I think I read True Grit in 1969 so probably time to revisit it as I quite enjoyed it. As far as "Western" novels go, I would add Warlock, by Oakley Hall, to your list.

Michael Ondaatje is Canadian not American, unles you were talking about North American that is.

Whoa! Thanks for jogging my memory. I read this back in '75 or '76 in my Western History class in high school in Colorado. I remember really enjoying it at the time, and being disappointed in the John Wayne/Glen Campbell movie when our teacher showed us that after we read the book.

My teacher was into his subject, and dubbed a couple of kids in the class "Harold" and "Farrell," after a couple of dumb guys in the novel. He'd call on them, "what do you think, Harold?" The school district would be sued for that now, and the whole class would've had an intervention on sensitivity issues, but "Harold and Farrell" went along with it with good humor back then. (My teacher also accidentally discharged a loaded sawed-off shotgun into the ceiling once while discussing Doc Holiday during one of his show and tell lectures. Oops. What would happen to him in today's society?)

The reviewer places Portis up there with many other great authors. I didn't know anything about Pynchon or Nabokov back then. In the intervening years, I've read and enjoyed many Nabokov stories, and purchased and been frustrated by several of Pynchon's. (His most recent is in my 15-year-old daughter's room, who swiped it from me because she thinks it's cool that he's been on "The Simpsons." Neither of us have gotten more than a page into it.) I didn't know "good literature" back when I was 15, and until this review I wouldn't have thought about "True Grit" as anything other than a book we had to read for class, which I dimly remember because I thought at the time that it was pretty good. I'd forgotten about it until now, and have never known anything about Portis's other work. All his books sound interesting, so I'm off to Amazon to order myself several Solstice presents. I'll turn the light of 30+ years of literary maturity on it and see how it holds up, and what I missed back then.

Thanks for the cool blast-from-the-past review, Salon.

I found "True Grit" in a box full of Spanish language pulp fiction on the side of road in Somerville, MA. It had a "Felice Navidad" card stuck in it. I grabbed it out of curiosity. I'd always loved the movie, and was amazed by how good the book was. It also deepened my appreciation of the movie, it was a fairly faithful adaptation.

The girl who played Matty went on to play John Cusack's mother in "Better Off Dead." Which is bizarre, if you ask me.

is written up every five years or so as the great lost American writer, and always correctly. His twin sins are that he avoids publicity and is deeply funny. Oh, and I guess he could write a bit more often also. Calling him Pynchon-esque seems a bit off, though. He's a far more disciplined writer than Pynchon, more clean-lined. There's so much happening in a Portis book that is unspoken. True Grit is perhaps his most accessible book, but that doesn't make it any less profound. It reads as a fun romp, but there is a tragedy underlying it. The movie, though it preserves a lot of Portis' great dialogue, is a flat, lifeless thing for the most part. Another great entry to Portis' small but essential library is Norwood, which is the smoothest, funniest picaresque debut novel I've ever read. Summary doesn't do it justice. Just pick it up and start laughing.

Portis has his devotees. I remember discovering Portis' "True Grit" in an English-language library in Bangkok over a quarter-century ago. Like the previous poster, I had seen, and enjoyed, the movie, but I was overwhelmed by the novel. I also found the delightful "Norwood" in that same library; then began an odyssey to discover more writing by this 20th century successor to Mark Twain. I was disappointed in my search. Even though "Dog of the South" had been published in 1979, I had to finally track it down in a (pre-Ebay) second-hand book store in Fayetteville, Arkansas. When "Masters of Atlantis" emerged, I thought Portis was on a roll. However, it's been sixteen years since the only other book I know of, "Gringos," appeared. There have been the occasional magazine sightings in The Atlantic Monthly and Oxford American, but, otherwise, bupkus. Every word this man writes is pure gold, and all his fans can do is hope for at least one last novel before this genuine original joins Rooster and Mattie in the great beyond. Or in Chiapas.

I read True Grit before I saw the movie, and found the latter unwatchable. The wooden, 22-year-old Kim Darby was completely wrong to play 13-year-old spark plug Mattie. True Grit is one of the greatest American novels, and The Dog of the South is about the funniest book I've ever read. Both fans and haters of Kerouac will appreciate the echoes of On the Road in The Dog of the South, and it's hard to think of a funnier scene in all of literature than Mrs. Symes's interrogation of Ray Midge.

Portis's greatest gift, among many, is the ability to capture a distinctive voice and sustain it throughout his narrative. In True Grit it's the voice of the prim, elderly writer of ladies' historical magazine articles; in The Dog of the South it's the idiosyncratic perpetual student and side-lines observer. Neither of these characters is personally very likable, but Portis makes us love them because he writes with respect and deep understanding.

There should be a hardcover collection of Portis's work continually in print. I'd probably buy several.

Jim Crutchfield

Long Island City, NY

It's been a long time since I picked up my very dog-eared paperback copy of "True Grit," but I believe the funniest line from the film — "By God, she reminds me of me!" — only appeared in the screenplay and not the book.

Even if the line isn't Portis', though, I hope he wouldn't object to it.