The Watch by Rick Bass
I recently read a story by Rick Bass in the 2008 Pushcart Prize anthology, my favorite book almost every year. I’d definitely heard of Bass–he’s in the pantheon of America’s short story writers–but till then I had never read him. It was a story about boys in Texas trying to turn a buck buying cattle, and I almost wept with laughter. I resolved to check this guy out, and though this story was from his new collection, The Lives of Rocks, anal retent that I am I had to start with his first book, The Watch, published in 1989. I was not disappointed.
Though Bass’s stories are often humorous, he is not a humor writer ala David Sedaris. The humour in his stories is a natural outgrowth of the voices of his characters, or their sideways perception of the events around them. (This as opposed to Sedaris, who I always feel is lying to me.) Bass is from Texas, so many of his stories are set here, but he feels more Southern than many Texas writers–more like Barry Hannah, perhaps. His characters are often just hanging on, trying to survive from day to day and to make sense out of the messes around them, but they are rarely desperate. Rather, they accept the world that is theirs in a factual manner, and the distance between that factual manner and the often absurd situation is what generates a good deal of the humor.
Witness the first paragraph of the first story in the collection, “Mexico”:
“Kirby’s faithful. He’s loyal: Kirby has fidelity. He has one wife, Tricia. The bass’s name is Shack. The fish is not in an acquarium. It’s in the swimming pool that Kirby built, out in his and Tricia’s front yard.”
This almost reads as notes for a story, but instead it sets the tempo and tone in a way that completely hooked me, and told me that the world I was entering was skewed, but that this was just to be accepted as part of the situation.
Bass’ grasp of voice is just masterful. Check the start my favorite story in the collection, “Cats and Students, Bubbles and Abysses:”
“I got a roommate, he’s tally and skiny, when we get into arguments he says “I went to Millsaps,” uses the word like what he thinks a battering ram sounds like. He’s a real jerk. I could break both his arms just like that! if I wanted to, I’ve got a degree in English Literature from Jackson State. I was the only white on campus, I can’t use “I went to Jackson State” like a battering ram, but I can break both his arms.”
Great stuff. Reminds me a bit of Barthelme the Great and the late, sad David Foster Wallace.
Check this guy out. It looks like he’s been pretty consistent over the years. I’ll read everything the dude has written.