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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.
"Starred Review. A benchmark collection of stories by one of the most capable practitioners of the form at work today ... Essential reading for students of the modern American short story and some of the best work of a writer who is at the top of his game." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. A collection of enrapturing radiance and depth, a beacon and a hearth." - Booklist
"Rick Bass has been one of our finest short-fiction writers for decades. For A Little While will cause a wide public to take note. His name will be on notices alongside Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor." - William Kittredge
"Never facile, Bass is able to make us see and feel in unexpected ways and his stories call out to readers to stop and consider, to explore their feelings about what has risen up from the pages." - Annie Proulx
"In the natural world, and even in the supernatural, the intersection of beauty and loss remains a hallmark of his exquisite fiction, and is on full display in For A Little While." - Amy Hempel
"In the powerful lyricism of his exquisitely wrought prose, Rick Bass conveys not only the ordinary thoughts and impulses of his characters but also those moments of pure sensation - convincing in every physical, mental, and emotional detail - when the intensity of life exists at a pitch almost beyond language." - Joyce Carol Oates
This information about For A Little While was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Nicole Blaisdell
Rick Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1958. His father was a geologist
who passed on his passion to his son. Bass received a B.S. in petroleum
geology at Utah State University in 1979, and then worked as a gas and oil
geologist in Jackson, Mississippi. He started writing short stories during
his lunch breaks.
In 1987 he and his wife, the artist Elizabeth Hughes, moved to the Yaak Valley
in the northern Rockies, near the Idaho-Montana-Canada border. They have
two daughters and a couple of hunting dogs. Bass is active in working to
protect the Yaak area from roads and logging, and serves on the board of the
Yaak Valley Forest Council and Round River Conservation Studies.
He is the author of over twenty books. His first short story collection...
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He who opens a door, closes a prison
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