Platte River

by Rick Bass

Rick Bass is one of the foremost writers of his generation, charging headlong past the hard surface of modern life to illuminate human beings and their relationship to the natural world. Platte River is a collection of three novellas, each a singular exploration of the human heart set against the backdrop of God's creation. Filled with arresting images-chinook winds flying through a valley, couples skating in the dark on thin ice, tools made from animal bones, a delicate shape frozen in a river-"Mahatma Joe" is about an evangelist who settles in Grass Valley, Montana, and the woman who becomes obsessed with his vision of the world. In "Field Events" a woman falls in love with a man even larger than her discus-tossing brothers. And the title novella, "Platte River," portrays one man's lyric meditation on loneliness, the nature of peace, and the quest for love.

• ISBN10: 0345392493
• ISBN13: 9780345392497
• Publish Date: 18 June 1995 (first published 1 February 1994)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Ballantine Books Inc.
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 160
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

It’s like Rick Bass writes the world just beneath the surface of this one. The real real world, so guts-level and naked and honest, and this other foreign world on top where everyone else lives is shown up for what it is, for making no damn sense at all. I’m not even sure I’m speaking metaphorically here. These stories of his, one right after the other, work in my guts more than just about anything I’ve read. I haven’t seen anything like it. It’s a whole-soul hunger that gets nourished here, in these strange, simple, dreamlike, inverted worlds, more real than real. Like he writes of Lory in “Field Events,” water through the gills.

And “Field Events,” God damn. That and “Platte River.” Bass writes the only kind of love story that makes any sense to me at all.

First reviewed November 2011

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August 2012:

I read this whole thing last night. After midnight. Until 3 AM, when I had to be up at 8. There was a thunderstorm, rain on the tin roof with the bed dry and warm. I hope (and I know, you do) everyone has a story that’s this dear a friend, that makes you breathe in a way that’s different and better than the way you were breathing before.

“Field Events,” God damn.

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October 2012:

I needed to breathe in the way that is different and better again, and this worked. Every time.