Courtesy Encyclopedia of Arkansas
Charles Portis passed away today in Little Rock, at the age of 86. If you like westerns, John Wayne, and Glen Campbell, most likely you have seen ‘True Grit’. Charles wrote the best-selling book, along with several others.
Portis was born in El Dorado, Arkansas in 1933. He was raised in Hamburg…went to the University of Arkansas and earned a degree in journalism, after a stint in the Marine Corps in Korea. He eventually wrote for the Arkansas Gazette, then for the New York Herald Tribune. He covered the civil rights stories of the day, throughout the South. Afterward, he became a fiction writer, full-time.
Charles Portis’ first novel was Norwood, in 1966. Two years later, True Grit was published (1968). Both of these novels were originally published as a serial read, in the Saturday Evening Post magazine. True Grit was the Big Hit of Portis’ career, as a best-selling novel, and a major motion picture, twice. John Wayne won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for his characterization of Reuben J. ‘Rooster’ Cogburn, the U.S. Marshal. In 2010, the Coen Brothers staged a remake of the film, which was not like the original but was also pretty good. Other novels include The Dog of the South (1979), Masters of Atlantis (1985) and Gringos (1991). His nonfiction work was published in 2012, Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany. Throughout the years, he wrote articles for the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, and Saturday Evening Post magazines, too. Charles Portis was able to make good use of that U of A diploma, most certainly. If you have the inclination, I invite you to read some of the Portis works. His dialogue is interesting; not like any other, you have read, in the modern-day.
Today, though, I am thinking of my friend Jane Portis. Charles was her Uncle Buddy. She was crazy about her uncle, who made sure that her mother, sister, and she attended the premiere of ‘True Grit’ in Little Rock. Not only that, she tells a fun story about Uncle Buddy teaching her to drive, out in the back property of his house. Sure he was famous…but he was simply Jane’s Uncle Buddy. No frills.
As I told Jane, I am thankful for the entertainment her Uncle Buddy brought us, both in reading and on film. I appreciated his talent.
Write On, Charles Portis.