SOURCE: “Reclaiming the Frontier: New Writings from the West,” in New England Review/Bread Loaf Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 2, 1989, pp. 213–15.

In the excerpt that follows, Merrill offers a positive assessment of The Watch, focusing on Bass’s exploration of the boundaries of possibility.

Rick Bass may be a newcomer to Kittredge’s part of the world; nevertheless, he reveals in his first collection of stories, The Watch, a genuine affinity for life in the West. Born and raised in Texas, he has lived in Utah, Arkansas, and Mississippi, and now caretakes a ranch in northwestern Montana; his stories are set in a similar variety of places, roughly half in the South, half in the West. He is by turns a petroleum geologist and environmental activist, which must give him a broad view of one of the thornier issues facing Westerners—the development of natural resources versus the preservation of...