{"id":36134,"date":"2003-10-24T12:46:00","date_gmt":"2003-10-24T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=36134"},"modified":"2025-02-18T10:53:33","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T18:53:33","slug":"issue-53-a-conversation-with-rick-bass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/issue-53-a-conversation-with-rick-bass\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 53: A Conversation with Rick Bass"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Willow<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found in\u00a0Willow Springs 53<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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October 24, 2003<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Brian O’Grady and Rob Sumner<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A CONVERSATION WITH RICK BASS<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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\"Rick<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photo Credit:\u00a0The Elliot Bay Book Company<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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RICK BASS IS THE AUTHOR OF EIGHTEEN BOOKS<\/strong> of \ufb01ction and non\ufb01ction, including the novel Where The Sea Used To Be, and editor of the anthology The Roadless Yaak. Bass lives with his family in northwest Montana\u2019s million-acre Yaak Valley, where there is still not a single acre of designated wilderness. In October 2003, Rick Bass talked with Brian O\u2019Grady and Rob Sumner at the home of the writer John Keeble, a ranch located southwest of Spokane, Washington. During the conversation they sat on the rear porch, still under construction, and enjoyed a meal of freshly slaughtered pork as the sun settled into the horizon beyond the hills of pine. We are eating bowls of chili.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BRIAN O\u2019GRADY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before you started writing, what e\ufb00ect did a compelling story have on you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before I started writing, I read a lot, as a child, but certainly not as much as my children read, it\u2019s just what I thought of as a lot. And I\u2019ve met other people along the way who really do read a lot, what I\u2019ve thought was a lot was more just a hobby. I\u2019m in awe and some envy of truly serious readers. That\u2019s a long answer to say I probably didn\u2019t read as much as I thought I did. I loved it and I read everything I could but there\u2019s people who don\u2019t go to sleep because they love reading, I mean they read twenty-four hours a day. In retrospect I realize I\u2019m not one of those kind of people and certainly now that I\u2019ve become a writer I don\u2019t have the luxury or indulgence of becoming that kind of person when paradoxically I most need to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A single story can have a huge in\ufb02uence on a writer, or a reader, or any person, and for me that story was Legends of the Fall, the novella by Jim Harrison that really made me want to write \ufb01ction. I loved to read \ufb01ction, I loved to read non\ufb01ction before that point, but reading that story made me want to try and write it. I don\u2019t why. I mean I know why I like that story, why I love that story, but I just remember having that impression of how big\u2014the clich\u00e9 about that story is epic, which is an overused word, but I just remember how big the emotions and content, scale, voice, everything about that story was larger and fuller than what I had read previously. And not to take away anything from Legends of the Fall, I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s the only book that way. It could have been other stories in the world but I had not to that point read them. I believe there\u2019s a story like that for every reader. I think eventually, sooner or later, you encounter them. If they make you want to be a writer or not, who knows? There are too many variables there, but for me it did make me want to be a \ufb01ction writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019GRADY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you aim for that range of emotion?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No. I wish it were that simple, that I could have a guidepost, or model, or scale against which to measure each work, if that\u2019s what you\u2019re asking, but I don\u2019t aim for anything other than just to do the best I can. And that almost sounds defensive, but it\u2019s liberating is what it is. And conversely or paradoxically it\u2019s not so liberating, because that\u2019s pretty tough to ask of yourself to do the best you can every time. I mean you can only do the best you can one time, and then that\u2019s your best. The only thing I aim for is to do the best I can given any emotion, any range of emotions, any character, any range of characters, any setting. Whatever story or essay I \ufb01nd myself in I just try to do my best, which is usually task enough. That can be taken the wrong way when I say that\u2019s task enough. I don\u2019t mean that, \u201cOh I\u2019m so wonderful that it\u2019s hard to match my best,\u201d I mean it\u2019s so easy to be lazy, I think it\u2019s hard enough for everybody to do their best every time they go out(,) or even try to have the courage to attempt their best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan Johnson comes out with a plate of ham, baked beans, and salad for each of us. His three-year-old daughter, Anya, and John Keeble\u2019s dog, Ricky, come out with him.
Jonathan: I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to have room for all of them here.
Rick: This is incredible. This is so good.
Jonathan: I\u2019m sorry the silverware has to be inside the toilet paper.
Anya stays outside with us for several minutes while her dad brings out the rest of the food. Rick gives Ricky some pets.
Brian: You were right about getting out here.
Rick: Good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019GRADY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you still get the same impact that you did before your writing, when you read \ufb01ction today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More so. Much more so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick smiles.
Rick: That dog.
Jonathan: I\u2019ll bring Ricky inside. Come on, Ricky. Come on!
Ricky falls to the deck. He wiggles about on his back and wags his tail.
Rick begins to talk but starts laughing at Ricky.
Rick: I have not fed that dog. Laughter.
Rick: Oh my gosh, you are a trickster. That\u2019s great. No, I said, come on, not lie down and roll over. You misheard me. Roll over so I can scratch your belly and feed you. Give you pork.
Laughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A great story a\ufb00ects me more now than it ever has. I rely upon reading as tonic more than I ever have. I think that\u2019s probably just a function of age as much as profession. You\u2019ve seen, approaching or in the shadows of middle age, and you still haven\u2019t seen everything but I\u2019ve seen a lot more than I had seen when I started out being a writer, which is to say when I started out making notes about what the world looks like. That\u2019s a bad place to come to as a person. So I really rely on \ufb01ction and non\ufb01ction, creative non\ufb01ction, and poetry to pull me out of that, the natural tendency we have as individuals to go into that telescopic place of diminished perception, observation, newness, wonder, all those signi\ufb01cant artistic notions. A good story means more to me now than it ever did as a young person. Also, having wrestled with writing for almost twenty years I have a greater appreciation now for when it\u2019s done well than I did. And that\u2019s not to say I took it for granted when<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was younger, I still loved reading great things but my palate was not as developed then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick eats between questions.
Rob: I\u2019ll let you chew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ROB SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve noted the importance of not overly controlling your writing. When you\u2019re developing a story how do you refrain from interfering too much?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would say something like that and it\u2019s true, but you grow and prob- ably contract too, but you grow as a writer, hopefully, and go through phases and spells, play to your strengths and then work on your weaknesses. For me, personally, that has probably at one time been a strength, to not control a story or just go with the intuitive and subconscious and trust those instincts and focus on feeling them as powerfully as possible. It\u2019s hard to argue against that approach, that can be kind of a tiring way to go through stories, one after another, but it can also be deeply and strongly felt. As I get older, for lack of a more precise term, the intellectual side of writing does interest me more, if only that I\u2019m slowly learning my way into it. It becomes like a game to try and control a story now and tinker with it, make it go this way and go that way. That\u2019s still a dangerous impulse, and the best stories for me as a reader or a writer, and the truest stories, are the ones in which I don\u2019t control them, but am tapped into the emotion more than the intellect. That said, I\u2019m becoming comfortable enough with, I guess, theory, for lack of a better word, to be aware of it as I work. Structure, or any of those conscious things, as opposed to the in\ufb01nitely more powerful subconscious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve stated that emotional truth informs the structures of your stories. Is emotion always central for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. To answer your second question, or to answer the question, yes, I mean if you\u2014yes, there\u2019s just no other answer but yes. But I\u2019m not sure I understood the \ufb01rst thing you asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well you\u2019ve talked\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or mentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014about how emotional truth, that the emotion of the story that you\u2019re writing develops the structure, kind of tells you where to go with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can and usually does, and in the past it has for me, but what I\u2019m interested in now, and maybe it\u2019s almost out of boredom or something, but I don\u2019t think that necessarily has to be true. You can have an emotional truth underlying a structural instability or a structural falsity, and a story could in theory be all the more powerful for that. It could enhance that emotional truth, but on the other hand to have a structurally sound and logical creation that has a false emotion, arti\ufb01cial emotion beneath a structure that might \ufb01t an emotion you\u2019re trying to get, that wouldn\u2019t work. So the answer to your question, yes yes yes, but again the obverse is not necessarily true. As long as the emotional truth is being felt by the narrator or the author you can have a good structure or a bad structure and you\u2019re still going to have a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019GRADY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just before we sat down we were talking about your essay in Why I Write, \u201cWhy the Daily Writing of Fiction Matters.\u201d In it you stress the importance of engagement with the world as well as with the world of the imagination in \ufb01ction. Is that balance between engagement and imagination an evolving process for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to say no, I want to say that it\u2019s pretty much a \ufb01xed variable, a \ufb01xed rate, a constant, that I need a certain amount of x to yield a certain amount of y, and that\u2019s what I believe. I don\u2019t ever write about that. You would think\u2014I would feel like that can\u2019t be possibly true, because people change, everything changes in the course of its existence, but it seems constant to me. When I get enough physical activity, that yields intellectual and emotional growth for me or even an expansion of feeling. And when I\u2019m not in the physical world the other aspects of me tend to shut down too. It\u2019s just that simple. That\u2019s all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019GRADY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along those lines, something else that you mentioned in that same essay, have you been able to follow the advice you give, to be able to write every day and also to be in constant contact with the physical world in light of the other activities that you do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a trick question. Let me \ufb01gure out how to get there. For the bene\ufb01t of our reader, can you clarify that device of which you speak, of which we speak?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019GRADY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the essay you say speci\ufb01cally that you spend your mornings writing and then your afternoons walking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, because sometimes I tell stu\u2014I thought you were talking about another advice, a device, so, good, you\u2019re not, because I don\u2019t follow that one, that other one. But I don\u2019t follow this one either anymore. [With] the activism and family desires and obligations, I just make a choice every day. I\u2019ve got to do what I want to do after writing and some days I don\u2019t even write because of the other obligations of activism and so on. So no, I don\u2019t, and that\u2019s a real handicap. But everybody has handicaps. Some people have to work for a living. [laughter]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve warned of our culture\u2019s increasing corporatization and homogenization and how writing is a way to rage against the resulting constriction and entrapment. How does writing challenge sameness?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does writing challenge what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sameness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well within writing, back to that notion I talked about [earlier], about literature being about loss or the recognition of loss, you\u2019re also remaking the world. Either you\u2019re celebrating the world the way it is, knowing that it\u2019s not going to last that way, or you\u2019re already actively re-creating an alternative world, an alternative logic, an alternative justice, alternative boundaries in the world. You\u2019re putting on paper and presenting to the \u2018true world\u2019 or the \u2018real world,\u2019 the existing world or the present world. And that very act challenges sameness. You know, you\u2019re putting your money where your mouth is, you\u2019re investing the time of your life to put down this model, this blueprint, this plan of another world with other values, and giving craft time and attention to that work, just as surely\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick is interrupted by Jonathan Johnson, who comes outside with three beers.
Rick: Oh, I can\u2019t, I wish I could!
Jonathan: You\u2019ve been bested, eh? [laughter]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing doesn\u2019t necessarily have to challenge sameness, I mean you could be a press \ufb02ack for the Bush administration and just be \ufb01ghting furiously to hold on to the status quo and pull the wool over voters\u2019 eyes and say all is well in Bethlehem. So writing doesn\u2019t necessarily have to challenge sameness, but, on the converse, it certainly can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve quoted before William Kittredge: \u201cAs we destroy what is natural we eat ourselves alive.\u201d That\u2019s quite di\ufb00erent than what Bush\u2019s press agents are writing. Your own writing seems to tend to something quite di\ufb00erent than a Bush press agent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean \ufb01ction, good \ufb01ction, has that quality of naturalness to it, in that it\u2019s being its own thing, and you don\u2019t even know what that thing is, you just know you have an emotion, you don\u2019t know what story is going to come out of an emotion, you\u2019re not trying to advance an agenda, you\u2019re just trying to get an emotion out of the vessel of your body into the world, and that\u2019s the only agenda at play in good \ufb01ction. That\u2019s a pretty natural process, it\u2019s an expulsion, and a procreation or a creation or perhaps a re-creation of an emotion in you, but it\u2019s creative. So that is natural, it\u2019s not a destructive or even really manipulative impulse, or exploitive. It\u2019s pretty natural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Non\ufb01ction, on the other hand, can be a real challenge. You can have other less primary, less elemental goals or desires in the writing of non\ufb01ction. You can have direct values that, by the nature of the medium, come into play. It doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s less natural, and for that matter to say that to manipulate or exploit is unnatural is like a dog chasing its tail. That\u2019s natural too but I don\u2019t think of it as being as primary or elemental\u2014that\u2019s the raw emotion with the human \ufb01lter. What I like to think of as really good \ufb01ction I think of as being more primal than that, not even having the human \ufb01lter but just being the thing itself: the physical essence of joy or sorrow rather than the narrator or writer \ufb01ltering that emotion into creative non\ufb01ction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a book like Oil Notes you paint a picture without trying to change anyone\u2019s mind. In other non\ufb01ction books, like The Nine Mile Wolves, you\u2019re trying to a\ufb00ect change. And then there\u2019s your \ufb01ction, where you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a fair gradation. For me there\u2019s pure \ufb01ction, and then creative non\ufb01ction which just has kind of an edge of me or the human condition. And then there\u2019s the you-know-what-you-want-and-you\u2019re-going-after- it kind of non\ufb01ction which is more of the latter group, The Nine Mile Wolves or The Book of Yaak kind of book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So are these di\ufb00erent types of writing de\ufb01nitely separate for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s almost a question of level, how far into the subconscious I am. With \ufb01ction it\u2019s not even a temptation to bring in an agenda or even me. You\u2019re supposed to be in the characters and in the setting and that means you\u2019re not in you, that means you\u2019re certainly not in your politics. And in environmental advocacy work you\u2019re so into the issue your art doesn\u2019t get into it at all. I guess the creative non\ufb01ction part of that triumvirate is where it can get interesting, where you can bring in some pure \ufb01ction for a while and then also attempt to bring in some hard core advocacy. That can be interesting. But that\u2019s why it\u2019s the middle ground for me. With \ufb01ction I\u2019m not ever even tempted to get on a soapbox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019GRADY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You said before that writing and reading \ufb01ction can help writers and readers overcome natural and cultural boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suppose it can. I don\u2019t remember saying that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019GRADY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m paraphrasing of course. Do you think that as a country we look at \ufb01ction in that way, as a weapon against those tendencies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve never thought about it. Are you asking me how I think in this country we tend to look at \ufb01ction? This is going to be o\ufb00 the kettle, calling the stove black or however that saying goes, but I think in this country. There\u2019s a tendency among too many to look at \ufb01ction as making a statement of politics or even personal values. I understand what a joke for [it is] me to say something like that, because my environmental advocacy is so \ufb01ercely partisan. It depends on the reader but I see a lot of people read \ufb01ction and try to \ufb01lter it through a lens other than what I think the writer was intending, which was the human condition. A lot of readers will try to extrapolate from a piece of \ufb01ction into judgments and assumptions that don\u2019t hold up. But it\u2019s always been that way, and that\u2019s a weakness but it can also be a strength of \ufb01ction, the fact that it can be mutable, that it\u2019s a universal currency, that it can be a universal dialect in language. It should be, and yet the readings of so many books are slanted toward the times, the culture, this day and age. It\u2019s a good question but I can\u2019t answer it. Most readers are di\ufb00erent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we could talk about your new collection The Hermit\u2019s Story. Longing has played an important role in your \ufb01ction. Earlier work has often focused upon the rage of people as they try to get along in an uncooperative world. In the new collection we \ufb01nd characters such as Dave in \u201cThe Prisoners\u201d and Kirby in \u201cThe Fireman,\u201d divorced men who can see their daughters only rarely. Both Dave and Kirby have moved from rage towards a more deadened feeling. What interests you in their saddened, hardened emotional state?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t know. What you said previously, about them moving toward detachment, may be what touches me about characters in those situations, that they\u2019re moved toward survival and their acceptance of pain. Under one reading you could look at characters in those stories and say, \u201cWell, they\u2019re copping out, they\u2019re detaching rather than embracing their pain,\u201d but I don\u2019t read those, or I don\u2019t read \u201cThe Fireman\u201d that way. [In] \u201cThe Prisoners\u201d the characters have more of a subconscious detachment, they haven\u2019t yet realized that they\u2019re detaching to stay alive, but if you\u2019re trying to stay alive then you\u2019re trying to avoid foreclosing on the possibility of not being able to be sensate. So that is, if not heroic, it is still nonetheless, well it\u2019s maybe not even dying but it\u2019s not a full disengagement. You can detach in order to retain the ability to engage, and I mean that\u2019s what, it\u2019s just a diminution of ambitions, perhaps. Bittersweet would be the emotion there. And that\u2019s an interesting con\ufb02ict or interesting tension, interesting duality of emotions\u2026[trails o\ufb00]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan Johnson is approaching the table with three pies balanced on his arms.
Rick: Good god almighty!
Jonathan: One per each. Pumpkin cheesecake, turtle cheesecake, and pumpkin pie.
Brian: Umm, I\u2019ll have some of the pumpkin pie. Rob: I\u2019ll try that pumpkin cheesecake.
Rick: Ah\u2026My God, that\u2019s the hardest question. Johnson: He\u2019s been rendered inarticulate by dessert. Rick: Yes, yes, all of it.
Johnson: All of the above, eh? Rick: Just the tiniest sliver.
Johnson: Of which? Rick: Of yes, of each. Johnson: Okay. I gotcha.
Rick: I mean, but you can imagine\u2026pie.
Johnson: Pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, tiny sliver of each. Can somebody open the door?
Rick: Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rob: No more sun.
Rick: Yeah, never was much. Frosty. [eating] What are these little red things?
Brian: Those are pomegranate seeds.
Rick: Oh yeah?
Rob: Yeah, they were good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kind of tied into the longing, what we\u2019ve just been talking about, memory in your work seems to work as a type of longing. Ann in \u201cThe Hermit\u2019s Story\u201d holds a memory of her trip to Canada \u201cas tightly, and securely, as one might clench some bright small gem,\u201d and Russell and Sissy in \u201cThe Cave\u201d are hit by the realization that though their memory of the cave was bright and strong in that moment, \u201ceven an afternoon such as that one could become dust.\u201d These are characters trying to hold on to what has already passed. In a way they re\ufb02ect your stressing of \ufb01ction as a way of reconnecting what has been isolated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not to sound like a smart ass, but yes. I mean, I would agree. Certainly. I\u2019m not conscious of those kinds of thoughts but that doesn\u2019t make them any less true or even surprising to me that I wouldn\u2019t have been able to explain them. A lot of people talk about memory as a kind of landscape, and that really interests me, that makes sense that, you know, you\u2019re looking back, but . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer Davis comes outside with plates of pie. Jennifer: . . . cheesecake. [laughing] Sir.
Rob: Thank you. Brian: Thank you.
Jennifer: Here you go. [To Bass:] Yours is coming. Rob: Yours takes more time.
Rick: Bring the wheelbarrow!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, in memory, you are obviously looking back at country that you traveled through, you are making a map, a map of that territory, but the way you say it was smarter. [\u2026] I mean, \ufb01ction is a device to preserve memory? Is that what you meant? Enrich memory?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To try to hold on to our own memories, or things that we\u2019ve lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hm. I suppose so. I mean again, literature is about loss or the recognition of loss, in celebrating or bringing the attention of art and craft to a story you are both celebrating and preserving something, for sure. You don\u2019t think about presenting it to a future, but I think about presenting a story to the present, because it\u2019s already in the past as you imagined it. There\u2019s some movement across time and it\u2019s almost kind of a resurrection, sure. Take something from the past and bring it all the way back up to the present, take it back to the contemporary moment, and that is an act of preservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My own memory is really bad, so I suspect that there\u2019s something larger to that than what I\u2019m grasping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick: You guys are missing out. Rob: The turtle?
Rick: Yeah.
Rob: Yeah, I was eyeing that one. Pumpkin cheesecake. Maybe there will be some left for us when we\u2019re done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now here\u2019s another. Let\u2019s talk about work. Artie in \u201cThe Prisoners\u201d works in real estate and Kirby in \u201cThe Fireman\u201d is a computer programmer. Both men \ufb01nd their jobs either numbing or irrelevant. They make money for their companies but \ufb01nd very little value in their work. So Artie goes \ufb01shing and Kirby volunteers as a \ufb01re\ufb01ghter, activities that working-class people do for a living. In the \ufb01shing and the \ufb01re\ufb01ghting there is an immediacy to the activities, a direct physical engagement with the world around them. What\u2019s the relationship of work and passion in these stories and in your writing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t even know how to explain it, but work is what you do, that\u2019s how you are\u2014one of the ways\u2014that you are in the world, to state the obvious, and almost everybody has to work. If you\u2019re going to write a story about engagement with the world . . . Let me back up. I guess what it speaks to in part is what kind of story do you like as a reader and a writer, and the stories of the sad, dead weight, heart-dead, bittersweet, life-wasted stories of detachment and desensitization that are not infrequent in contemporary literature, while technically masterful and even emotionally masterful, after a while I get to feel, as a reader, cheated by the repetition of these subdued responses when the point of the story is your response to it. A little goes a long way, I get it! And that\u2019s life, I get it! And so I like to personally look around for almost more elemental stories, where there\u2019s a little less ambiguity. I don\u2019t think that gives up anything in terms of sophistry, I don\u2019t concede that at all in stories that really speak to me. If you\u2019re interested in reading or writing a story about which a partly successful attempt at greater engagement with the world is achieved, it\u2019s hard, a real trick to pull that o\ufb00 with a story about somebody who didn\u2019t do something, as opposed to a story in which it was in somebody\u2019s character to do something, and work is something to do, so it seemed hard to leave work out of some stories. But the wind is in your face if you\u2019re going to write a story about somebody who\u2019s going to feel the world deeply, but that person doesn\u2019t feel deeply enough about the world to engage with it except when he or she is on the pages of your story. It seems artsy\u2014it can run the risk of becoming artsy and arti\ufb01cial. There are, I\u2019m sure, people who do not work who are fully engaged with their senses and the world, but the wind is in your face, in the writer\u2019s face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick coughs.
Rob: You doing all right?
Rick: I\u2019m shoving pumpkin pie in my face. I\u2019m doing all right. [pause] It\u2019s my favorite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019GRADY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cThe Distance,\u201d you have a Montana family visiting Monticello with the result that Thomas Je\ufb00erson, westward expansion, and the dynamics of one 21st-century family coalesce into a single story. Central to the story is the boundary between wilderness, or wildness, and control and our attempts to balance these elements. What motivated you to dig into the mistakes of America\u2019s past?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Um, almost sounds like a smart-aleck answer, but\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019GRADY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you take issue with the question\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, not even so much as issue but again a lot of the questions you\u2019re asking are so thoughtful, intelligent, that there\u2019s a danger of them presuming an awareness on my part that that\u2019s what I was aiming at, which was not the case. It doesn\u2019t make it not true, I just didn\u2019t know of some of the things that were going on there. The arc of this country at this point in time I \ufb01nd severely disappointing, and there\u2019s not a day that goes by that I don\u2019t fret about or rage about it. So that\u2019s embedded in my subconscious, it\u2019s embedded in my subconscious that it even comes up into my consciousness, but I don\u2019t set out to write \ufb01ction to say those things. I just think, \u201cWhat am I feeling?\u201d, and then I start painting pictures and say, \u201cThis is what I\u2019m feeling. This is what I see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I would not argue with any of that, but it was not a conscious goal, because that would be a political assertion. It\u2019s there, you\u2019re right, but my \ufb01rst impulse was just trying to get the pictures accurate, that landscape, that point in time, that disparity between them. The Louisiana Purchase inhabitant in new-time versus the Louisiana Purchaser in old-time and the crisscrossing, it\u2019s just a good structure, a good zone, good opportunity for con\ufb02ict and richness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something about that story . . . Well, you asked, \u201cWhat, what was the genesis for that dynamic?\u201d I think what authorized me to tell a story like that, or enabled me to, is that living in the Yaak in the 21st century, we\u2019re faced with the same choices on such a heartbreakingly smaller scale. The scale to Je\ufb00erson\u2019s perception, then, was in\ufb01nite. It wasn\u2019t in\ufb01nite, but he perceived it to be in\ufb01nite, his culture perceived it to be in\ufb01nite. And now, goddamn it, nobody perceives it to be in\ufb01nite, we all understand how damned \ufb01nite it is, we can measure down to the last foot how \ufb01nite it is. There is 188,000 acres of roadless lands left in a million-acre landmass in the Yaak that\u2019s still even eligible for wilderness designation, which is to say let these last 18.8 percent of the landmass go about its own natural processes, to burn or rot, grow old or die, grow young again at its own pace outside of our own manipulations. Not to cast value judgments even on our manipulations, just to say these last 18.8 percent of places in this incredibly wild valley we\u2019re going to save, for no other reason than as a test case, scienti\ufb01c base of data, against which to measure our own future successes and failures. So living there is where that story came from about slavery and control, land and control and science and knowing everything or thinking you know everything. But I don\u2019t think those things when I\u2019m writing a story, I\u2019m just realizing it now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How\u2019s the Yaak doing, Rick?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s in a tough way. It\u2019s got a Republican White House, Republican Senate, Republican House of Representatives and they\u2019ve had three years to stu\ufb00 agencies and cabinets and committees with industry lobbyists and right-wing philosophers, and they\u2019re not big fans of wilderness or wildness. They\u2019re not big fans of much of anything of what I care for, so it\u2019s about the worst I\u2019ve ever seen it. We\u2019re in the middle of a forest- planning initiative, so if I can make a request for people who read the interview to write letters I\u2019ll send information on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was our last question. Do you have a \ufb01nal thought?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Too many \ufb01nal thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SUMNER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re never \ufb01nal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BASS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re all \ufb01nal.<\/p>\n\n

<\/svg><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RICK BASS IS THE AUTHOR OF EIGHTEEN BOOKS of \ufb01ction and non\ufb01ction, including the novel Where The Sea Used To Be, and editor of the anthology The Roadless Yaak. Bass lives with his family in northwest Montana\u2019s million-acre Yaak Valley, where there is still not a single acre of designated wilderness. In October 2003, Rick Bass … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9086,"featured_media":2568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36134"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36697,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36134\/revisions\/36697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}