SOURCE: “Yakety-Yak,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 26, 1997, p. 8.

Houston is an American author and critic. In the review of The Book of Yaak that follows, she applauds Bass's passion for saving the ecosystem of the Yaak Valley and discusses his inner contentions, especially regarding the use of art to advocate environmental preservation.

“Some nights my heart pounds so hard in anger that in the morning when I wake up it is sore, as if it has been rubbing against my ribs—as if it has worn a place in them as smooth as stones beneath a waterfall.”

This is the first sentence of the shortest chapter in The Book of Yaak, the most recent offering from Rick Bass. The chapter—really more of a prose poem—is called “Waterfall,” occurs a little less than halfway through the book and serves as a kind of a synecdoche...