A Thousand Deer

September 1, 2012
Prolific nature writer Bass (The Black Rhinos of Namibia, 2012, etc.) offers a view of fine country and his family's past through the scope of a rifle. The author has long been a naturalist and novelist laureate of the Montana mountains, but here he returns home to Texas to ponder the ways of the old folks, four generations of Basses who passed glorious time in the rougher patches of the Hill Country. Life always entails death, of course. That's the primary lesson of hunting, and of family history too; as Bass writes, "Each generation, I think, learns less and less about death, these days, rather than more--and so here I am, in this room full of old people....I wonder how often they think about it." The author thinks often about the Hill Country's abundant population of deer, who by his account, offer themselves up as a "gift of the land" in the old social contract of predator and prey. It's a subject fraught with the possibility of being misread, given modern sensibilities, but there's nothing of the yahoo or land-rapist in Bass' approach either to hunting or to writing about it. Along the way, the author writes gracefully of the geology of the region, with its sandstones and feldspars and "nuggets and gravels that we call chat, which is a beautiful pink-rose color," and of the spirit of the place, whose tongue "is the language of water...cutting down to the heart and soul of the earth, to a thing that lies far below and beyond our memory." Those outraged at the thought of doing Bambi in may not be won over by the sometimes self-conscious lyricism, but anyone who has spent time in the Hill Country will recognize the author's authenticity. A minor but pleasing entry in Bass' body of work.

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September 1, 2012

Prolific writer Bass (The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana) makes clear that no one in his extended family suffers from nature-deficit disorder. These 12 essays, all previously published elsewhere, form a seamless celebration of family, tradition, and nature as seen through the scope of deer-hunting. Bass focuses his nonfiction on the wild and is at his best when telling stories: helping his cousin dig a truck out of a gumbo sidetrack in the driving rain or taking his teenage daughter on her first hunt, where he observed the snow-quiet world and "tracks that reminded me of the trident calligraphy of shorebirds on the beach." Bass draws his portraits of family and the cedar-studded hill country of Texas with care and grace. His descriptions are matched by insights: at his family's annual hunt they spend time shaping stories, "even as we knew also it was more the tellers than the stories themselves who were being shaped." VERDICT This book is for anyone who appreciates evocative prose and close observation of nature.--Michal Strutin, Santa Clara Univ. Lib., CA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2012
Acclaimed fiction writer Bass goes a little rogue here, collecting essays on the joys of hunting. It's really a sort of paean to Bass' family, its shared heritage, and the changes wrought by the passing years. Those thousand deer are dead deer, deer his family and others like them have killed: Earlier this fall, up in Montana, where I live now he writes with deliberate emphasis, I shot a deer. Killed a deer, hunted a deer, got a deer, took a deer off the planet. He hunts because he likes it, simple as that. Bass is an elegant and passionate writer: When we run out of country, we will run out of stories. When we run out of stories, we will run out of sanity. He writes about hunting not merely as the taking of life (which it is, and he makes no apologies for that), but also as a shared experience, part of the history of his family, and a central part of his own love of nature. Committed opponents of hunting will probably reject the book on general principle, but Bass' passion and narrative skills are undeniable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)