Remembering a true great, writer Charles Portis
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There are better-known writers than Charles Portis, author of the classics “True Grit,” “Dog of the South” and “Masters of Atlantis,” but everyone who reads him seems to become a fan.
“People just do attach to his books, to his whole body of work, in ways they don't with a lot of other writers,” says Jay Jennings, the editor of “Charles Portis: Collected Works,” a recently published Library of America volume of novels, stories and other work. “I'm sure there are a few twostar Goodreads reviews of `True Grit' — I can't pretend to understand those people — but yeah, he does seem to evoke an avid fandom.”
Along with Jennings, well-known fans include writers Donna Tartt, Ed Park, Jonathan Lethem, Maria Semple, Wells Tower, Roy Blount Jr. and Ron Rosenbaum, as well as filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, who made the second film adaptation of “True Grit.” (The first starred John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glen Campbell and Robert Duvall.) Jennings adds that some of the writers of “The
Simpsons” and “Arrested Development” are Portis heads.
The Little Rock, Arkansas-based Jennings, who is also the author of “Carry the Rock: Race, Football and the Soul of an American City,” knows Portis' work well: He edited the excellent 2012 book “Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany,” which collected Portis' nonfiction, short stories and a play.
In fact, calling Jennings the editor of that book does him a bit of a disservice. “Escape Velocity” is a work of longstanding care and diligence; Jennings spent years collecting mentions of Portis, his work and the rare bit of undiscovered writing into an overstuffed file folder, which he then turned into the book.
That research also made it possible for Jennings to construct a chronology for the Library of American edition, which adds fresh understanding to Portis' life and work.
“I undertook `Escape Velocity' with the idea that there might one day be a Library of America edition, and so I wanted to gather these pieces that had been largely forgotten or unfound, even by some of the most rabid fans,” says Jennings. “That was part of my pipe dream of doing `Escape Velocity.' The other part was just having, you know, all this writing between two covers, rather than having to thumb through my folder with the clippings or printouts.”
Unlike famously reclusive authors like J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon, Portis, who died in 2020, wasn't a man of mystery; he just didn't much care to talk about his work. Jennings
Jay Jennings parlayed a signed book into a lifelong acquaintanceship with Charles Portis, a fellow Arkansan.
recalls finding a document that demonstrated Portis' deadpan humor and disinterest in self-promotion.
“Going through some of the papers, I found a marketing sheet for `Norwood,'” says Jennings, referring to Portis' first novel. “The first question was, `Describe your novel in 200 words or less.' And he typed, `This book defies brief summary.' That was it. Not helping the marketing people out at all.”
(I experienced something like this: Years ago, reaching out to his publisher to ask about interviewing Portis, I spoke with a kind young publicist who was sure Portis would want to talk to me. Portis, no surprise, was sure he did not. That was fine and not unexpected, and I only felt bad
for the disappointed publicist.)
Jennings, unlike most of Portis' fans, knew the man himself. As a Little Rock local, Jennings got his copy of 1985's “Masters of Atlantis” signed by its author at a bar called the Town Pump. They stayed in touch, getting together when Jennings was in town; when Jennings moved back to Little Rock, they began regularly meeting.
“He was always very generous with his encouragement and his advice, and that kept me going. So whenever I would come home to visit my parents, we'd meet up at one bar or another, and sort of the relationship grew from there,” says Jennings, recalling a regular Monday afternoon group that would gather at a place called The Faded Rose. “He did have a way of saying things that made even his spoken words memorable.”
Jennings found that to be true in the journalism he dug up. Prior to writing novels, Portis had been a columnist and reporter for the Arkansas Gazette and New York Herald Tribune (the latter is where he worked with Tom Wolfe, who recalls a meeting of Portis and Salinger). He worked briefly at Newsweek, dating Nora Ephron while there. Jennings sees not only a dogged journalist — one who covered the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr., the Ku Klux Klan and even the death of Elvis Presley's mother — but one with the eye and ear of a novelist.
“As a combat Marine, he saw the war close up; he saw civil rights battles close up. And the things that he saw and recorded in the course of his journalism career, I think, feed the novels. There's a certain talent in having that ear and that eye,” says Jennings.
“Even though he oftentimes makes fun or shows disdain for journalists, they have all the hallmarks of good journalism, which is, you know, a talent for scene, a great ear for spoken dialogue or spoken word, and a fineness of observation that separates the great journalists from, you know, from the ordinary.”
No offense taken on behalf of the ordinary, I tell him.
As we talk, Jennings tells me that his wife, Abby's, calico cat Cali is resting in his lap, casually mentioning that a famed actor, one known for providing the voice of God in films, named the cat.
“Cali was named that by Morgan Freeman, and how my wife came to acquire Cali is a Portis-esque story,” says Jennings, who adds, “If it came from the voice of God, then that's the cat's name.”
The bottom line to all this is that Portis is a writer worth your time if you haven't read him, and worth revisiting if you have. You're bound to find something you enjoy in one of his novels — or all of them. As Jennings wrote in the introduction to “Escape Velocity,” “Portis wrote at least one great novel, `True Grit,' and four maybe better ones.”
Jennings elaborates during our conversation.
“People have different favorites,” he says. “But any people who like him like them all … and that's unusual for any writer.”