True Grit

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: Ah, young Mattie. What a wonderful tale you have to tell. 'True Grit'is a work of rarity. Straight forward, brash, and honest, which is a description of the narrative and the narrator. Mattie is a strong and enduring character who is the perfect foil for Rooster and all the rowdies that populate the book. The only knock on the book is a lack of emotional connection with the characters. When there is danger, we are interested but not emotionally involved. This lack of feeling comes from the way the narrative is purposely given; in an unemotional and honest way. (Try to divorce from your mind the John Wayne icon as you read this novel).

Rating:
Summary: wonderful!!!!
Review: Ah, young Mattie. What a wonderful tale you have to tell. 'True Grit'is a work of rarity. Straight forward, brash, and honest, which is a description of the narrative and the narrator. Mattie is a strong and enduring character who is the perfect foil for Rooster and all the rowdies that populate the book. The only knock on the book is a lack of emotional connection with the characters. When there is danger, we are interested but not emotionally involved. This lack of feeling comes from the way the narrative is purposely given; in an unemotional and honest way. (Try to divorce from your mind the John Wayne icon as you read this novel).

Rating:
Summary: An American Classic
Review: Charles Portis, a veteran of the Marine Corps in the Korean War from Little Rock, Arkansas, worked as a newspaperman in Little Rock, Memphis, New York, and London, ending his newspaper career as London bureau chief for the New York Herald-Tribune. He also wrote for such magazines as the Saturday Evening Post before launching his career as a novelist with the incomparable Norwood. True Grit, his second book, is one of the true joys of American literature. I give it four stars rather than five because it may not be as significant, ultimately, as Huckleberry Finn or, say, Faulkner's The Hamlet. This is beside the point. True Grit will likely last as long as does this Republic. It is funny, scary, thrilling. How can a burr-head Marine like Portis channel Mattie Ross of Yell County, Arkansas, a fourteen-year-old girl bent on avenging her father's cowardly murder at the hands of the white-trash Tom Chaney? It's a mystery. The novel was made into a film, the only one for which John Wayne was awarded an Oscar, but don't let that fool you. This is a great book, one that will bear many rereadings.

Rating:
Summary: An archetypal and highly recommended western
Review: First published in 1968, set in the American frontier during the 1870's, and the basis for one of the most popular western films John Wayne ever made, True Grit is an adventurous novel about Mattie, a young woman determined to avenge her father's death. She convinces one-eyed, fat-bellied, seemingly disreputable U. S. Marshall "Rooster" Cogburn, to accompany her on a journey where they will confront outlaws and worse tracking the murderous gang into dangerous Indian Territory in pursuit of her mission of retribution. A raw saga of character and determination embodying the spirit of the traditional Western, True Grit is an archetypal and highly recommended western.

Rating:
Summary: Have this book surgically attached to your body!
Review: I have read True Grit about 16 times. Every time I go into The Strand or any book store I find a copy and prop it up on the fiction table hoping to infect someone else with the Portis bug. I have read all of his work, even "Gringos," and it is all as funny and real as "True Grit," especially "Norwood." I lobby high school teachers to get "True Grit" or "Norwood" on reading lists and I lend out copies left and right or give them away in the hopes of widening Portis' sphere of influence.

But enough about me. "True Grit" is such a great read, full of jokes. I know I won't do them justice but here are a couple of scenes I like: The degenerate Marshall Rooster Cockburn lives in the back of a general store with a Chinese guy and a cat called Genera Lee. He sleeps in a string bed (!) and shoots a rat during a business meeting with Mattie, the 14-year-old protagonist out after her father's killer. Or after Mattie tries to buy a horse from a local business man, vexing him beyond all limits, the business man sees her walking up the path and says "I heard tell of a young girl drowning in a well last night. But I can see you are fine." And the horse Blackie is such a good horse and the scene near the tail of the book where Blackie meets his end is so succinct and sad!

This is a great book that I think just about everyone would enjoy from 10-year-olds to 75 year-olds

Portis is supposedly holed up in a fishing shack in Arkansas writing a new book. I have a google search on his name to keep track of all Portis activity! I can't wait!

Rating:
Summary: To be young, Calvinist, and ugly.
Review: I love this novel, having stumbled across it in a used bookstore some 20 years ago, having read it expecting not much more than stilted prose and shootouts, and having returned to it again and again since that first reading.

It's written in the first person, kind of like a memoir, by an old woman describing a youthful adventure. And what an adventure! Shootouts are the least of it.

Mattie Ross, the adolescent girl, is stingy, opinionated, unsentimental, and as tough as John Wayne, if not as big and strong. She conforms to Northrop Frye's concept of the "ironic" hero -- too naive to understand the things she's dealing with, like Voltaire's "Candide." When her ability to keep up during the pursuit of some outlaws is questioned, she answers defiantly, "Pappa took me on a coon hunt once." Camping overnight with the two lawmen, she registers a succinct complaint, "One of the officers made a wet snoring sound. It was disgusting."

But the prose is delirious throughout, like the events they describe. There's a laugh on almost every page, far too many to give examples. I should mention too that the prose is historically and regionally accurate. About a bucket of milk, Matty says, "It looks like bluejohn to me." I looked up "bluejohn" in the Dictionary of American Regional English, and there it was, an old term used in and around Arkansas for skim milk. Likewise, kerosene becomes coal oil. Tall scrubby weeds are a "brake." And all of these regionalisms are woven into a prose style that is memorably idiosyncratic and unintentionally funny as all get out! Rooster Cogburn intends to shoot an unsuspecting man in the back because, "It will give them to know our intentions is serious." Now that's a sentence to savor. First of all, there is the absurdity of the plan. Cogburn, instead of calling out and telling him that he's serious, is going to kill him just to be sure he and his friends know it. Second, there is the absence of contractions, as if the narrator is determined not to lapse into a casual style. And there is the attempt at elegance of expression -- "give them to know," and "our intentions [not just "we"]" are not to be taken lightly. And then there is the telling mixture of a plural noun ("intentions") with a single verb ("is"). The effect is disjointed. It's like hearing a rapper throw in an allusion to Thomas Aquinas.

I haven't read any other works by Charles Portis. I haven't gone out of my way to avoid them but I haven't sought them out either because I can't believe they could possibly match the humor, irony, character, and suspense of True Grit.

Rating:
Summary: Gutsy western classic
Review: Mattie Ross must be one of the all-time greatest fictional heroines as she embarks, in her own words, "to avenge her father's blood".

I love the humor of Portis's book,

COWBOY: I gave some thought to stealing a kiss from you, but now I am of a mind to give you five or six good licks with my belt.

MATTIE: One would be as bad as the other.

And again,

MATTIE: Do you need a good lawyer?

COWBOY: I need a good judge.

This is a heady mix. The technique of a first-person narrator adds realism and immediacy, which combines with the author's sense of drama and irony to create something quite remarkable. It is only strange that "True Grit" should have found more fame on the screen than on the page.

One thing annoyed me and that is hardly the fault of the writer. The cover blurb states,

"Mattie Ross should soon join the pantheon of America's legendary figures such as Kit Carson, Wyatt Earpp and Jesse James" (Washington Post)

Well, perhaps, if only she could jump that thin barrier which separates fact from fiction.

"True Grit" is such a compelling novel that I was genuinely surprised to find that Charles Portis is a living author. I had supposed it had been written closer to the time in which it is set, such is its sense of authenticity.

It is also unbearably sad as well as funny. As the older Mattie states, ruefully reminiscing on her young self, "time just gets away from us." Such wryness is more shocking than all the snake-pits, shoot-outs and dying ponies of the early part of the story.

I have a few quibbles. The two marshals, Rooster Cogburn and LaBoeuff live to great ages (we are told Cogburn lives to 68) when I guess in reality most would have lucky to reach 40, even if they were not vastly overweight and whisky-quaffing like the hero. But overall I really enjoyed this short novel and its introduction by Donna Tartt, even if she does not fully acknowledge the importance of Portis to her own work.






Rating:
Summary: A TRUE WESTERN WINNER ON ALL COUNTS
Review: Mosey on over to Arkansas and Missouri, why don't cha? - and check out this edition of TRUE GRIT by Charles Portis. With a stunning first person narrative voice, you'll find it's an absolute classic of the western genre - indeed, of the novel form itself.


Unfairly underated, or even misunderstood in the UK (my own well-thumbed copy is a child-oriented Puffin edition), Charles Portis' masterpiece has hitherto been quite sniffily regarded by the cognoscenti amongst us who are never stuck for a word or two, and invariably presume to dictate our literary tastes for us. (Naturally, John Wayne and Glen Campbell in the film version will have struck no chords of recognition with the literati!)

But personally, I was really interested to learn recently that novelist Donna Tartt's mother was "so crazy about (TRUE GRIT) that when she had finished it, she . . . read it all over again."

Only once in a bibliophliac lifetime have I been similarly affected by a novel, and that too was by a western: Elmore Leonard's HOMBRE. But, of course, HOMBRE too is an absolute classic of the novel form, though the literary snobs amongst us don't necessarily want us to know that.

I have been grateful too for Donna Tartt's incisive reminder about "the great abiding pleasure of (the narrative voice)" in TRUE GRIT. Because this set me thinking about my personal favourites in this respect. Two of them are listed above; the others being ROOM AT THE TOP; THE GREAT GATSBY; A CLOCKWORK ORANGE; JACK'S RETURN HOME (a.k.a. GET CARTER); I, CLAUDIUS; Keith Waterhouse's THERE IS A HAPPY LAND; THE CATCHER IN THE RYE; and ALFIE - to name but a phew!



Rating:
Summary: Best Western
Review: There are a lot of great western novels, but none can match the oddball charm and effortless excitement of True Grit. Even the movie version is so good they couldn't kill it with Glenn Campbell's singing.
A permanent classic.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Book!!
Review: This is an exciting book to read. It takes you on a great adventure. Mattie Ross is a brilliant and smart character. She is a head strong young girl. Rooster is funny and so is LaBeouf. Once I watched the movie "True Grit" I had to have the book. I read the book twice it is so good. I have seen the movie up-teen times. I have the movie on both VHS and DVD.