Oil Notes (Flamingo S.)

by Rick Bass

[jamiereadthis]

The sheer luck of reading this, age twenty-eight. Living in the farmhouse. Rick Bass writing this, age twenty-eight. Living in the farmhouse, the slow life, the dogs, the oil. We figured out some time ago that Bass is Wallis, Wallis with his ear to the ground in “Where the Sea Used to Be.” Here’s your further proof.

And because of that, or maybe because of other things too: it’s my favorite, far and away, of Bass’s non-fiction thus far. Maybe because it’s so personal. Maybe because it’s notes, maybe because it’s Mississippi. Maybe because there’s a lot of words in here I could have written and a whole lot more I couldn’t.

“Corn. Houses with porches. Mailboxes shining silver in the weeds along the road. Happiness: it is a thing to be lassoed, wrestled. No milksops or lightweights allowed.”

“The kind of geologist I like: his face will cloud over at the hint that he ‘should have done it differently.’ The thought must be dismissed even before it is formed. He or she will be the first, the absolute first to tell you he was wrong when this is so. But you can never make a great geologist believe he should have done it another way.”

Holy hell, this is good. This is the real-life “Where the Sea Used to Be,” which is one of the highest compliments I can give.

“The sea. Maybe when you look at the sea, at night. Have you ever done that? That is the same type of thought as knowing about oil and wanting somehow to get it out of the ground. Have you ever looked at the sea at night, when you could almost hear better than you could see?”