The Hermit's Story

by Rick Bass

A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the “Uniformly excellent” stories about our relationships with each other and with the treacherous natural world (Publishers Weekly).In the title story, a man and woman travel across an eerily frozen lake—under the ice. “The Distance” casts a skeptical eye on Thomas Jefferson through the lens of a Montana man’s visit to Monticello. “Eating” begins with an owl being sucked into a canoe and ends with a man eating a town out of house and home, and “The Cave” is a stunning story of a man and woman lost in an abandoned mine. Other stories include “The Fireman,” “Swans,” “The Prisoners,” “Presidents’ Day,” “Real Town,” and “Two Deer.” Each is remarkable in its own way, sure to please both new readers and avid fans of Rick Bass’s passionate, unmistakable voice.“Bass focuses a naturalist’s eye not only on the frozen lakes and interplay of predator and prey often found in his work but also on the ebb and flow of human emotions and relationships . . . Thought-provoking and entertaining, these stories move along quickly but continue to resonate long after the reader is done; several have been anthologized in award collections.” —Library Journal“Beautiful in their magical imagery, dramatic in their situations, and exquisitely poignant in their insights, these stories of awe and loss are quite astonishing in their mythic use of place and the elements of earth, air, fire, and water.” —Booklist“Bass puts his talent as a nature writer to terrific use.” —The New York Times Book Review“Bass’s language glistens with the beauty of the landscapes he evokes.” —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Nature, Literature, Short Story Collection

195 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Rick Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in Houston, the son of a geologist. He studied petroleum geology at Utah State University and while working as a petroleum geologist in Jackson, Mississippi, began writing short stories on his lunch breaks. In 1987, he moved with his wife, the artist Elizabeth Hughes Bass, to Montana’s remote Yaak Valley and became an active environmentalist, working to protect his adopted home from the destructive encroachment of roads and logging. He serves on the board of both the Yaak Valley Forest Council and Round River Conservation Studies and continues to live with his family on a ranch in Montana, actively engaged in saving the American wilderness.

Bass received the PEN/Nelson Algren Award in 1988 for his first short story, “The Watch,” and won the James Jones Fellowship Award for his novel Where the Sea Used To Be. His novel The Hermit’s Story was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year in 2000. The Lives of Rocks was a finalist for the Story Prize and was chosen as a Best Book of the Year in 2006 by the Rocky Mountain News. Bass’s stories have also been awarded the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Award and have been collected in The Best American Short Stories.

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story “Eating” is going to hold a special, special place in my heart. Set right here outside my door in North Carolina, he gets the place and the people just right.

“I’m hungry,” Russell said. They stood there in the blue smoke, letting it bathe them for a while, and looked out at the forest dropping away below them: sweetgum, hickory, oak, loblolly, mountain laurel. They could see more ridges, more knolls and valleys, gold lit, through the framework of green leaves and branches. Tobacco country, down in the lowlands. Russell took another look at the hams. “This is my country,” he said. “Or getting real near it.”

Likewise “The Cave,” the companion story to “Eating,” is tremendous: the two young lovers underground in a coal mine. Likewise “The Fireman,” likewise “Real Town,” likewise “Swans”— the one that killed my heart. I just wish Rick Bass would write a bad story now and then.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rick Bass is a stud. Not like you would normally classify "studs", but a stud none the less. I bet if you spent a day with this man, you might think "He's more boring than I would have thought him to be" but man oh man does his life experience seem interesting when reflected in what he writes. You kinda finish these up and think "he's my hero" then you rethink what you read and realize "he's really no different than I would be in his shoes-----he's just dang good at putting thoughts into action through his words".

This collection, while quite different than The Watch is certainly in keeping with the talent displayed there. These all kind of center around relationship, and particularly the struggles of different kinds of stresses placed on marriages. While I certainly hold a different outlook on love than Bass displays in some of these stories, I think it took kahunas to try to adequately describe the emotions he let loose within these 10 stories.

True to self, Bass uses part history, part ecology, part wilderness/adventure, part biology (and human chemistry), part landscape, and a whole lot of risk in getting these stories whittled into something that can make the point but still be very entertaining. Some people might not like his quirks.......but they aren't reading reviews of books like this one anyhow. This one has all sorts of episodic stuff that I thought about quoting and then decided that without immersing yourself it would look stupid out of context.....go read the book, that's the point right?

Well done author, well done.

[Kateri Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read this collection of short stories twice, and two of the stories several times. I'm not sure why the alchemy happens between an author's words and a reader, but Rick Bass is one writer who I seem to connect with more often that not. These stories are quiet, even when they are adventurous. The title story, The Hermit's Story, still evokes strong images for me, magical, mysterious images of a place I've never experienced, and just the mystery of walking beneath a frozen, dry lake seems impossible. This story haunts me. The story of the swans enchants me, still. These are mostly melancholy tales, but give me a glimpse into lives and places I only dream about. Mostly I connect to the sense of place that Bass creates, even more than the characters. I am not a hunter, and I never will be, but when I read a Rick Bass story about a hunt, I come closer to understanding why some people do it.

If you enjoy short stories and don't mind endings with open doors for your imagination to take over, and if you enjoy stories with the natural world as a main character, even more so than the human characters, I think you will like these.

[AJ Nolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every story in this collection is amazing, particularily the title story, and "Swans." And all the rest.

[Lucio · Rating 5 out of 5]

You never quite escape the icey blue environment of the title story--it's like a skeleton key for whole collection. Whether in the woods or in an SUV passing a bus full of inmates, Bass knows what "environment" means--engagement. "Swans" is absolutely devastating in the best possible way. "Cave" blends eroticism, exploitation, and death--my favorite three things. "The Distance" is a great story centered around TJ and Monticello. Where is the line between conservation and manipulation? Between adoration and commodification?

[Theo Austin-Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short stories oscillating between nature and decay; the breakdown of corporeal bodies against the steadfast bulwark of Appalachian mountains. Bass renders a noble rot via simple prose, and he accomplishes this with a true master’s touch. It is certainly a book, once you’ve finished it, that you should quickly palm off to your old man or grandfather. My grandad told me last week that the pack of fish fingers currently in his freezer are to be his last (he’s giving up being a pescatarian for good, supposedly), that he’s going to dedicate five to himself, three to his dog and the final two to the local fox he feeds every evening. One night soon, after polishing off the bottle of Budweiser he will inevitably shove into my hand, either sitting across from him in the summerhouse he built or shaded under the pergola of his well-maintained garden, I’m going to try and slip this little volume into his pocket and really sell it to him. He’ll say it’s all too melancholic. Maybe the amount of death in the book will overwhelm him, the corpses of deer, wolves and owls litter the page (even cracking open the book is tantamount to a minor genocide - and the ailing health and love of the couples within it aren’t a great deal more optimistic), and because of all of this he may not be able to see the subtle notes of muted joy, and hope, and contentment, that animate and haunt each and every one of these stories. God knows he talks enough about the pigeons and wildlife that litter his garden for me to be justified in giving it to him. I’ll let you know how it goes, and update you if the situation concerning the fish fingers changes - also shoutout to Paperbird’s vid that brought Bass to my attention, he’s a goodun.

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know how I ended up on this short story kick, but I seem to be trapped in the world of short fiction. I actually did not realize this was a collection of short stories until the first story ended and then I looked at the contents.

It is a good, solid collection. All the stories go together roughly enough; they feature rural, wooded landscapes and are more often than not set in winter. There are people who used to be in love falling out of love and several stories about tough old men losing their virility. Animals are frequently brought back to life (either frozen and then alive when thawed or not properly killed in the first place). But the best part are the few stories here that are creepy. Because man are they just so creepy.

I have notes below on each particular story.

The Hermit's Story:
I wasn't crazy about this story, but I loved the image of Ann and Gray Owl traveling under the ice. The description of the space: "The air was a thing of its own--recognizable as air, and breathable as such, but with a taste and odor, an essence, unlike any other air they'd ever breathed. It had a different density to it, so that smaller, shallower breaths were required; there was very much the feeling that if they breathed in too much of the strange, dense air, they would drown." This story was too long and a bit boring, but it had my favorite nature descriptions.

Swans:
This was a good story of Billy's decline and the contrast between the narrator's love life and the beautiful friendship between Billy and Amy. It also had one of the best quotes of the book: "the best way for a man to love a woman, or a woman to love a man, is not to bring gifts, but to simply understand that other person: to understand as much (as with as much passion and concern) as is possible)." The actual swans were rather a distraction from the story, but maybe that was the point.

The Prisoners:
This was my least favorite story. Bass grasps the relationship between the men well and I loved his description of Artie as a man that "doesn't know how to laugh. He can pretend-laugh, can ridicule things, but he hasn't opened up and laughed, hasn't felt the cleansing opening-up trickling of simple, gurgling laughter since he was about ten or twelve." I was lost by the necessity of the prisoners, though. I thought that this story could have just kind of ended on the highway, or ended when they got to the dock to meet the fishing guide. And of course, this means that I lost the whole emotional pinnacle of the story, but I really just didn't get it.

The Fireman:
This connected least with the rest of the book. The necessity of the fires to keeping the marriage alive was an interesting thread and certainly provides the unity, but otherwise this was a very urban story (as opposed to the rural nature of all the others). Once again there is a father who is devoted to his children (and less so to their mother); once again the importance of human connection is mediated through a lens (in this case the fires) to allow for the characters to recharge and regroup.

The Cave:
This was my favorite story. It was so deliciously creepy with the prowling around under the earth. But then, it became rather ridiculous. I mean how many times can two people have sex underground and ride around on old boxcars before they start to panic about finding their way out. It was really all very fantastical; I had to believe that they had given up hope of ever coming out when they stumbled upon the light. And yet, there was no sense of this. In the beginning there is panic and then certainly a sense of comfort in the middle; Sissy is relieved to find a way out, but almost abstractedly so. And Russell could spend the rest of his life underground.

President's Day:
Again we have the loss of virility as Jim reaches out to Jerry for help and Jerry ponders his failing relationship with Karen. The overall story here is interesting enough, but the moment of oddity is when Dr. Le Page turns into Doctor Smock. I was rather disappointed that there was no further mention of this, either as Jim's hallucination or Dr. Le Page's neurosis.

Real Town:
Again, Bass touches on the absurd; Jick is creepy and I hated that he was gassing puppies, but I was really not sure why he had the narrator's hair. Of course the idea that tourists will buy anything is just plain funny, but I found the sadness of her desire for a family coupled with the image of all those dying puppies to just be a bit too macabre for my taste.

Eating:
This story is a coda to the Cave, although I am almost positive that it precedes the cave; partly because Russell mentions having eaten so much in the cave (just before he takes a poo), but also because it is really hard to picture them stopping at the diner in such a calm way AFTER having come out of the cave. This was an absolute absurd piece (from the owl to the elk and the 24 eggs). I felt like I had stumbled into some sci-fi collection with this one.

The Distance:
Once again, there is the relationship of 20 years stalled out and looking for a spark: "Doesn't anyone, everyone, after twenty years of sameness, encounter such crises? Aren't we all extraordinarily frail and in the end remarkably unimpressive, creatures too often of boring repetition and habit rather than bold imagination?" I did not see the necessity of Monticello, but I liked that the tour guide was in love with Jefferson and I found the irony in Mason (and his wife's) boredom with each other (two living people) and the guide's lack of boredom repeating the same spiel day after day after day.

Two Deer:
I think this was my least favorite story. It fell into the rural motif and followed the pattern of 20-something year married folks falling out of love (and trying to find the spark again), but mostly just felt like a rehash of the previous stories. Again, there were lots of frozen woods and water; the revivification of several deer, but ultimately they die.

[Paula Hagar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best collection of short stories I've ever read. I've long loved Rick Bass' non-fiction writing but hadn't read any of his fiction until now. These stories are heart-numbingly bittersweet, sad, full of lovely lyrical writing and they just took my breath away. Every one of them, though my favorite was the title story.

[Cameron Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

The smell of pine permeates this collection of essays. Each one tightly wrought. Like iron. Like running water.

Maybe a little bit of realism that boarders often times on the magical.

[Tali Zarate · Rating 4 out of 5]

During my MFA I read a lot of short story collections, and always read every story in the collection. Recently I've just been reading two or three stories from a collection, and moving onto something else. Anyway, the stories I did read in this collection were wonderful. Rick Bass has an incredibly ability to create atmosphere -- reading his stories is often like listening to really beautiful ambient music.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have immensely enjoyed all of Rick Bass's books that I've read.

There are very few writers who can write such interesting fiction that is tied so closely with nature the way that Rick can.

In this collection of ten short stories, these five were the ones that I loved:

1. The Hermit's Story

2. The Cave

3. President's Day

4. The Distance

5. Two Deer

5 stars

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though this collection only entails ten 'short' stories, its sheer number of pages (all 179 of them) make it seem like more. This coupled with the fact that most of the stories here are filled to the gills with long—oftentimes painstakingly descriptive—depictions of nature leaves me exhausted and hungry for some semblance of civilization.

It's not that I do not enjoy nature, or that I particularly like being in these massive sanatoriums we call cities, but I find the sort of isolation that Bass has gone about creating in this collection extremely dismal. He is obsessed with places that are farflung from all human endeavors (save a lone woodsman or two) and so, Bass relies on his descriptions of these 'rugged pockets of wilderness' to stand as characters in their own right. Unfortunately, this becomes unclear if not monotonous, and Bass runs into trouble occasionally. Anywhere from Montana to Idaho to Mississippi to North Carolina to Virginia and West Virginia all begin to sound like the same place.

Exaggeration: 'There's a layer of red clay on the ground. The bulrushes line the river. We fish for speckled trout along the cutbanks. Here's how silt is formed. The dogwood, the birch, the hickory, the sweetgum, the beech, the oak. Killdeer, snipe, plover, swales, osprey. Doe, fawn, elk, moose.'

Of course, I'm being harsh on Bass, and this collection of stories is (for the most part) very well done, but it also bothers me when a piece of contemporary literature seems to disregard city/town/village/community life in favor of sprawling descriptions of wilderness. The Hermit's Story struggles with keeping any sense of modernity, and it goes without saying, it depressed the shit out of me. But to be honest, my blue mood probably comes from Bass' pitiable characters rather than the veritable smorgasbord of flora and fauna of which he writes so exhaustively.

See, Bass spends a great deal of time wrestling with the loss of love, which his characters are continually experiencing throughout the book—and the most dispiriting thing is that they can't stop the hemorrhaging. The relationships go south, turn cold, or worse, and it leaves these characters almost humorless, embittered, ravaged, and 'a little off.' I wouldn't want to have a beer with any of them. They worry me. Are they victims of their own machismo, or has the wilderness ruined them for anyone else? In short, I found these characters lonely. Yes: rugged, hard-nosed, replete with the knowledge of experience for sure... but lonely.

Heart of the matter: Bass' characters are trying to find a balance between nature and society, but are constantly coming up empty-handed. They are saddened by their inability to live among other humans half as well as they can live among the 'natural world.'

That it might be written beautifully doesn't really console me; it's a bummer.

[Steve Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the stories are beautiful, but _The Cave_ reads like a bad taste of dime store romance. Rick Bass seems to have problems with sexuality, as most of his characters have broken relationships and the act of sex is given short, pathetic, shrift. The most interesting thing about Bass to me is that he tries to reduce the supernatural to the natural -- the physical world becomes a place of wonder and mystery unequaled in its ontological possibility. What creates magic and wonder is the relationship between the individual and the world, not any transcendental reality. It is the relationship between subject and world itself that becomes transcendental in Bass's fiction, which is to say, for Bass, the transcendental is immanent.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am beginning to think of Rick Bass as a new favorite author. The stories are mostly excellent. Language and imagery is crisp and clean, characters well developed, and stories land with a lot of punch. I love how he uses the natural world within the lives of the characters. Do I really like every story? No. Do I love most? Yes

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miraculous naturalism. I'm pretty sure it's going to become a personal challenge for me to find a Rick Bass story and not be overwhelmed by it. He's a master at explaining man's place and time on earth as brutal but worthwhile. I'm glad he's not a sculptor or an architect, I'm not sure I could take a three dimensional manifestation of what he sees and describes in these ten short stories.

[Lucynell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love short stories, even when seemingly nothing much happens. This collection contains 'Eating' which is 6 pages about a young couple, on their first date, taking a ride to the mountains. Its funny and peculiar and heart-warming and highly recommended.

[AD LAND · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title story is one 0f my favorite short stories and I've read it many times. Bass is at his best painting a surrealistic view of nature. The other stories ranged from pretty good to meh. How many times do you want to read about a rocky marriage? Maybe it is 3.33 stars overall.

[Andy Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection of short stories published in 2002; my clear favorites were those set in Bass's beloved Yaak Valley in Montana. The title story is set there on a Thanksgiving day when the power is out. The entertainment for the family on this "off the grid day" in their snowed in cabin is the mom's telling of a story years ago when she took hunting dogs she had trained to their owner in remote Canada. She stayed for a few days to show the owner how to work the dogs and reenforce her training of them. During one training day they become lost in a blizzard and she describes how they survived the night under the ice in a dried out lake.
"Swans" tells of a couple whose devotion to each other amidst their isolated cabin in the Yaak mirrors the swans that stay in their lake year round due to Anne's baking of bread and tending of fires in the winter that keep the lake icefree. The story is told by a distant neighbor who has had three failed relationships while living in Yaak and is envious as he describes their idyllic life.
"Real Town" is told by a single woman living in the Yaak Valley of a day when the whole valley loses power and the weather is overwhelmed by the results of a storm. The residents gather around the Mercantile, the sole store in the valley that houses the only short wave radio, waiting for the owner to return to learn about what is happening outside the valley. The disgruntlement about the Mercantile's jacked up prices alternated with grudging acknowledgment that the alternative to the Mercantile's high prices, no store at all, is in some way an allegory of the pros and cons of living in the isolated valley.
The Montana stories are contrasted with the others in the collection that are often set in very urban areas that show not just the difference in environment but the differences in the lives of the people. "Prisoners" tells of three Houston area businessmen driving to go fishing. During the drive while griping about their jobs they pass a bus transporting prisoners and make idiotic faces and gestures toward the prisoners. As the traffic causes the bus to later pass them they become very uncomfortable and this discomfort can be applied to their lives in general. Similarly, in " The Fireman" the highlight of an urban dwellers life is his work as a volunteer firefighter and his fascination with the burning of urban buildings while he remains depressed and somewhat obsessed with his daughter who lives with his ex wife.
"The Distance" is a fascinating story. It tells of a Montana family's visit to Monticello. The description of the visit allows the teller to ruminate about Jefferson's life while thinking about his own-this is as interesting a perspective of Jefferson and his home as I have ever read
There are other great stories in this fine collection that is well worth the read

[Lakeleni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 2002 collection of short stories was named a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2002. Author Rick Bass was inspired to write the title story after hearing about lakes that drain in winter, leaving a crust of ice above an air pocket. The story is a fictional memoir told by a survivor of a winter storm, who followed her partner who’d fallen, with all their gear, into what was presumably water. Instead, they set off on a surreal, under-ice journey filled with magical realism and nature’s grace. The other nine stories in the collection branch beyond the author’s designated slot as a literary eco-activist. “The Fireman” and “The Prisoners” explore working-class men seeking to regain their stride, getting a temporary fix from fighting fires or taunting a bus full of prisoners, then facing payback. On a humorous note, “Eating” takes the reader to a small-town diner under the stares of locals, watching a young man eat plates of food (befitting of Jethro from the Beverly Hillbillies). Each story is absorbing and unique.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

These short stories generally involve a couple whose relationship is faltering. Then they encounter a natural phenomenon, and their life continues, maybe no worse, maybe no better. In “The Cave,” for example, a man and woman descend into an abandoned coal mine, get lost, wander for miles, and eventually find a way back to the surface. In the title story, a woman and an old man make an even more unusual descent and eventually return. In other stories couples accidentally collide with owls and deer and then go on with the rest of their lives. In one story a trio of men going fishing make faces at a bus load of prisoners and feel badly aas a result.

All of the stories contain beautiful natural description and would be very frustrating to read unless you realize that, unlike most short stories, they are not about the people at but about the natural world in which they are immersed.

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yeah, I bought a bunch of Bass. I’ve hammered out my dismay with reactions to other books, so I won’t get redundant here. But these stories get lousy with metaphor, acting on single directions and making their points. Successful in technique but, to steal from Raymond Carver, lacking an embrace of story. Tho steak from James Brown, talking loud, ain’t saying nothing (new).

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pleasantly surprised with this collection of stories. Favorites were The Hermit's Story, Swans, and the Cave. The one about Thomas Jeffeson/Monticello hit me as odd and out of place, and my least favorite.

[David Blankenship · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the stories seem more like a character study or a random scene, neither of which go much of anywhere, beyond a mindset that seems to say, 'The wilderness, it does a crazy thing to you.'

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bass is an absorbing writer -- he's got the eye for natural environment features. The stories are intriguing and keep me wanting to read more.

[Lylia · Rating 3 out of 5]

i like the hermits story, swans, prisoners, presidents’ day, and real town. really nice nature imagery

[Anne, Unfinished Woman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite stories:
"The Swans": used in OLLI SS Group
"The Hermit's Story"
"The Cave": used in OLLI SS Group

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazingly descriptive of life in rural Montana. I had no idea that ice around a lake could form a protective "cave" with warmth from the earth.

[Ken Lumberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these stories of living out in the wilderness.

[Swamp Potato · Rating 2 out of 5]

not my cup of tea. the sories i mildly liked : swans, the fireman, presidents' day, real town. i didn't like the writing style, sometimes just wanted to skip through some of the stories. so, 2/5

[Jaden (: · Rating 3 out of 5]

as part of best american short stories 1999. just wanted to have it there y'know