Fortunate Son
Fortunate Son
Selected Essays from the Lone Star State
Rick Bass’s Fortunate Son is a literary tour of the Lone Star State by a native Texan of exceptional talent. The essays encompass a Texas that is both lost and found, past and present. The stories reach from Galveston Bay to the Hill Country outside Austin, and from Houston in the 1960s to today. They are bound together by a deep love and a keen eye for the land and its people and by an appreciation for what is given, a ruefulness for what is lost, and a commitment to save what can be saved.
"This is a journalist’s Texas scrapbook, then: a firefighting story, a musical pilgrimage, a ramble in Texas’s tiniest public wilderness (one of only five in the entire state). Fishing with my father and uncle on a lake that is partly in Texas and partly in Louisiana; flying around the borders of Texas—usually defined by water, a resource that will vanish in much of the state within our lifetime; hanging out at my parents’ cattle farm down near Goliad; reading the work of Texans before me."—from the Introduction
The book’s sixteen essays, both old and new, form a kind of Lone Star collage.…Bass’s writings are shot through with warmth and worry.
Mr. Bass is an exquisite and unfussy writer.
Bass’s book is probing at times, but it also exudes a more ethereal quality. Reading it reminded me of artist and musician Terry Allen’s description of one of his albums as ‘a haunting.’ In Fortunate Son, Texas isn’t a protagonist or antagonist; rather, it’s an ethereal spirit that touches on essays.
Fans of the author’s writing and collectors of Texas literature alike will prize his homecoming.
Perfect for fans of [Larry] McMurtry’s essays.
Rick Bass has something important to say, and he says it good.
Rick Bass is one of the most important American writers of his generation. In literary-historical terms, he takes his place among legends such as Edward Abbey, John Graves, Aldo Leopold, and Annie Dillard, among others, as a notable nature essayist.
Rick Bass is a Texas native now living in Montana. Recognized by numerous Pushcart Prizes and the O. Henry Awards as well as the Texas Institute of Letters, Bass continues to publish celebrated fiction and nonfiction about the natural world and humans’ place in it. His recent books include For A Little While: New and Selected Stories and The Traveling Feast: On the Road and at the Table with My Heroes.
Introduction
Into the Fire
The Shining Marsh
Moon Story
A Dog in the Hand
The Farm
Adventures with a Texas Naturalist: Roy Bedichek
Toledo Bend
Into the Woods with James McMurtry: Hunting Wild Turkeys, Great Songs, and Wide Open Spaces
Into the Wild
Writing in Stone
3,822 Miles
For the Love of the Game
When a Hunter Dies
Maps
