The Watch: Stories

by Rick Bass

Set in the South and West, they pursue themes of friendship, loyalty, and freedom, of escape, where valiant holdouts refuse to grow up, or to grow old.

• ISBN10: 039331135X
• ISBN13: 9780393311358
• Publish Date: 9 February 1994 (first published 8 March 1989)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 9 March 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: WW Norton & Co
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 192
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

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.

Reserving the last star solely because I want to read so much more of what Bass writes.

First reviewed March 2010

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May 2012:

There are a lot of books I love, but honestly, this might be my favorite of favorites. 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 do a few times each summer. It’s impossible, sometimes, to go back to the world where nobody thinks the way this book does: especially in the summer.

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July 2013:

I don’t ever want the world to be any other way than it is inside this book, which is good, because I think it’s the way the world really is.

And no, summer is still never summer without “Mexico,” “The Watch,” “Mississippi,” and “In Ruth’s Country.” My heart is never the same without them all.