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A MONTANA PATIENCE
Where The Sea Used To Be
by Rick Bass
Houghton Mifflin, 1998
445 pp.; S25
Rick Bass has a relationship with his land
scapes that suggests he has walked every inch
he has written of, snapped every twig, killed
every elk or deer, and mourned every loss, be it
of a character he created or a natural sur*
rounding he altered in his writing.
After 12 books of non-fiction and short sto
ries, he has written a novel, Where the Sea Used
to Be. It's a novel that
engages the reader with
characters who strip off
their habits as the land
scape beckons them, and
it is about characters who
allow the stark honesty of
that landscape to send
them running.
Old Dudley is an iras
cible bastard of a Texas oil
tycoon, infamous for
hiring young geologists
and snatching their souls.
He sends them off to a
corner of Northwestern
Montana with the impos
sible task of finding oil in
the unreceptive Swan
Valley, an area his
daughter, Mel, has been
calling home for 20-plus
years. His first pitch,
Matthew, had developed a love affair with Mel
that had flickered and faded.
Wallis, Dudley's second choice, follows in
Matthew's footsteps, into the uncomfortable
winter quiet of the region. Yet, through Mel's
guidance and respect for her surroundings, he
gradually allows the area to change him.
The main character in this book really is
RICK BASS
Swan Valley and its four seasons. Bass details
this area with love, patience and trust. And it's
Wallis' growing patience with the harsh Montana
winter that allows him to develop an assured
relationship, not only with his new surround
ings, but with Mel. As they evolve horn awkward
acquaintances to confidants to lovers, Mel is
allowed to recognize her own loneliness.
Together, they adapt the best parts of each
other, as, Bass writes, "the mountains split to
reveal a living world that had been lying
beneath, raucous and seething green."
The novel also introduces us to Joshua, a
coffin maker who sculpts his boxes into animal
shapes, a boy named Colter, who wants nothing,
more than to escape what he considers to be a
tame surrounding, and Helen, mother of
Matthew, who, as she dies of lung cancer, dines
with bears and searches for the proper tree to be
buried under. One of the more telling scenes in
the novel is of Helen, freshly dead, perched in
her rocker and brought out onto the main road
to appear as if she sees the late summer fires.
With the seared remains of the fire's
onslaught come Matthew and Dudley, ready to
find the map Wallis worked on all summer and
begin drilling. Their failure to obtain a drop of
oil is guaranteed by what
the reader already knows
of the area and its inhabi
tants' stubbornness. Yet
their bungled attempts are
treated with a respectful
humor. As Dudley dies
with his unquenchable
obsession, Matthew and
Wallis are able to recon
nect in an often embar
rassing, but finally tri
umphant trek to procure
elk meat for the winter.
Where the Sea Used to
Be has an almost unac
ceptably forced plot: it's
hard to fathom an old
man as devilishly greedy
as Dudley, and hard to
believe he's have such fan
tastic power over the two
grown geologists. Yet, the
action, almost always internal, is slow enough to
allow the reader to learn each nuance of each
character's emotions, rendering their inner land
scapes as beautiful, stubborn, treacherous and
surprisingly forgiving — as forgiving as Swan
Valley can be for those who allow themselves to
blend with it.
Bruce Miller
A
A'
Book Report
By Judy Long
• The premier issue of Figdust, Winter 1999, is
hot off the press. Editors Brennan Collins and
Suzi Sheffield were encouraged by a friend to
name their literary journal after the powder added
to seed to encourage a bird's song. The editors
write: "In the midst of all the performance poetry,
hyper-scholarly sequences, and predictable stan
dards that tend to pervade most media nowadays,
we’ve tned to collect intelligently voiced creative
writing and thoughtful images." They have indeed
succeeded. Contributors include Coleman Barks,
Sean Hill, William Kaiser, Amy Rogers, Tayari A.
Jones, Jessica Richardson, and Bill Matthews
Barks' famed "My Final Final" appears here in pnnt
for the first time, as well as his "Bill Matthews
Coming Along (1942-1997)," in which Barks
writes, "When I see Bill Matthews coming along, I
see and taste the culture of the world..." Collins
and Sheffield consider it "an honor to have
*ceived a poem from Bill Matthews," and pub
lishing Matthews' poem "ridgety-Feet" is indeed a
coup for the journal The issue also features art
work by Andy Cherewick, Pamela Pecchio, and
Todd Stockholm All of this can be yours fur only
S4. Copies are available in Athens at Jackson
Street Books and Blue j*y The editors are con
svdenng submissions for their next issue. Fiction,
poetry, short stories, reviews and artwork should
be sent to P.0. Box 1?85, Athens, GA 30603-1285.
• The Chattahoochee Review is offering their
15th Anniversary Issue as a gift for subscriptions
entered between Feb. 1 and August 31, 1999. This
342-page commemorative issue contains fiction by
LaiTy Brown and Lewis Nordan, who once gr?ced
the halls of Park Hall and says he will come back
to Athens "if the Allman Brothers are ever playing
here again." Also included are interviews with
Andrew Lytle, Peter Taylor, and Brown, who
waxes eloquent on the subject of denouement.
Poets included are Coleman Barks, Fred
Chappell, Judson Mitcham, and Judith Ortiz
Cofer Congrats to Cofer, who is the winner of the
Hugh J. Lake Award for four poems published in
the winter issue of Prairie Schooner. Call (770)
551-3019 for subscription info for the CR.
• The latest issue of The Chattahoochee Review
contains three "My Dead Father" poems by John
Lane, the Renaissance man of the South Carolina
Piedmont. Lane wears the hats of poet, essayist
and publisher of Holocene Press; member of the
Hub C»ty Writers Project; teacher; and anthology
editor. Lane's most recent publication is The
Woods Stretched for Mites: New Nature Writing
from the South (HGA Press), a book he cc-edited
with Gerald Thurmond. This is an anthology of
the best writing about Southern landscape and
nature by 18 respected writers, including Rick
Bass, Wendell Berry, Franklin Burroughs, James
Kilgo, Janet Lembke, Barry Lopez, Janisse Ray.
and E.O. Wilson. Four paintings by June McCoy
Ball grace tne cover of this important collection.
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