rick bass

This thin book, a collection of thirteen essays, had (has) an ugly cover when I saw it sitting on a table in Off Square Books: a picture of a stuffed bear against the obviously fake backdrop of somewhere out West. But I just happened to open to essay #3, which began:

I've been waiting a long time for this. Jackson, Mississippi, is the best place for me to make a living, but there's this one small problem. There are no moutains.

I picked it up and checked out.

On driving through the Delta, he writes:

The scenery is hot. It is flat and drab, and you look at your road map for the fifth time in thirty minutes to see if you can look ahead and tell where it will end. You yawn and sing along with the radio even if you have never before heard the song that is playing; you do isometric exercises against the steering wheel; you roll the window down and then roll it back up again just to be moving. You read the billboards when you are lucky enough to pass one.

It's all too familiar. :-P