Charles Portis poll

!! hooray!

now I have to do some deep soul searching

I want to say True Grit but I love Dog of the South and Norwood a great deal.

i read masters of atlantis last year and loved it but for some reason didn't read any other portis until recently, then powered through the rest except for true grit, which i am saving for last for some reason. i think norwood might be my favorite so far but they are all pretty amazing.

i am also curious about the big gaps in his writing career. like did he write dog of the south for 11 years or did he just not have any ideas/not feel like writing for a long time or was he doing something else?

Portis meets his Rooster

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/gallery/photo/true_grit2_f.jpg

was planning to read more after True Grit. Haven't.

n/a I kind of got the feeling that he just sort of wrote when the mood took him, that he could lapse between 'being a writer' and 'normal life' relatively easily. I think part of the reason he has stayed off the radar, publicity wise is because he really doesn't think writing is that big of a deal.

At least that's my theory. I also think it's why he's so good at it. It's like the best furniture is made by the guy who just sets out to make a chair for you to sit on, you know?

xpost did you enjoy True Grit?

"was planning to read more after True Grit. Haven't."

Fascinating!!!

no trolling in the Portis thread. THIS IS A NICE PLACE

Think you're pretty otm, VegemiteGrrl. Last year the Oxford American convinced him to emerge from his house to accept an award and he even did a little reading. My good friend got some great shots of him, so I'm vicariously excited. Word about town is he's got a couple of go-to restaurants near his home here in Little Rock. I always keep an eye out when I eat in those joints (which is pretty rare). No sightings yet.

I'm voting Gringos, and I may be alone here. It may be because it was my first. Hear there's a film adapt in the works. Hoping for like a cross between a sad-sack Billy Jack and sad-sack Jack T. Colton.

i was pleasantly surprised how good/different gringos was! i was a little worried since it was the most recent one. more plot-oriented and a lot more characters than the earlier stuff but i thought it held up

yes, I liked TG v much

admrl having a bad LA day

Gringos is the only one I haven't read, I need to hunt it down.

I read a really cool informal conversation with Portis recently, I think someone put it on the True Grit thread --- I'll see if I can find it and repost it here.

I think I will have a hard time not voting for True Grit as I think about it more and more...Mattie is one of my all-time favorite characters from literature, right up there with Harper Lee's Scout. I'm a sucker for a girl with gumption :)

Voted Masters of Atlantis. Odd, deadpan hilarity.

"He also commissioned a drawing of a pop-eyed, moronic human face, that of a collegiate-looking fellow with spiky hair and a big bow tie, and had rubber stamps made of it. The face had a strange power to annoy, even to sicken the spirit--one had to turn away from it--and Popper directed that it be stamped on every page of Hen's books, in a different place on each page so that the reader could not prepare himself."

Dog of the South by a hair over Masters of Atlantis.

John Dolan's savaging of Franzen's The Corrections has stuck w/me due to his digression on Portis halfway through.

Word about town is he's got a couple of go-to restaurants near his home here in Little Rock. I always keep an eye out when I eat in those joints (which is pretty rare).

I saw him at that franchise restaurant next door to the Town Pump. I tried to take a very nonchalant photo while I walked past his table, but maybe knowing in the back of my mind that he loves his privacy, it didn't turn out so well.

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/tt203/pplains/11-6.jpg

that's still pretty A+, just knowing it's him.

He's...beautiful

Ha! That's rad, pplains. I think I've sat at that very booth (or one just like it anywhere else in the place)! Good spot fer keepin an eye on the car.

Dog

With Norwood a close second

Quality control so high with Portis, won't be surprised when every book has at least a few champions.

Really? Remember reading the first few chapters of Masters Of Atlantis and thinking it was kind of arch without being funny. And Gringos seemed to the only one in print at one point (although surely True Grit was as well) so I always pegged it for some kind of crossover dilution without even opening it. Perhaps it is time for a second chance.

Meanwhile, at the back of the crowd, Portis held the envelope in his hand. He opened it, pulled out the check, studied it for a minute, then leaned over to show it to the woman seated next to him before sliding it back into the envelope.

(Article featuring andrew's friend's pics.)

http://www.arktimes.com/images/blogimages/2010/12/22/1293064881-portis.jpg

Cool.

Guy I always think of when I think of Portis is Padgett Powell. Still have to finish reading The Interrogative Mode.

i finally read true grit so now i can vote for norwood with confidence. i do wish true grit was like three times as long though.

also voted norwood - love this passage:

Rita Lee came back with a frozen Milky Way and some confession magazines and comic books. She read about a miser duck called Uncle Scrooge, and his young duck nephews, whose adventures took place in a city where all the bystanders, the figures on the street, were anthropoid dogs walking erect. Norwood read about Superman and the double-breasted-suited Metropolis underworld. It was a kryptonite story and not a bad one.

anybody ever seen the movie version of norwood w/ jon voight (its meant to be terrible, tho' voigt seems like p good casting)? the closest nov i know to norwood's gothic comedy is modern baptists by james wilcox, which i wld also v much rec for those who have exhausted the portis bunch

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

omg I'm an idiot I didn't vote. That is why True Grit = 0

fail ;_;

ha surprising that masters of atlantis got 1 vote and true grit got 0.

it's all my fault

:(

ha surprising that masters of atlantis got 1 vote and true grit got 0.

― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, May 16, 2012 2:06 PM (1 hour ago)

Arkansas native Charles Portis, author of True Grit, will soon release his first new book in more than 20 years.

Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany will be published this fall by Butler Center Books, a division of the Central Arkansas Library System.

The book, which collects Portis' nonfiction and short stories as well as a memoir and a play, spans his half-century-long writing career, covering his early journalism from the 1950s when he worked for several newspapers up to more recent magazine stories published in the Atlantic and the Oxford American.

nice

weeeee

Charles Portis Dies at 86

I have never sought out information about him as a person, but he was the author of many worthwhile and interesting books. Rest in peace, Mr. Portis. Your works will continue to be read.

heartbroken. :(

anybody ever seen the movie version of norwood w/ jon voight (its meant to be terrible, tho' voigt seems like p good casting)?

It's Glen Campbell, not Jon Voight - unless there's another movie version of "Norwood"? Not only Glen Cambell, but Kim Darby too!

...and Joe Namath!

RIP, one of the greats. these poll results were weird, i think portis-heads overcorrect for the popularity of true grit sometimes

and two people thought "gringos" was his best book?

^ChasPollops

(Not your post, the two votes)

Don’t sleep on the link I dug up
TOMORROW, Sat. Jan 6, is the last day of COLISEUM BOOKS in NYC

Also, closest thing I ever found to Portis was Padgett Powell, although of course it is not quite an exact match.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/what-charles-portis-taught-us

i am here to formally announce that i will pay you all of my money in exchange for an open-world RPG based on the novels of charles portis

— pete beatty (@petebeatty) March 18, 2020

I could see LaBouef driving a Ford Torino, sure.

*bump*

From Library of America enewsletter:

Jay Jennings, editor of the LOA edition of Portis’s collected works, recently went through the archive and wrote about the experience on our website. Though he didn’t find an unpublished draft of a novel “set in Veracruz and involving chiropractors or witches,” he did unearth a wealth of material shedding light on the famously shoptalk-averse Portis’s craft and process.

for the True Grit fans out there, i would recommend God's Country by Percival Everett. not sure how intentional it is but it really felt like a sideways take on TG to me, in terms of tone and plot.

ooh thx!

Another reminder to subscribe to the Library of America and get the slipcover edition of his works