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prcizmadia's review against another edition
5.0
This one sure snuck up on me. I'm interested enough in Bass' prose as it is, and tagging along for his field work drew me in... but I wasn't expecting something that led me to meditate on time, love, happiness, and time on earth. But it did.
jar7709's review
5.0
I can't even with how much I loved this book. It was like reading my own brain. This could have been my life, if I had taken that potential job offer out of St. Louis. And had graduate 20 years earlier. And was a man. But other than that, if you want to know what my brain is like, read this one...a series of vignettes, notes, journal entries, that seem disconnected but if you map out the scraps, you can find the oil deposit (or the contaminated zone, in my case). The oil is oil, yes, but it's also so much else about life and meaning, buried deep under the surface. I devoured this book in one great gulp, not slowing to savor, but I've already started to re-read to really put that complete map together. Six, eight, ten stars if I could.
jamiereadthis's review against another edition
5.0
The sheer luck of reading this, age twenty-eight. Living in the farmhouse. Rick Bass writing this, age twenty-eight. Living in the farmhouse, the slow life, the dogs, the oil. We figured out some time ago that Bass is Wallis, Wallis with his ear to the ground in “Where the Sea Used to Be.” Here’s your further proof.
And because of that, or maybe because of other things too: it’s my favorite, far and away, of Bass’s non-fiction thus far. Maybe because it’s so personal. Maybe because it’s notes, maybe because it’s Mississippi. Maybe because there’s a lot of words in here I could have written and a whole lot more I couldn’t.
“Corn. Houses with porches. Mailboxes shining silver in the weeds along the road. Happiness: it is a thing to be lassoed, wrestled. No milksops or lightweights allowed.”
“The kind of geologist I like: his face will cloud over at the hint that he ‘should have done it differently.’ The thought must be dismissed even before it is formed. He or she will be the first, the absolute first to tell you he was wrong when this is so. But you can never make a great geologist believe he should have done it another way.”
Holy hell, this is good. This is the real-life “Where the Sea Used to Be,” which is one of the highest compliments I can give.
“The sea. Maybe when you look at the sea, at night. Have you ever done that? That is the same type of thought as knowing about oil and wanting somehow to get it out of the ground. Have you ever looked at the sea at night, when you could almost hear better than you could see?”
And because of that, or maybe because of other things too: it’s my favorite, far and away, of Bass’s non-fiction thus far. Maybe because it’s so personal. Maybe because it’s notes, maybe because it’s Mississippi. Maybe because there’s a lot of words in here I could have written and a whole lot more I couldn’t.
“Corn. Houses with porches. Mailboxes shining silver in the weeds along the road. Happiness: it is a thing to be lassoed, wrestled. No milksops or lightweights allowed.”
“The kind of geologist I like: his face will cloud over at the hint that he ‘should have done it differently.’ The thought must be dismissed even before it is formed. He or she will be the first, the absolute first to tell you he was wrong when this is so. But you can never make a great geologist believe he should have done it another way.”
Holy hell, this is good. This is the real-life “Where the Sea Used to Be,” which is one of the highest compliments I can give.
“The sea. Maybe when you look at the sea, at night. Have you ever done that? That is the same type of thought as knowing about oil and wanting somehow to get it out of the ground. Have you ever looked at the sea at night, when you could almost hear better than you could see?”
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