The Watch

by Rick Bass

In this extraordinary fiction debut, Rick Bass establishes himself in the first rank of American writers. Rooted in the creative traditions of the South, his stories introduce us to men who belong— in spirit if not always in fact— to the American outback, to the deserts of Utah, the swamps of Mississippi, the remote ranges of the Rockies. Strong and inventive, funny and lyrical, these luminous tales stir the heart with wonder as they resonate with hard-won truths. With a title story that is “an American classic” (Newsweek), The Watch is a landmark in contemporary short fiction.

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

194 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

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 5 out of 5]

‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how deep’.

Rick Bass is like Seamus Heaney’s spade, digging, inching toward the heart of the matter, his pen ‘snug as a gun’. His characters study the depth, vastness and immensity of their longing, with borders and limitations that are difficult to remember in the haze of desire.

The stories are told with gorgeous simplicity and I just loved how the narrative darted around the place, like electrons misfiring in the brain. I could probably count on one hand how many times Rick Bass actually gave it all up to the reader - that secret, delicate wisdom he had me orbiting or ducking. I seemed to always be asking, is this going to hurt?

‘Mexico’, ‘Choteau’, ‘Juggernaut’ and ‘In Ruth’s Country’ were pretty darn perfect as short stories go, but all are so important.

To share a few of my favourite bits:

‘You go out into the desert (said the professor) and in your dig, you try to find a fossil tree, the trunk of a big stout one, the equivalent, I suppose, of our live oaks today - a good jumping tree - and then from that, in your diggings, you radiate, work outward, and you start finding these little half-bird things, as many as you could ever care to collect. Half something, half another thing’.

from Mexico


The dogs had been smelling Buzbee and his camp all night, and were nearly crazed: their chests strained and swelled like barrels of apples, like hearts of anger and they jumped and twisted and tugged against their leashes, pulling Hollingsworth and Jesse behind them in a stumbling run through the wet grasses. Froth came from their muzzles, their rubbery lips. Their eyes were wild. They were too hard to hold. They pulled free of their leashes, and raced, silently, like the fastest thing in the world, accelerating across the field and into the woods, straight for the camp, the straightest thing that ever was.

from The Watch


Rating: 5 of the fullest, galena blue stars there ever was.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes I think there’s only one kind of guy I could trip and fall flat on my face for, and he has this book asleep by his bed, folded in his back pocket, faded and dog-eared in the passenger seat.

First reviewed March 2010

- - -

May 2012:

There’s nothing like the smile on my face when I flip page 47 from “Choteau” to “The Watch” and there’s that first line: “When Hollingsworth’s father, Buzbee, was seventy-seven years old, he was worth a thousand dollars, that summer and fall.”

So yes, I read this front to back in an afternoon, like I tend to do during summer. It’s difficult, sometimes, to go back to the world where nobody thinks the way this book does.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Watch

This was the first book of short stories from Rick Bass published way back in 1989. There are 10 stories here and some have since been published in other compilations.

I am admittedly a huge fan of Bass’s style of hyper realism with odd bits of magic sprinkled in. I found six of these stories to be of 5 star quality or nearly so. There are some mild spoilers here. My favorites were:

1. Mexico - a 1st person narrative that features a young recurring friend Kirby and their collective experience after becoming somewhat wealthy in the Texas oil boom of the ‘80s. Just rich enough, for example, for Kirby to buy a house with a big swimming pond that Kirby then drives a car into and uses the wreckage to cultivate bass and an especially enormous one. He threatened to shoot anyone who tried to fish in his bass pond. Kirby also has a beautiful fiancée that the narrator is also gaga over. After returning from one of their many trips over the border in Mexico they find the neighbor kids have caught the big fish and Kirby go nuts. Coming of age story of sorts. Probably my favorite story along with In Ruth’s Country.

2. Choteau- set in the Yaak valley in Montana, the narrator meets an elderly fellow Jim who he hunts with and gets into trouble with. Jim leaves a legacy when he steals a cement mixer to give the small town a present. There is a funny scene where Jim rides a moose which captures the Bass magical realism style to perfection. Probably the most poignant story.

3. The Watch - the title story and the most fantastical of the bunch. An elderly man Buzbee escapes his son and goes to live in the nearby yellow fever swamp with several women who are abused by their husbands and look favorably on Buzbee as he is funny and kills all the reptiles that are menacing the encampment. There is also a subplot with the son befriending a man on a bicycle and they half heartedly search for Buzbee. A story of loneliness and isolation. Quite well known.

4. The Juggernaut - another story with Kirby. In this story the boys are in high school and coming of age. They find out the most beautiful girl in the school is dating their teacher. They don’t quite know what to do about it.

5. In Ruth’s Country - I’ve read this story before and it remains one of my favorites. For a summer job, a non-Mormon teenage boy is responsible for watching over some livestock over a vast area with backroads and trails. He meets a Mormon girl and they fool around and he falls in love when she becomes pregnant. But will she and her family accept him?

6. Redfish- another three’s a crowd story where both of the boys like the girl in their group.

5 stars easy. Perhaps the type of stories you might get if a modern day John Cheever grew up in the west.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without question, this is my favorite group of short stories thus far. Bass' ability to suck you in these somewhat far fetched, crazed tales that somehow you know have some root of truth to his own life experiences is second to none. Unlike similarly crafted tales (Barry Hannah's Airships comes to mind) the word usage and perspectives are simplistic enough that there's no need to strain for meaning and fluid thought......it doesn't hurt your brain to figure it all out. Yet, he can put statements and visual thoughts together and leave you thinking "how did he do that?" but also "I know EXACTLY what he's describing". I would detail more to suck you in if it wouldn't ruin the pleasure you might have when discovering each story as you go. Not a weak one in the bunch in my opinion. I can't recommend this strongly enough if you enjoy quick witted, hearty, purposeful but entertaining tales. How anyone could rate this below a 4 is a mystery to me.

[Kirk Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book of short stories celebrating life. I have handed out far too many fives lately, but my recent reading list has warranted it. I have to compare this to so many other story collections that are jaded and cynical, yet outstanding in their way. This book never avoids or abandons the harshness of reality, but skips around it and focuses on the better elements, the love, the small joys, the stolen freedoms. The Watch helps us realize that despite life's pitfalls there is still great joy to be found in the experience.

[Michael Whitaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I am new to short story collections. I've read a ton of short stories and I've written a few, but I have never sat down to read an entire collection of stories by one author, one story after the other. So this is new for me.

All in all, I greatly enjoyed "The Watch" by Rick Bass. His prose is electric in that sometimes it runs smoothly and beautifully and in the same page will skip synapses with great energy. I think, through the first few stories, I had a hard time catching up. Like I mentioned before, I felt like something grand was happening before me but I was missing it: eyes glued to the trees, soul missed the forest.

Midway through, the collection gained traction. I could not stop reading the title story (and I will be reading it again). And then, "Juggernaut," "In Ruth's Country," "Wild Horses." I was sucked into each of these worlds and fell in love with every character. Each story seemed completely real and wonderful and honest and heartbreaking.

What I did love, without a doubt, was Bass's ability to form fully realized characters. You never forget that each character is a real person, even the fringe characters, so full of wants and needs and confusion. That's what I loved most. When you read these stories, you remember, this whole world is feeling the pangs of life. (For instance, I am not an animal person, really, but the mule...the story of the mule in "Wild Horses" is enough to break my heart. I cannot stop thinking about this damn mule.)

Very good collection in my amatuer opinion. What's nice is the ease of re-reading. I know I'll go back to read the four stories I mentioned.

My favorites:

"Wild Horses"
"In Ruth's Country"
"Juggernaut"
"The Watch"
"Redfish"

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm pretty rusty on writing lengthy reviews. This book was so damn good that my review will never do justice. There are few books that come along that I want to savor rather than plow through, but I took my time with this one. I read only a few short stories at a time, so that they wouldn't blur together but would still impress me with the way they intertwined and kept bringing me to a familiar feeling. I sort of spent the whole time with my heart breaking. I kept wanting the men in my life to be like the men in these stories, with all their longing and flaws. I then realized that they probably were.

My favorites were The Watch, Juggernaut, Wild Horses, and In Ruth's Country.

Sidenote: I thought In Ruth's Country would be impossible for me to enjoy as the copy of the book I purchased had markings on that story (and that story only, THANK GOD) that were so elementary and seemed so far off the mark - such a stretch to tie things together - that it really distracted me. Thankfully, it only took six pages for me to overlook this and really appreciate this one.

Back to my favorites, they are my favorites in how memorable the stories are as a whole. Yet, I also keep finding myself thinking about snippets of Mississippi, which I believe is the shortest of them all at a little less than 8 pages.

This is the writing that I crave. I know it is something special when I want to read every single word. This is one that will never leave my shelf because I'll be reading it again (and again) when I need something to stir me up and make me really feel something and transport me to a place that is all too real, rather than the fantasy world of so many other books.

[Harry · Rating 5 out of 5]

very rangy, and so many of these stories I thought were just brilliant. some hilarious sentence to sentence writing, brilliant sense of voice. deep melancholy too for large stretches.

[Ryan Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

n the debut short story collection from Rick Bass, nature and life are inseparable as they show the lengths to which people will go to not lose themselves.

Set mostly in open woodland areas both literal and figurative, The Watch (W.W. Norton & Co., ISBN: 039331135X, 1989) finds Rick Bass creating landscapes, characters, and situations that are naturally flawed and dealing with it. These ten stories are certainly about the male perception of the outdoors, but they also deal with an overarching fear of growth, relationships, and being something small at the mouth of something big.

Nature and Character

Bass tends to create his stories around the dominance of beauty and honesty in nature, making the two concepts inseparable. He writes largely about the American Southwest, but his charm is strictly Southern: clarity, manners, and a harrowing sense of truth.

Proof is found in a story like “Mexico” or “Redfish.” Their slightly absurd characters – eccentric drinkers who refuse to grow up – find themselves in situations that aren’t cheap quirks to make a character stand out, but, rather, defining traits of a real person and his or her life.

“Juggernaut” and the Rick Bass Trick

A reader may realize, upon reaching the end of “Juggernaut,” that Rick Bass is a tricky guy. Like every other story in this collection, “Juggernaut” was written in a laid-back tone that managed to be both detailed and poetic without being too much of either. Also, like the other stories in this collection, “Juggernaut” felt like Bass was almost taking the reader for a ride, falling back on the prose and language, the charisma and not the story.

But when the end of “Juggernaut” is reached, there’s a realization that Bass was telling the story the whole time, even when he wasn’t. He poses the questions, “Aren’t we all like the Juggernauts, both a real juggernaut and a member of the hockey team in the story? Aren’t we all just scrambling, trying to crush everything, fighting for glory and against reality, trying to make the glory and the fight the reality?” The endings sneak up and attack, much like the wilderness these characters frequent.

The Right Details

The stories here aren’t barebones or minimalistic at all. What these stories manage to do is contain description that is both relevant and plentiful. This isn’t “A Clean, Well Lighted Place” or anything from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: short, bleak stories that contain just enough to destroy. Instead of being scant with just enough detail, Bass puts in a surplus of just the right detail.

Rick Bass gives the reader a grand long-form short story like “The Watch” and fills it full of descriptive, intertwined stories. A small thing like Jessie dumping out less and less of his Coke before drinking more and more mirror his obsession, but it also plays into Hollingsworth’s tiny shop representing his obsession with his father, his obsession with loneliness and emptiness. They converge to bring back Buzbee, Hollingsworth’s father, an old man who ran away for the sake of freedom, leaving Hollingsworth alone and worthless. Despite the fact that everyone in the story is crippling obsessed, the reader i not left to determine that by what isn’t said.

A Look Around

The other stories in here range from the heartbreaking “In Ruth’s Country” and “Wild Horses” to the uplifting “Redfish.” Most of the time, however, Bass prefers to wander around in different stages of questioning, ending his stories with characters saying “What next?” not unlike the stories in Raymond Carver’s Cathedral.

The main difference, and one of Bass’s greatest strengths, is that he doesn’t imply or even hint at an upward hook of hope at the end of his stories. Rather, the characters in The Watch are left wondering and underlining the questions with a smile on their face for some reason they might not even know.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that started my infatuation with Bass's work. Lyrical, highly imaginative, totally absorbing.

[Ned · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rick Bass has hooked another, I loved it. It is modern in its jumpy imperfect thought lines and use of ordinary broken words, like real life, unafraid to be orginal. Perhaps it is because I was 29 when it was published and the stories of recklessness, kookiness and the particular American pathos of the people about my age at the time resonated. On the surface the narrator is a passive observer of the exploits of his friends, but its true male personality is fully revealed in his views, concerns and private afflictions. There is no artifice here, no experimental MFA-style cleverness, just pure storytelling of the way it is in our infected American culture. Bass’ stories harkened to the craziness and tragic machismo of the young Jim Harrison and the zaniness (with less exaggeration) of TC Boyle. The unflinching and poignancy of Raymond Carver is also evinced, with his clean pure words and lines. The title story is “enhanced” in its experimentation, but the character development moves originally and unpredictably in a most creative and interesting way- these move beyond the author’s perspective. Probably most autobiographical, and my favorite, is “Cats and Students, Bubbles and Abysses” where one possible and another failed professor of literature are trying to manage a brilliant young student's burgeoning career, fearing his proclivities and watching in horror as he approaches the precipice that will surely either lead him over the edge or from which he will take flight. This is writing about writing at its finest. I could relate to all the characters and their senseless muses. I wish I had some talent for putting it out there like Bass, to get my own faded memoir assembled some day. This type of book gives me ideas and hope. I’m ordering more of the Bassmaster today.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The depth and array of emotions and feeling to Bass's stories is fantastic - and while I'm not generally a fan of short stories, this is really excellent. I'm a fan.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories are beautiful and disturbing, and despite this being Bass' first published collection, the writing is surprisingly poignant. His succinct use of common speech is refreshing, revealing the stories in a more natural way--one steeped in oral tradition. Even his more experimental forms ("Cats and Students, Bubbles and Abysses" for example) seem like they are driven by voice. In a way, Bass achieves a sort of mastery of dialogue where speakers and their particular dialects are translated as well as the meaningful silences, the situations where our words sometime fail us.

On a side note, Mr. Bass' story from the 2008 Pushcart Prize ("Goats") is considerably different in style--more lyrically or descriptively rich, the sentences also far more structurally complex--but remains particularly strong in dialogue. He is well on his way to becoming one of my favorite short story authors of all time.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a set of short stories that people seem to love without any reservation. The stories are beautifully written, almost fairy tale like in their oddness in particular the second story. All of them focus on people with an intensity in them that seems as odd as their relationship with nature.

As I started reading the book I struggled to yield to the book jaded city dweller that I am, well if you can call Zurich a city, in my family nature is referred to as greenery. There seemed to be a strong whiff of preciousness to the writing that I struggled to overcome but finally in one of the last stories, a grandfather thinking about how to preserve his grandchildrens joy it all finally started to work at the base emotional level I think the author intended.

A good maybe even great read.

[Rayroy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five mother-fucking stars Rick Bass can write circles around most in Raymond Carver's league!

[Bookish]

It’s fun to go back to books you loved a long time ago and see how they hold up. It’s been years since I fell in love with Rick Bass’ first story collection, The Watch. The book captures mostly male characters living in the Deep South, Texas, and Rocky Mountain West (all places Bass knew intimately) in states of transition, whether these men want to transition or not, and their tales are told with humor, unbridled imagination, and quiet insight. Bass has a gift for making outlandish situations seem believable; he gives a tall-tale or mythic twist to some of these stories. There’s always been a passionate attachment to nature and landscape in his work, and I was introduced to it here. I can’t wait to get to the late story “Redfish,” which blazed in my mind for months after reading it. Two men taking a break from humdrum Houston lives drag a couch onto a Galveston beach at winter midnight, make a bonfire, get drunk on Cuba libres, and fish. They also get their BMW stuck in sand. At one point they grow maudlin, thinking about their lives. And then it begins to snow. —Phil (https://www.bookish.com/articles/frid...)

[Brian Brothers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb writing about desperate dreamers on the fringes of society

[Johnnie]

amazing short stories. highlights include "Mexico", "Choteau", "The Watch", "Juggernaut", "In Ruth's Country", "Wild Horses", and "Redfish". hell all of them were great.

[Charles Boogaard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book simply about people that change does not happen for them. Some do not want change others are forced not to have it. Yet some do not know anything different so continue on with the life they alway known no matter the consequences. We all know people that do not let life change them. I remember people from college who continued that life style way to long a disappeared from my radar.

From the book "most of us get to the bubble finally, just ignore it, and quit bouncing against it, cease to hurl ourselves recklessly against the thing, and settle for moving cautiously within its limits as best we can."

Love Bass's stories and their deeper levels. Wish I had other to discuss it with after each story.

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the stories were pretty good. Some were profoundly beautiful. His style and subject matter are deeply American; I'm not one for patriotism, but it's a very beautiful thing, his America. Full of feeling, full of life, yet somehow startlingly desolate.

"Negative space" is something visual and audio artists use to their advantage quite frequently; his writing style, I feel, is the literary complement to that. The way he chooses the details to include and the details to leave out...it's done with such subtle precision. I don't think I've ever read another author with a comparable writing style. I love it.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exquisitely simple exploration of relationships focusing more upon people in gritty proximity to each other than upon their relationships to their landscape, which becomes Bass' predominant theme in later works. All of the stories seem effortlessly told but this collection contains what is now my favorite of all his stories I've read thus far, the title story "The Watch." If you've also read his later book, "The Sky, the Stars, and the Wilderness," you may find yourself seeing in its first story, "The Myth of Bears," the exact same themes of freedom, pursuit, and escape found here in "The Watch."

Tragic and funny and all true. Truly beautiful writing.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rick Bass is everything that lesser writers of short fiction wish they could be. Wildly imaginative and with phenomenal command of the language to bring it to life, Rick Bass is almost intoxicating to read. There is great beauty in these stories.

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some amazing stories in here, not a bad one at all in the collection. "Mississippi", "Choteau", "Cats and Students, Bubbles and Abysses" and "The Government Bears" are my favorites. The more serious-toned ones are good, too, and serve well to balance out the exuberance.

[Danica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why does every book I pick up these days bore me to tears?

[Jennifer Fitzpatrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of lonely stories of friendship and freedom.

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

The single sentence biography of the author on the back cover tells all: Rick Bass was born in Texas, was educated in Utah as a petroleum geologist, and now lives in Montana’s Yaak Valley. These stories take place in Texas, Utah and Montana’s Yaak valley, with detours through Mexico, Mississippi and Canada, and in them Bass writes out the contours of his selves, past, present and future, playing no one man but the entire patrilineage - grandfather down to grandson and back up again, though none are more important to him than his brothers by friendship, as they are those formative relations made not by blood but by choice, relations limited by circumstance but which bear an agency he is keen to illuminate. Take this passage in “The Government Bears”, after the narrator reflects on the deleterious influence of his neighbours and turns his hope towards his grandchildren:

They won’t tolerate anything different. That, more than anything, drives me to encourage the boys. Fit in where you don’t: make your own space. I want them to be different. So that they don’t give in.
Exist somewhere you’re not supposed to, or where you don’t want to. Be your own men; do what you want, and don’t hurt anybody. What a real and utter victory that would be, the only and best victory.

I see this as a rare statement of philosophy among these oblique tales of lovers and hooligans, broken men and proud men and men in between, brought to life with the author’s superb capture of the world they inhabit - nature in these pages is rendered beautifully sensuous and present. His “don’t hurt anybody” seems lighter on exploration here, but by the end we can tell he’s trying to figure it out; this is a marvellous debut, and makes me excited to see Bass’ later development of the quietly burning passion of The Watch.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very excited to receive this book as a gift, as I've read a couple of Bass's later books (The Lost Grizzlies and The Sky The Stars The Wilderness) that I enjoyed tremendously. But this one, his earliest collection, didn't really grab me. A few stories were interesting, a couple quite good, and several that I simply couldn't interpret. As with any book I read by a highly-regarded writer, especially one I usually like, I always wonder if I'm just too naive to understand it. Whatever the cause, I found many stories somewhat wacky for no particular reason. Sadly, I got the impression that Bass was experimenting with his writing to see what came out. Crazy characters and plotlines that went all over the place without, ultimately, going anywhere. After finishing the book, I went back to look at the first couple stories and almost didn't remember anything that had happened. To me, that's a significant "minus." Again, perhaps it's me, but I don't think so. I think Rick Bass developed his skills greatly as his books progressed. Next time, I'll stick to his more recent fiction and hope for more of the writing I'd come to expect.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.75 stars.
"We were driving up the part of Hellroaring Road…" (45). *What a name!
"...he said clearly, enunciating quietly and with his teeth--it was like the words were an ice cream cone, and he was eating it slowly, on a hot day…" (114).
"The twins are six, and mean, and stubblesouled" (170).
"They ride them like electrons, clinging to them; they curse, they give it full throttle" (175).
"Things that are different must be strong. Things that are different will be told, and tried to be made, to yield" (176).
"There's a lady three miles down the road who handles snakes in her church services and I swear that takes less courage than to just duck your head and keep on doing what you are doing, the regular" (179).

[Celia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Short stories with interesting little venues. Most of the main characters seem similar to me, even though they're in different places and situations. Each story is just a snip it of someone's ordinary life. The stories don't really have definitive endings. They're meant to make you think. It felt like most of them were depressing or hopeless. The writing isn't bad, it's just not my cup of tea. I'd give it 2.5 stars if that was an option.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rick Bass' first book, of short stories. Inventive yet reflective of a young life at the break of a literary career. It would be hard to find a better first collection of short stories from a writer. It's as if he surveys his future in this book, then in the work that follows fills it all out with much more mature work.