Story Collection Ponders Nature and The Value of Friendship ‘For A Little While’

This collection of stories by Rick Bass reflects on landscapes, the environment and the special bond of male friendship.
 

By Joy DiazMarch 23, 2016 8:47 am,

There’s an author Clay Smith, with Austin-based Kirkus Reviews, is surprised more people don’t know about.

Writer Rick Bass wrote For A Little While, a book of essays about nature, but he doesn’t badger or hector readers into feeling bad for not spending more time in it.

“He’s a very tender, thoughtful writer,” he says. “I worry that he gets a little bit overlooked for that reason.”

Smith says Bass is talented at describing the environment and the outside world.

“Most of his stories are set outdoors,” he says. “I feel like we don’t have enough writers who write really thoughtfully about landscape and he’s certainly a master at that. ”

What you’ll hear in this segment:

– Why Kirkus Reviews describes Bass’s work as “men’s fiction”

– How Bass writes about men and their friendship

– The story from this collection about two friends who go to the Galveston coast