Charles Portis (1933–2020)

I don’t know if the opening line of The Dog of the South has ever been included in any of those “Best First Line” lists, but it’s worthy:

“My wife Norma had run off with Guy Dupree and I was waiting
around for the credit card billings to come in so I could see where
they had gone.”

We know what happened and what’s going to happen - it’s just a matter of getting there now.

The narrator, Ray Midge, a self-described “predatory bird” look-alike who “can expect to be called show more a rat about three times a year” proceeds to track Norma and Guy Dupree through Texas, to Mexico, and finally to British Honduras (now Belize). As the first line suggests, Midge is a man of measured action. Instead of leading into the half-expected violence, The Dog of the South is a story of subtle humor. Along the way Midge runs into several eccentrics, including the shady Dr. Reo Symes, who dispenses such medical wisdom as “You’ll never find a red-headed person in a nuthouse.”

As well as creating nuanced characters, Charles Portis can turn a phrase. A woman that finds herself in a hospital cheers up the sick “in the confident manner of a draft-dodger athlete signing autographs for mutilated soldiers.” The Dog of the South smolders with outstanding writing. I’m keeping it close because I know it’s going to be on my mind until I read it again. show less

I have to be honest - I didn't really like this book. I didn't dislike it, per se - it just isn't the book for me.

I gave it four stars because it's obviously - and, I think, inarguably - a masterpiece. It's an incredibly well-crafted work of storytelling. All the superlative reviews of it are all true.

I recognize the sly, droll humor. I appreciate Mr. Portis' satire.

It's just not the book for me.

I was quite surprised to discover that I don't care much for this book, as I love both the movies show more made of it. I watched all the classic John Wayne films growing up and it was a delight to see him play against type as Rooster. I adore the Coen brothers screen adaptation! It's easily in my Top 20 films of all time.

The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that the movies are exactly why I don't like the book.

In the John Wayne movie, the story isn't what really matters - John Wayne playing the ultimate anti-John Wayne cowboy is just incredibly fun to watch. In the Coen brothers' movie, it's all about Mattie, and to see such pluck and assurance, such grit, in a girl who's only 14 years old is incredibly endearing.

The book, by contrast, is narrated entirely by an adult Mattie. It's only her voice from start to finish - even the other characters speak with her voice. Even 14-year-old Mattie speaks with adult Mattie's voice.

Imagine watching the Coen brothers' movie with all the dialog over-dubbed in the voice of the actress who plays adult Mattie. That's what reading the novel was like for me.

I don't like Mattie as an adult. I find her abrasive and off-putting. I find her harsh. What was endearing when she was 14 has become rigid and unforgiving in her adulthood.

Whereas I enjoy spending time with Rooster and young Mattie, I don't enjoy spending an entire book with adult Mattie. Which makes it pretty well impossible for me to truly enjoy the book.

That being said - this novel is a master course in the craftsmanship of storytelling. Personal dislike aside, I recognize that this is an amazing work of fiction. show less

It is the rare book that delivers a unique and complete voice, unadulterated, without shaving off the rough edges. Mattie Ross, Charles Portis’ young teen heroine in [True Grit] is just such a pure voice.

[True Grit] is told entirely by Mattie, re-told really, as though recounting the events toward the end of her life to someone close to her, someone with whom she shared a trust. So, how much of Mattie’s story is accurately reflected in the pages of the book? How much of the antics and show more character of Rooster Cogburn or LaBouef can we believe? How much of the speech and eccentricities of these rough men are true to life? Remember, we are viewing the entire story through the eyes of a lonely, and bitter from the sound of it, spinster who lived through the adventures when she was just fourteen-years-old. And these particular fourteen-year-old eyes are filtered through fundamentalist religion and the politics of 1890’s democrats.

Whether Mattie was an accurate historian or not, her story suggests a deeper issue – are we accurate historians of our own lives? Mattie describes how she left home to attend to the affairs of her recently murdered father. At fourteen, she ties up the loose ends of her father’s legal and business affairs with the acumen we would attribute to someone skilled in the art of ‘fixing.’ She enlists the services of the most brutal man she can find to help her catch a man at the top of his game in the art of con and vice. She hits the trail with this hard-drinking, hair-triggered brute, and manages to tame him somewhere along the trail. With Rooster’s help, and LeBouef’s, she exacts her revenge, and survives a nest of rattlesnakes. If you’re looking for realism, the story itself stretches the boundaries. But, perhaps because it is told by Mattie herself, all of it has the absolute ring of truth. The question is whether it is the truth or the truth that Mattie’s told herself through many years of living alone and caring for an ailing mother.

That question is one we could all put to ourselves. If nothing else, Portis manages to secure Mattie as someone who knows who she is and what has made her who she is. Portis’ subtlety in telling Mattie’s story in her own voice is magical, allowing us to see the hazy light just through the veil of her own peculiarities and grasp the point of her story, and his. Everyone begins to recreate the history of their own lives, re-shaping and excising the outlying facts when they don’t conform to the story we want to tell. In the end, Portis bedevils us all with a story about taming the beasts that lay hidden deep inside of us all. Mattie tames her fears and tames her own strong will to live through the adventure. Mattie helps Rooster to tame his own demons, ones created in blood and immorality. Mattie and Rooster help LaBouef tame his ego and pride to become something greater than himself. So, we forgive Mattie if she doesn’t tell everything just as it happened – just as our friends and family forgive us when the details go awry but the story makes its point; just as we forgive ourselves for re-shaping our own history if it helps us become who we need to be.

On a side note, this particular edition is graced with an afterword by Donna Tartt, she of [The Goldfinch] fame. Tartt explains her own fascination with Portis’ epic Old West tale, finding it the intersection of the frontier with chivalry. With apologies to Ms. Tartt, chivalry was not absent in the frontier, it was everywhere. The point she makes is that Rooster’s nobility seems to arise in his interaction with Mattie and her quest. I believer Portis gives us enough of Rooster’s background to see that he was a noble man at some point, even if he’s lost his way. So, I believe that the point, while well-taken, is slightly missed. My own take is that Roster regains lost nobility that was always there, he is able to tame the demons created by his poor choices, just as Mattie’s own nobility shines through the obsessive will and pride of her character.

Bottom Line: A tale of redemption, of people taming their demons and proving their nobility.

4 ½ bones!!!!! show less

When I first finished the book I was vaguely disappointed. True Grit is sui generis, but of the "spiritual trinity" of Norwood, The Dog of the South, and this one, I thought the picaresque structure, the easygoing plain-spoken main character, the straight-faced jokes, and the easy asides and insights in Gringos seemed to have the least impact on me. The whole book is as laid-back as its protagonist, a Portis stand-in named Jimmy Burns living in Mexico who gets tangled up in a scheme to show more rescue a stray gringo from a bunch of hippie cultists in the ruins of the Mayan pyramids. The pacing seemed so slow, the characters so blurrily defined, and the ending so anticlimactic, that I didn't really like it. It actually almost seemed like a partial autobiography - the constant sprinklings of Spanish phrases, the trademark car talk, the obvious deep immersion in Mexican culture - with all the potential for dead spots that implies. Then, and this sounds like a really stupid epiphany, I started thinking about it while I was eating at at a Mexican restaurant and I realized that the point of the book was right in the title. It's really about what happens to Americans when they come to Mexico, and the way they find meaning in this endlessly adaptable country, conveniently close yet still foreign enough to offer new possibilities. For Jimmy, Mexico offers the possibility of the quiet life of a voluntary expatriate, of doing odd jobs and escaping the pressures of his home country. For the pyramid hippies, Mexico's ruins have a convenient penumbra of mystery for their attempts to find religious meaning in that vanished Mayan culture. For the archaeologists, each dig site is another opportunity for a power trip, to one-up their colleagues and impress everyone else with the work they imagine they're doing.

Everyone in the book is coming to Mexico for their own reasons, but keep falling back into the patterns of the culture they came from. You can never really shake off the habits of your home, and so when a bunch of flakes show up in this country, many of them use it to indulge their worst habits. It's Ugly American Syndrome, basically, and Portis is his usual wry self about it. The reason why this occurred to me at a Mexican restaurant (bear with me) is because one thing I like about the city I live in is its excellent food - it's had a lot of Mexican immigrants importing big chunks of their culture, and it's therefore very easy to eat cheaply and well. I get to enjoy some of the benefits of Mexico and all of the benefits of the US, but others make different choices depending on their natures. I wouldn't say that Portis is any more thrilled with human nature of the American variety than he normally is, but he's still able to throw a few chuckle-worthy scenes, and of course if you live in the Southwest you'll be able to relate to it a lot more. show less