Page 29 - ARUBA TODAY

A29
PEOPLE & ARTS Wednesday 19 February 2020
'True Grit' novelist Charles Portis dies at age 86

By HILLEL ITALIE engine hitting on about
Associated Press three cylinders."
NEW YORK (AP) — Novel- Anxious to write novels,
ist Charles Portis, a favorite Portis left the paper in 1964
among critics and writers and from Arkansas com-
for such shaggy dog stories pleted "Norwood," pub-
as "Norwood" and "Grin- lished two years later and
gos" and a bounty for Hol- adapted for a 1970 movie
lywood whose droll, bloody of the same name starring
Western "True Grit" was a Glen Campbell and Joe
best-seller twice adapted Namath.
into Oscar nominated films, Portis placed his stories in
died Monday at age 86. familiar territory. He knew
Portis, a former newspaper his way around Texas
reporter who apparently and Mexico and worked
learned enough to swear enough with women string-
off talking to the media, ers from the Ozarks in Ar-
had been suffering from kansas to draw upon them
Alzheimer's in recent years. for Mattie's narrative voice
His brother, Jonathan Portis, in "True Grit." He eventually
told The Associated Press settled in Little Rock, where
that he died in a hospice he reportedly spent years
in Little Rock, Arkansas, his working on a novel that
longtime residence. was never released. "Grin-
Charles Portis was among gos," his fifth and last novel,
the most admired authors came out in 1991.
to nearly vanish from pub- Portis published short fic-
lic consciousness in his own tion in The Atlantic during
lifetime. His fans included the 1990s, but was mostly
Tom Wolfe, Roy Blount Jr. forgotten before admiring
and Larry McMurtry, and essays in Esquire and the
he was often compared New York Observer by Ron
to Mark Twain for his plain- Rosenbaum were noticed
spoken humor and wry by publishing director Tra-
perspective. Portis saw the cy Carns of the Overlook
world from the ground up, Press, which reissued all of
from bars and shacks and Portis' novels. Some of his
trailer homes, and few spun journalism, short stories and
wilder and funnier stories. travel writings were pub-
In a Portis novel, usually who starred as Rooster Portis was born in 1933 in El as a night police reporter lished in the 2012 anthology
set in the South and south Cogburn, the drunken, Dorado, Arkansas, one of for the Memphis Commer- "Escape Velocity."
of the border, characters one-eyed marshal Mattie four children of a school su- cial Appeal and finishing In recent years, the au-
embarked on journeys that enlists to find the killer. The perintendent and a house- as London bureau chief thor lived in open seclu-
took the most unpredict- role brought Wayne his first wife whom Portis thought for the New York Herald Tri- sion, a regular around Little
able detours. Academy Award and was could have been a writer bune. Rock who drove a pickup
In "Norwood," an ex-Marine revived by the actor, much herself. As a kid, he loved Fellow Tribune staffers in- truck, enjoyed an occa-
from Texas heads East in a less successfully, in the se- comic books and movies cluded Wolfe, who re- sional beer and stepped
suspicious car to collect a quel "Rooster Cogburn." and the stories he learned garded Portis as "the origi- away from reporters. He
suspicious debt, but winds Rooster was so strong a from his family. In a brief nal laconic cutup" and a did turn up to collect The
up on a bus with a circus character that a new gen- memoir written for The At- fellow rebel against the Oxford American's Award
dwarf, a chicken and a girl eration of filmgoers and Os- lantic Monthly, he recalled boundaries of journalism, for Lifetime Achievement
he just met. "The Dog of the car voters welcomed him growing up in a community and Nora Ephron, who in Southern Literature and
South" finds one Ray Midge back. In 2010, the Coen where the ratio was about would remember her col- was known to answer the
driving from Arkansas to brothers worked up a less "two Baptist churches or league as a sociable man occasional letter from a
Honduras in search of his glossy, more faithful "True one Methodist church per with a reluctance to use reader. But otherwise Portis
wife, his credit cards and Grit," featuring Jeff Bridges gin. It usually took about a telephone. His interview seemed to honor Mattie's
his Ford Torino. In "Gringos," as Rooster and newcomer three gins to support a subjects included Malcolm code in "True Grit" for how
an expatriate in Mexico Hallie Steinfeld as Mattie. Presbyterian church, and a X and J.D. Salinger, whom to deal with journalists.
with a taste for order finds The film received 10 nomi- community with, say, four Portis encountered on an "I do not fool around with
himself amid hippies, end- nations, including best ac- before you found enough airplane. He was also a first- newspapers," Mattie says.
of-the-world cultists and tor for Bridges, and brought tepid idolators to form an hand observer of the civil "The paper editors are
disappearing friends. new attention to Portis and Episcopal congregation." rights movement. In 1963, great ones for reaping
The public knew Portis best his novel, which topped He was a natural racon- he covered a riot and the where they have not sown.
for "True Grit," the quest the trade paperback list of teur who credited his stint in police beating of black Another game they have is
of Arkansas teen Mattie The New York Times. the Marines with giving him people in Birmingham, Ala- to send reporters out to talk
Ross to avenge her fa- "No living Southern writer time to read. After leaving bama. Around the same to you and get your stories
ther's murder. The novel captures the spoken idioms the service, he graduated time, he reported on a Ku free. I know the young re-
was serialized in the Satur- of the South as artfully as from the University of Ar- Klux Klan meeting, a dullish porters are not paid well
day Evening Post in 1968 Portis does," Mississippi na- kansas in 1958 with a de- occasion after which "the and I would not mind help-
and was soon adapted tive Donna Tartt wrote in an gree in journalism and for grand dragon of Mississippi ing those boys out with their
(and softened) as a film afterword for a 2005 reissue the next few years was a disappeared grandly into 'scoops' if they could ever
showcase for John Wayne, of the novel. newspaper man, starting the Southern night, his car get anything right." q