One of my favorite short stories is Rick Bass, “Where The Sea Used To Be.” Some days I don’t qualify it; I don’t say “one of,” it’s just my favorite story. Other days, another Rick Bass story is fresh in my mind so I get around it and say “one of.”This is the novel, by Rick Bass, by the same name. Wallis is here. Old Dudley is here. The oil is here; the buried sea. But it’s a whole different beast. First I thought it took place after that story, fleshing it out, expanding. Then, I thought it might do the same thing, but take place before. It’s neither. It’s alternate history. An alternate universe. The story and the book, they each have details that exclude the other. Even Wallis, Old Dudley. That Wallis, in the story, he couldn’t drill at the coast, he couldn’t drill anywhere but his buried beach in Alabama. He would say, “Why would a man want to go into a country he was not familiar with, knew nothing about?” This Wallis is drilling the coast, this Wallis is mapping millions of years in Montana. That Old Dudley was not good at cruelty. He was predatory by exception, not the rule. This Old Dudley is eating the world.And there is Mel, and there is Matthew, and there is Helen, and there is no Sara. And I love it. That the thing I love could be two things instead of the one. What Wallis thinks: “As if a man could be both awake or asleep, or both good and evil.” Or, also? That it’s either/or. A binary. What Mel thinks: A thing could be either one way or another. There didn’t need to be any more variance in the universe than that most basic rule of binary. A thing— glacier, fire, flood— happened or didn’t. A thing came or it went. A thing was either being born and was growing, or was dying. And with only those two possibilities— the day and night of things— transcribed across every object of the world, came all the mystery and richness one could ever hope to seek. It’s a love story. It’s the high and rich cost of metamorphosis. It’s the hot sea of oil. And it’s slow and languid and reckless and animal and I sank down into it like a place to live.“You could never figure it all out,” Mel said, watching the blinking of orange. “The closest you could come is to learning a small thing really well, and then hoping the big things run pretty much the same way.”t“What small thing would you learn?” Wallis asked, and Mel laughed.t“You’re right,” she said. “There’s probably nothing that small.” Or Matthew, with my thoughts exactly: “Shit almighty,” Matthew said, still grinning.
I cannot recommend this novel, because Bass tries to do too much in the development of the plot and characterization. It is vastly overwritten. If a reader searches the NYT review, it will be seen that this review is brutal. That said, I really enjoyed the core environment, the development of that little village, etc. I enjoyed all that a reader can learn about animals, plants and a lifestyle that most of us will never experience.We were in a little beach town and I bought this novel for a dollar in a used book store. For the positive comments above, I feel I have a bargain in this purchase. But, I'd not recommend the book.
What do You think about Where The Sea Used To Be (1999)?
This is a big, burly, living book. A masterpiece which makes no apologies to anyone or anything. Old Dudley might just be about the most rancid character I've ever encountered. Even now, almost a year later, he vividly crawls through my mind as that thing I combat each summer as a fishing guide. As to the rest; one of the better love stories I've ever read. One of the few books in the last couple of years that I was actually living when reading through. One of the most important slices into oil development and small towns/wilderness I've read.
—Cameron
This is a really hard novel for me to score. I’m not sure it always worked, and I am sure that I didn’t get much of what the author wanted me to get, but I give him credit for his ambition, for writing a novel that is totally unique, not even remotely like anything else I’ve ever read. It’s a sort of environmental novel that takes place over the course of a year in a remote valley in the mountains in northwestern Montana that is cut off from the rest of the world from about the first of November until April or May. The story centers around a young man, a geologist, who comes into the valley to determine where his boss can drill for oil. His boss is a crude ogre, but he has a daughter, more or less the hero of the story, who lives in the valley and loves it, and the young geologist is sent to live with her in her cabin. Much of the story revolves around their relationship, but we meet a fair number of other interesting characters among the 40 or so who live in the valley. And, in fact, it is really the valley itself that is the main character. Much of the novel is not realistic or believable, but it can’t really be categorized as magical realism, either; it feels more mythic. It’s a grand epic well worth exploring.
—Marvin
