Le New Yorker

Le New Yorker consacre un article 
à Charles Portis.

The Guy Who Wrote “True Grit”

Posted by Jon Michaud

The Coen brothers’ adaptation of “True Grit” is the No. 1 movie in the country this week, and the film’s release has made the 1968 Charles Portis novel on which it is based a best-seller again (and apparently legitimately this time). To the delight of Portis’s fans—and Overlook Press, which publishes his works—we seem to be in the midst of a genuine Portis revival. The Believer and the Atlantic have recently posted pieces from their archives about Portis (both worth a look, if you haven’t already). And a dip into The New Yorker’s annals reveals that this is not the first (or even the second) time Portis’s work has been the object of a concerted comeback effort.
In 1984, William McKibben wrote a Talk story about Madison Avenue Bookshop, which had recently purchased every remaining copy of Portis’s “The Dog of the South,” which was originally published in 1979 and had fallen out of print. (There were a hundred and eigthy-three in all). “Most of us who work in the store are Portis cultists,” Gary Goldsmith, the assistant manager told McKibben:

He’s the guy who wrote “True Grit,” but his two other novels have been largely overlooked…. We read it and believed in it—and now maybe someone will option it for a movie and hire me to write the screenplay.

Reached in Little Rock with this news, Portis said to McKibben that

What’s going on in New York with “The Dog of the South” is nice. Usually my books are like those Slim Whitman records you see on TV—“not available in any store.”

The New Yorker shared the Madison Avenue Bookshop’s high opinion of “The Dog of the South.” In an unbylined review, the magazine said of the book:

A summary-defying novel… Given only the space of a sentence, one might simply say that the hero is a cross between Buster Keaton and Don Quixote—innocent, generous to a fault, indefatigable, and perfectly deadpan—and that Charles Portis has blessed him with a supremely funny adventure.

That adventure may be coming to screens in the not-too-distant future. “The Dog of the South” was optioned last year by Bill Hader and Gret Mottola, who made “Adventureland.” On the heels of “True Grit,” yet another Portis revival may be in store.
The entire article—and the complete archives of The New Yorker, back to 1925—is available to subscribers. Non-subscribers can purchase the individual issue.
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