True Grit Book

I loved it.

Mattie Ross is one of the great American children characters along with Huckleberry Finn and Scout Finch. Portis' protagonist and narrator looks back from the early 1900s to her childhood in the 1870s, not long after the end of the Civil War, when she as a 14 year old girl went out into the Indian nation to find her father's killer.

Reminiscent of Mark Twain (and also Barbara Kingsolver's narration in The Poisonwood Bible) the lyric quality of Charles Portis's prose is a treasure. Portis has captured an earlier language and a world more than a hundred years gone comes alive again in the pages held before us.

"People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band."

Mattie Ross shows a pluck not often seen in today's reality nor in our modern literature. Portis' character was lifted from history as seamlessly and as accurately as her sharpened pencil bookkeeping and the quality of her vouchers for payment.

This teenage girl was every bit the match for hardened men of her day and her narration, looking back from a long life, conjured images of a tough older women, wizened to her world yet acknowledging from a distance of time the stuff of her earlier self. Portis has Mattie speak some gems:

"As he drank, little brown drops of coffee clung to his mustache like dew. Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone."

"You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it."

"But I had not the strength nor the inclination to bandy words with a drunkard. What have you done when you have bested a fool?"

The films, both of them - Henry Hathaway's 1969 award winning film starring John Wayne and the Coen brothers film starring Jeff Bridges - are two of my all time favorite movies. While Portis' novel is told from the spunky perspective of Mattie Ross (and both films follow her as the central protagonist) in both the character of Deputy Marshall Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn is the man who steals the show.

"Who is the best marshal they have?'

The sheriff thought on it for a minute. He said, 'I would have to weigh that proposition. There is near about two hundred of them. I reckon William Waters is the best tracker. He is a half-breed Comanche and it is something to see, watching him cut for sign. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don't enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork. Now L.T. Quinn, he brings his prisoners in alive. He may let one get by now and then but he believes even the worst of men is entitled to a fair shake. Also the court does not pay any fees for dead men. Quinn is a good peace officer and a lay preacher to boot. He will not plant evidence or abuse a prisoner. He is straight as a string. Yes, I will say Quinn is about the best they have.'

I said, 'Where can I find this Rooster?"

I have loved the films for years but this was my first time reading and the first thing that came to me (besides both films loving proximity to the text) is that this is a funny book. I smiled frequently during many of Mattie's descriptions of events and laughed out loud several times. Though I would not call this a comedy, it is a well rounded and brilliant masterpiece that contains comic elements.

"She said, 'Goodbye, Reuben, a love for decency does not abide in you.' There is your divorced woman talking about decency. I told her, I said, 'Goodbye, Nola, I hope that little nail selling bastard will make you happy this time."

An American classic, but one that has a universal appeal, Portis' has created a masterpiece.