For a Little While

By: Rick Bass

Narrated by: Rick Bass

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

Long considered one of the most gifted practitioners of the short story, Rick Bass is unsurpassed in his ability to perceive and portray the enduring truths of the human heart. Now, at last, we have the definitive collection of stories, new and old, from the writer Newsweek has called "an American classic".

To listen to his fiction is to feel more alive - connected, incandescently, to "the brief longshot of having been chosen for the human experience," as one of his characters puts it.

These stories reveal men and women living with passion and tenderness at the outer limits of the senses, each attempting to triumph against fate. Bass provides searing insights into the complexity of family and romantic entanglements, and his lush and striking language draws us ineluctably into the lives of these engaging people and their vivid surroundings. The intricate stories collected in For a Little While - brimming with magic and wonder, filled with hard-won empathy, marbled throughout with astonishing imagery - have the power both to devastate and to uplift. Together they showcase an iconic American master at his peak.

©2016 Rick Bass (P)2017 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"A literary titan...Bass is, hands down, a master of the short form, creating in a few pages a natural world of mythic proportions." ( The New York Times Book Review)

"While nature figures heavily in Bass' work, in this collection it always yields the foreground to people and their difficult, sometimes devastating lives." ( San Francisco Chronicle)

"This is a rich collection of stories by a major American writer esteemed for his originality as well as for his fine prose. One of the trademarks of the Rick Bass story is the fresh perception of places and people in their relationships to each other. Never facile, Bass is able to make us see and feel in unexpected ways and his stories call out to readers to stop and consider, to explore their feelings about what has risen up from the pages." (Annie Proulx)

audible, please title the chapters right

seriously how lazy is audible? title the chapters by the short story titles. good god.

Unique, Moving Listening Experience

What a wonderful audio book—read by the author, and accompanied by original compositions. I’d never heard so much music in an audio book before, nor music influence the delivery of the stories.

I personally found the pace and content required some breaks between stories. The pace is slow; but the stories never drag. Simply the pace of the narrative with a lot of these stories is far slower and more observant than your ordinary genre fiction.

Content? These stories span a huge range—but a love for the natural world links many of them. And how the human heart interacts with that backdrop.

I listened to this book in about four chunks. So happy I stumbled into this collection! Highly recommended.

Captures Contemporary Western/Rural America

I can't say enough about how much I have enjoyed Mr. Bass's fiction and prose. I relate to the writing as an outdoorsman as he captures the moments and contemplations that can only be drawn from a life afield. I also appreciate the grassroots approach of the recording. It is read by the author both solo and accompanied by what (I'm speculating) is a score composed by musicians who have endeavored to capture the emotional underpinnings of these diverse tales.

Best audio book ever.

I’m a huge fan of this author, having read most all of his works. But this reading, by the author himself, is possibly the best audiobook I have ever listened to. It would be impossible to explain why. Just listen.

A must audiobook for Bass fans

I feel like Bass's stories are a lot like modern Americana music like country, blues, and folk. So if you like those genres, you would probably like his stories. In sci fi, science is almost like a character, driving the plot. In Bass's stories, it's nature. Also, Audible like the previous review says, title your chapters right with the name of the short stories instead of just the numbers.

His short story the Hermit's Tale is one of my favorite short stories. His stories have the rural American feel; the mixture of rough beauty of the land and the people that live on it. Which is a true reflection of how he lives. While, I found some of the stories to be short and cruel to both animals and humans, I realized that's how it is. While some of Bass's stories have that nostalgic factor, most feel empty. But it does make me long to return to that life in rural America. Only if my lower back and neck agree LOL. I'm about 31 percent through. Currently at 3 or 4 stars depending on the rest of the stories.

I'm on chapter 16 of 26. I love the audiobook! It has original music as well as being narrated by the author. I love the story Swans. Yes, his stories do blend together after reading through multiple of them. I didn't like the first stories but they do still stuck with me. But it's like good maple syrup or fine whiskey. The small sips and pours excite and satisfy our palate but too much of anything dulls the taste. Great book although you have to like Bass's style. I believe while most of the stories are from his older publications, there are around 5 new stories near the end. But as for me, this was one of the best audible purchases for myself.

Here's my other most recent review after half a year of reading the book:
We take from the land and the land takes from us. But what does it take? What do you take? I recommend this AUDIOBOOK wholeheartedly as the author’s narration is SUBLIME. I was lukewarm about Rick Bass's For a Little While on Audible but it was read by the author with original music. I loved the author's short story "The Hermit's Tale." One of the reviews state that the biggest negative about the book is the stories and the themes all blend together. The themes being nature and the stories of people living with it. I agree but I also want to say that the small minute differences make themselves more poignant after months. You don't have to love every story to love this book. The stories about rural America being told without caricatures is the strength in this book. The stories about the boxer training under rough conditions (The Legend of Pig-Eye), the elk hunter getting lost (Her First Elk), the dementia in the story swans (Swans), the story about "goats" and trying to be a cattle baron in college (Goats). I also enjoyed Field Events and The Fireman. nature in his stories take on almost an ethereal and fantasy-like setting for the characters to live out their human lives in: loss, love, death, life. The story about the boxer fascinated me. I know a guy in AK that trains fighters to fight in Anchorage. I left the city during COVID to go to rural America to help in the COVID relief efforts in the school systems in rural Alaska. It nearly killed me. But in the words of Hemmingway (adapted), “Life breaks some; but for those it doesn’t break, it kills.” A lot of city folk (like myself at one point) idealizes the country life. But betweens the quiet and beauty of nature, there is isolation, pain, loss, and a relationship with the land that needs to be experienced to be appreciated.