comes to rescue you or your home has problems that are at least as large as yours. You can count on that. There are no real rescuers.

the summer storm moved in and thundered across and past, like the nighttime passage of some huge herd of animals above.

Remembering these things, a grown woman now woven of losses and gains, Jyl sometimes looks down at her body and considers the mix of things: the elk becoming her, as she ate it, and becoming Ralph and Bruce, as they ate it (did this make them somehow, distantly, like brothers and sister, or uncles and niece, if not fathers and daughter?)—and the two old men becoming the soil then, in their burial, as had her father, becoming as still and silent as stone, except for the worms that writhed now in their chests, and her own tenuous memories of them. And her own gone-away father, worm food, elk food: but how he had loved it. Mountains in her heart now, and antlers, and mountain lions and sunrises and huge forests of pine and spruce and tamarack, and elk, all uncontrollable. She likes to think now that each day she moves farther away from him, she is also moving closer to him.

for every mysterious curve of the land, there is a similar shape in the human heart; and because of this, no one ever needed to feel he was alone.

[Micol Benimeo · Rating 5 out of 5]

C’è sempre uno scarto nel tempo di questi racconti. Il momento giusto, la felicità, la bellezza sono sempre nel passato o nel futuro, nel ricordo o nella speranza.

‘And many years later, after their lives separated, he would believe there was something about the sound, the harmonics, of that ravaged river and her ability to love it and take pleasure in it, that released something from within her; transforming in ancient alchemy the beautiful unseen into the beautifully tangible.’

Ci spostiamo tra il Texas, il Mississippi, il Nevada, lo Utah, tra taglialegna, pugili, cacciatrici, pescatori, ciclisti, addestratrici di cani da slitta. La malinconia e la solitudine degli uomini e delle donne, dei giovani e dei vecchi che popolano questi racconti si specchiano e si stemperano nella natura, negli animali, nei fiumi, nella neve. Il linguaggio è evocativo, musicale, ovattato.
Tutti i personaggi rincorrono quel momento in cui la bellezza che si cela nelle cose diventa una bellezza tangibile, ma non la afferrano mai se non nel ricordo, se non nel racconto, se non nell’anticipazione.

[John Barrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are many fantastic stories in this collection, and Rick Bass lives up to his reputation as one of our greatest storytellers. The only reason this collection isn't a slam-dunk 5 star review is because it is such a complete collection of his work that a few lesser stories pop up now and then. There are "not-stories," snippets of his great nature writing without a real narrative arc. There are really long stories, and IMO Rick's talents falter a bit on longer tales. But it is worth reiterating that these flaws don't make the book bad. This is a case of "great" occasionally slipping into "okay" territory, and I can't even complain too strongly, as I saw Rick read recently, and some people cited the stories that left me ambivalent as their very favorites, so maybe there's value in being a completist.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the short story "Fires" on LeVar Burton Reads and thought it excellent at world-building. The descriptions of the environment (you never find out where- perhaps Montana or Alaska) made you feel as though you were in the middle of bear country. A man and woman are thrown together for a season and seem suited for one another, but the woman is there simply to train for races and has to head home in the late summer, thus no romance develops. I was enjoying this slice-of-life interlude when the woman does something so mind-bogglingly foolish, that could have had huge ramifications, that the story ended on a sour note for me. While it might have been a metaphor for her feelings, I couldn't get past the danger of it all.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of old and new short stories from Rick Bass. Consistently great throughout, but in particular enjoyed Swans, The Lives of Rocks, and Lease Hound.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good body of work to read chronologically because you could really see Bass's style grow and breathe as the collection progressed. I felt at first that it was leaning a bit heavily on the atmospheric, nothing-really-happens framework, but that wasn't really it—atmospheric definitely, in a big way, but the arc of each story is there. You just have to be quiet and watch for it. And I do think that Bass got more adept at building the bones of the story as he kept working—I found them increasingly more satisfying as I read. But to pick out a standout mid-book, "The Hermit's Story" is just crazy out-there and not to be missed.

I read this one slowly and I'm glad I did.

[Joachim Stoop · Rating 4 out of 5]

4-

If I were to select half of these stories and take out the other half, it would be a 5 star book

[Nat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brother Janssen had said that everything in the God-made world has value, that there is no real waste or loss other than that which we choose not to celebrate. That the only real ruin lies in our inability to fully engage, in every incandescent moment, in the brief longshot of having been chosen for the human experience.

After many long months of picking up this collection and putting it back down again, I've finally completed Rick Bass' 'For A Little While', with a final review of 3.5/5 stars (rounded down to 3 for Goodreads purposes). I can't remember where I read this prior to picking up this collection, but whoever told me that it would be ill-advised to try and read this all in one sitting was ABSOLUTELY correct. By taking breaks in between every 2 to 3 short stories, you really get to admire Bass' knack for descriptive storytelling without readers' fatigue getting in the way - and trust that he's a master in descriptive storytelling, if anything else. No other writer thus far has been able to portray the stunning imagery of nature's best and worst, contrasted with the radiance and rot of the city, as well as Rick Bass. Some of the stories are a bit of a drag (and maybe that's just because I'll always love more character-centric stories, above all) but I'd say it's a worthwhile read if your particular niche is nature or the mundanities that come with being alive.

If you MUST read anything from this collection, please do read 'The Legend of Pig-Eye", "The Fireman", "Fish Story", "An Alcoholic's Guide to Peru", and "Lease Hound". Also, if you're anything like me, avoid "Field Events", "Pagans", "The Canoeists", and "The Lives of Rocks".

Spoilers ahead! Don't take these reviews seriously, I never really did either - I'm just happy to have finished this at all. Also, a lot of these are out of the collection's given order, so do with that what you will.

wild horses - 7/10, sweet look into grief and grieving and learning to tame the wild horses in your barn and the wild horses in your blood. very sweet and very calm. (bonus mark for reminding me about a mitski song)

in ruth's country - 7/10, i really liked ruth and the MC's relationship, and rick bass' description of nature and youth is as refreshing as always! i feel relaxed and melancholy after reading it.

redfish - 5/10, short and sweet. man rick bass is fucking good at vibes no i will not explain further.

the watch - 8/10, LOVE the character arc of jesse and i love the use of different perspectives. rick bass' descriptions of nature is as good as always and i respect that hollingsworth is truly and deeply insane.

the legend of pig-eye - 6/10, just an all around solid story about a boxer and the many boxers that preceded him.

the history of rodney - 9/10, a sweet short story (thank god its short) about learning to move on and trying to clamber onto something that you can hold onto. being afraid of change is a thing and change existing is a thing and the stories of these people intermingle great.

fires - 6/10, love the vibes and i respect that the story was just glenda and the MC's relationship being kind of a thing but also certainly not a thing. also glenda is batshit insane for setting a fire and i love that.

field events - 4/10, i do like lory a lot though!

the hermit's story - 6.5/10, a wonderfully descriptive story about spring and nature and the gorgeousness of winter nights and the hope that it represents. a little boring and slow throughout but the sights were worth it :)

the fireman - 9/10, an amazingly engaging story about a fireman and his relationship with everything around him. the way his beliefs and experiences in fighting fires molds his experiences in his everyday life, the way that the fire itself is described and interacts with the firemen, and the parallels between his "fireman" persona and "everyday" persona, are all written super interestingly. May be my bias towards character centric pieces, but this is my favourite thus far.

swans - 7/10! A beautiful and poignant short story about a man and his wife who live in the woods. Descriptive wise, I feel this isn't Bass at his best, but this definitely shines in its ability to draw everything together, how Billy lives by control, how Amy doesn't, and how that control slips as Billy returns to nature - and, though we hate to admit it, how nature moves on its own and mourns for no one.

Elk - 4/10! Just a short story about the treacherous journey of hunting an elk. Nothing too special, but some descriptions were really good, and I liked the way they showed that Matthew was more familiar and integrated with nature.

Pagans - 5/10! On teenage recklessness, choices that were never made, and cherishing moments you'll never have back. Unfortunately it couldn't really hold my attention or get me invested in these characters at all, so I was kind of bored the entire way through.

The canoeists - 3/10! A story about a whole lot of nothing that feels like it's about a whole lot of nothing. Extremely short but felt like it was a million pages long. Rick Bass' descriptive nature at its worst, probably.

Goats - 8.5/10! Rick Bass is so fucking good at writing about people who need to be strapped in a chair and kept in an insane asylum because there's this wildness to it that no other author can really capture.

Her first elk - 8.5/10! A sweet story about grief, how love can survive through everywhere and everything, and letting nature reclaim you.

Fish story - 9/10! This shit was a fucking comedy bro I had so much fun reading this. They start off by calling the fish a hideous and grotesque monstrosity, and I'm like "oh my god this poor fish leave him alone" and then it just keeps getting increasingly worse for this fish and every time you think they'll stop it there it gets comically worse somehow. Hilarious and a highlight of this book.

An alcoholic's guide to Peru - 9/10! Okay maybe it's just because I also have a minor alcohol problem, but this was probably the most realistic, engaging and relatable short story in this novel by far. All about shame, pride, fear, and how all of that comes back to bite you. Made me want a beer.

Coach - 8/10! I feel the less pretentious Bass' stories try to be, the more engaged I am in them, and Coach is certainly a fine example ot that case. I love that you can feel the passion and love for the sport (and teaching) oozing from the character's thoughts, and how it's shaped by how the thrill of winning in basketball and good coaching had saved him in his youth, and continues to do so. Points docked for some of the more boring descriptive sections, though.

Titan - 6.5/10! A short story about greed, naivete, and what you take and get back from nature. A pretty easy read.

The river in winter - 6/10! The last paragraph singlehandedly increased the rating by 2 points. I love Bass' descriptions on the truck as it rose to the surface, I just wish there was more explorations on the grief and less on the filler.

the lives of rocks - 3.5/10! This story was nowhere near engaging enough to justify how fucking long it was.

how she remembers it - 4.5/10! Pretty boring, and I'll probably forget about it 10 minutes from now. The descriptions were really good, for what it's worth, carrying itself with a sense of nostalgia that was really fitting for the story he was trying to tell.

the blue tree - 7/10! A surprisingly engaging story about a family man trying to make the best out of a christmas gone wrong - but moreso about trying to hold on to the things you love despite the world, and despite time.

lease hound - 8.5/10! Though formally not the last story of this collection, I'm glad this was the last one I read - a great embodiment of what i believe to be Rick Bass' values and his thoughts on nature and its connection to humanity. I thought the portrayal of morals and religion were great, and, as always, I loved the way that the beauty of nature was shown to be something not to be taken for granted. One of Rick Bass' best.

[Ian Plenderleith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sounds stupid to say, but Bass is one of those writers who truly is a writer, who you read for no other reason that his writing is perfectly balanced and poetic in almost every sentence. There's a certain tone to his prose whereby you imagine reading his stories in the careful, gravelly voice of an American man aged around 60. I could open any one of the 466 pages and find something quotable: "'This way,' Matthew said, taking a cigarette lighter out of his pack. 'Look at me,' he said. 'Watch.' He walked down to the nearest dead tree, an old wind-blasted fir, shrouded dense with black hanging lichen. 'This is what you do,' he said. His words came in breaths of steam rising in the rain. He stood under the canopy of the tree's branches and moss cloak and snapped the lighter a couple of times, holding it right up against the lichen tendrils. On the third snap the lichen caught, burned blue for a moment, then leapt into a quick orange flame."

[Bob Peru · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of our best 3 or 4 american authors still writing. maybe number 1 on some days. . .a great retrospective and 7 new stories. i love "where the sea used to be" his long novel, but the cumulative effect of these stories may eclipse even that. particularly the linked "her first elk" and "the lives of rocks." also "the blue tree" and "an alcoholic's guide to peru and chile." both are stories of linked lives in different stages. one of the best books of any genre i have read in the past 30 or so years.

[༺Kiki༻ · Rating 3 out of 5]

★★★☆☆ Wild Horses
★★★☆☆ In Ruth’s Country
★★★☆☆ Redfish
★★★☆☆ The Watch
★★★☆☆ The Legend of Pig-Eye
★★★☆☆ The History of Rodney
★★★☆☆ Fires
★★★☆☆ Field Events
★★★★☆ The Hermit’s Story
★★★★☆ The Fireman
★★★★☆ Swans
★★★☆☆ Elk
★★★☆☆ Pagans
★★★☆☆ The Canoeists
★★★☆☆ Goats
★★★☆☆ Her First Elk
★★★☆☆ Titan
★★★☆☆ The Lives of Rocks
★★★☆☆ How She Remembers It
★★★☆☆ The Blue Tree
★★★☆☆ Lease Hound
★★★☆☆ The River in Winter
★★★☆☆ Coach
★★★☆☆ An Alcoholic’s Guide to Peru and Chile
★★★☆☆ Fish Story

[Phyllis Krall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful collection of both old and new stories which will touch your heart. Rick Bass has his characters interacting with nature and each other in an indescribable way. He captures the actual feelings of people in their relationships with each other. The beauty of the sights and sounds of nature are vividly described in a unique way.
I already am rereading my favorite stories and will treasure this book. It is highly recommended .

[Jerry Peace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bass's writing is first rate, between a four and five. I see why critics like him; heck, I see why short story lovers like him. But his stories in this collection leave me untouched, like old ashes. The result is that, while I can recall phrases and really cool passages, the stories are great big empties, unrecallable.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection to savor. Nobody writes about nature like Rick Bass, but also about human nature. These stories are so well-developed and nuanced. Much to admire here.

[Scott Baxter]

Review of the Day: For a Little While by Rick Bass

I find it difficult to review story anthologies because while I can comment on individual stories, I remain mystified when trying to make a judgement about what they mean as a whole. So instead, I prefer to pick just one story and share my thoughts on it. We can use the Greek term SYNECDOCHE which literally means come together and is currently understood as a metaphor where a part of something stands in for the whole. Kenneth Burke pointed out that in a representative democracy elected leaders stand in for their constituents; synecdoche is a form of representation.

The story I chose to represent the book is Lease Hound. It is a story of an unnamed narrator remembering his work more than thirty years earlier as an agent of a drilling company trying to secure petroleum drilling leases. One thing I noticed that Bass’ story did not have was dialogue; I have read quite a few short stories in my life and this lack of dialogue is a conspicuous absence.

The narrator grew up in the Mormon faith and occasionally remembers the words and thoughts of his mentor: “In our ward, Brother Janssen had been largely ignored; he was viewed as well-meaning, but a little off the tracks — though by the time I got down in Alabama, I found myself strangely recalling much of what he’d said, things I’d thought I wasn’t paying attention to at the time, but which, due to the intensity of his storytelling, had remained with me” (p. 375).
“It continued to surprise me how many of Brother Janssen’s teachings stayed with me. … When he spoke, his eyes burned like ingots — though, in a cruel irony for one so pure, he resembled, in his whippet-thin visage, a weasel, an unfortunate and unfair likeness. As if the fires within him consumed all fat” (p. 387).

Much of the story is about the narrator trying to acquire the mineral rights of an elderly woman in north Alabama named Velma. Eventually the narrator does manage to convince her to sign the lease; but he is bothered by the process because he knows Velma is near death. “And yet as I ascended those raggedy stairs, I was certain what I was doing was wrong, and it wounded my spirit. Something was seeping out of me, and I did not know how to stop it” (p. 397).

In addition to describing his work challenges, the narrator has a girlfriend in Mississippi he visits several times a week named Genevieve. He says: “So much of it [the relationship] was sex, but there was more” (p. 385). In addition, “Genevieve said material wealth was overrated; that what mattered was the quality of life lived” (p. 376).

To complicate matters, the narrator also has a friend in Alabama, Penny, who processes claims at the courthouse who is a more Platonic friend. “We never so much as shared a meal” (p. 389).
“The girl who clerked in the courthouse, Penny, had been in and out of my mind for some months. …there was something about the way she greeted the day, and her smile — her happiness — that got me every time. … Her happiness seemed to come from some deeper core” (p. 377).

But at one point Penny does invite him to see her garden and the narrator spends two pages describing the scene. Then he says, “I turned away. … I had to decide whether to follow her one step further into the garden, or back out” (p. 390). “Something held me back, and whether it was the last of a purity that was in me then, seeking to protect her, or the first of a corruption, becoming more comfortable with squander, I still cannot say” (p. 391).

In what can be seen as a metaphor of his internal conflict between his two female friends, the narrator finds it difficult to describe to Penny what Mississippi is like:
“What I also didn’t tell her was how far away it always seemed when I was in north Alabama; how the three hours felt half a lifetime away. How the land changed quickly, coming down out of the hills: flat hardwood swamp bottoms, and then out into the dazzle of redclay Delta, cotton. Narrow roads, workers’ sunstruck hoes flashing in semaphore (p. 388).

The language and the descriptions are one of the high points of the story.

QOTD: Do you have a favorite short story writer?

kindle and librofm audiobook. 480 pgs. 21 August 2025.

[Andy Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a greatest hits of his stories from earlier collections supplemented by recently written stories. While I enjoyed re-reading his earlier stories, my focus was on his recent stories that showed that Bass still has the knack for deftly describing natural beauty, especially of his beloved Montana, and for his unique characters who reveal themselves to the reader bit by bit and so often with unexpected turns.
In "How She Remembers It" a 12 year old girl remembers a road trip from Missoula to Yellowstone with her dad. The descriptions of the changing scenery make the reader long to be part of the trip, the backstories of their family and the dad/daughter relationship make the reader want to know them.
"The Blue Tree" takes place in an isolated Montana valley, the two daughters go to a school that often has more grades than students. The dad absolutely loves the cabin, his family and their traditions and the isolated splendor surrounding their home. The story follows the trip to find the perfect Christmas tree that includes car trouble, and unexpected long hike and encounter with a mountain lion that stalks them on the way home.
"Lease Hound" is set in Alabama and Mississippi and follows an oil company employee buying up mineral leases from impoverished landowners. The employee's internal tension about his success is set against those who works with and buys from.
"The River in Winter" starts with a 15 year old boy staring down into the river that drowned his father and shifts to his bravado in volunteering to dive into the iced over river to hook a chain to a truck at the bottom to allow the truck's recovery. As I read the part where the boy is under the ice I found that I was holding my breath. And at the end of the story was a sentence that shows why Bass is such a great writer "And for many years, the story of how the truck had been reclaimed would be told: it belonged to all of them now, not just Brandon, and it drifted through the village like dust blowing off the mountains, though over time it began to seem that the words endure as long as the stones in the mountains themselves."
The title of "An Alcohic's Guide to Peru and Chile"is descriptive. A father with a crumbling marriage takes his two teenaged daughters on a trip to Peru to Chile. The reader roots for the dad to live up the hopes of the daughters with fun adventures while resisting the unrelenting desire for drink. The cryptic ending lets the reader decide as to the ultimate success or failure

[Jim Steele · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short story collection from an American writer who is well known abroad, but not in the USA. He should be!

Most of the stories are set in a valley in Montana's Beartooth Mountains or on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. The pair "Her First Elk" and "The Lives of Rocks" are excellent. The first paints a beautifully descriptive picture of the wilderness above the valley and a teen age girl's first experience tracking and killing an elk. The sense of loss in the girl who has recently lost the father who was teaching her to hunt is quite moving. The stalking of the elk is exciting as a non-hunter like me all but hopes that the elk will escape. The ending is surprising and the end is touching.

Titan is the story of her last hunt as the young girl in the prior story has grown to middle age. She is stricken with cancer and undergoing treatment while she lives alone in her isolated cabin in the valley. Her only neighbor is a large family which appears to be part of a religious cult. In her loneliness, the woman begins making small boats and putting small notes in them. She throws the boat in a stream behind her cabin and they flow down to the cabin downstream. Two children from the family visit her, and the resulting relationship is heartbreaking as the woman mourns her decision to remain alone and have no children. The end of this story is devastating.

While the first stories in the book are republications from magazines, the final seven stories have not been published before. These stories are also very good. They settings of these stories include his beloved valley as well as California, the Texas coast, Chile, and Peru. The most memorable character is an alcoholic father seeking redemption by taking his late teen daughters on a vacation.

Short stories are not my favorite kind of fiction. I hate getting involved with characters and settings only to have them suddenly disappear! These are excellent short stories, however. I hope someday to read something longer by Mr. Bass!

[Sadiepu1]

Long considered one of the most gifted practitioners of the short story, Rick Bass is unsurpassed in his ability to perceive and portray the enduring truths of the human heart. Now, at last, we have the definitive collection of stories, new and old, from the writer Newsweek has called "an American classic." To read his fiction is to feel more alive -- connected, incandescently, to "the brief longshot of having been chosen for the human experience," as one of his characters puts it.

These pages reveal men and women living with passion and tenderness at the outer limits of the senses, each attempting to triumph against fate. Bass provides searing insights into the complexity of family and romantic entanglements, and his lush and striking language draws us ineluctably into the lives of these engaging people and their vivid surroundings. The intricate stories collected in For A Little While -- brimming with magic and wonder, filled with hard-won empathy, marbled throughout with astonishing imagery -- have the power both to devastate and to uplift. Together they showcase an iconic American master at his peak.

[Pearse Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure gold. Rick Bass's prose is like clear liquid. I am humbled, brought down to earth, and set into awe by the same revolutions of the earth, her geology, and the Yaak Valley people's pursuit of small thing in life: TV dinners, firewood, seeing a bear outside. One of the best story collections I have read this year, and one I know I'll return to as I need to be reinvigorated to write and write well. Bass covers natural cycles and traditions I might never see due to the climate crisis, but their love and comforts are felt across these pages.

Two final notes: Bass's stories rarely have traditional conflicts, and instead deal with characters going about their day in the natural world, the exception to this being hunt or survival stories. Also almost every old person in this collection had severe memory issues and was suffering from some form of dementia.

The audiobook version of this book was heavenly, really well mixed with interlude stories accompanied by soft ambient music and swales that I just adored.