SOURCE: “Bookmarks,” in Prairie Schooner, Vol. 64, No. 2, Summer, 1990, pp. 131–32.

In the following excerpt, Lemon praises The Watch, as the work of a talented yet still developing young writer with a strong voice.

The Watch, the first collection of stories by Rick Bass, is also primarily about the land and the men who love it. It does everything a first collection by a promising young writer should do—establishes a new voice, stakes out an area of human experience as the author’s own, implies a coherent set of values, and both satisfies and leaves room for development. The voice is finely modulated, totally unsentimental but concerned; the area of human experience explored is our struggle to retain the vitality of our youth—either by reliving it or by retelling it—; the values include a love of nature more persuasive because unspoken and an admiration for whatever is there...