A Satirist at the Top of His Form
By Phil Surguy
[
A review of Gringos, by Charles Portis,
Transcribed by Alex T. Moore from The Toronto Star (May 18, 1991), 
for non-commercial use on The Unofficial Charles Portis Website 
(http://charlesportis.cjb.net).
]

THE BLURB ON the front dust jacket flap of this book is an insult to 
its author, who is one of the finest American satirists now working. 
It begins with a rave about Portis' first two novels, Norwood (1966) 
and True Grit (1968). Then, perhaps awed by the fact that those books 
got made into Glen Campbell movies, the blurb writer drivels on about 
Portis being back at the top of his form with his most successful book 
in many years.  

Gringos is, indeed, a successful novel, but Portis' two intervening 
books: The Dog of the South (1979) and Masters of Atlantis (1985) have 
been overlooked. Neither was made into a movie, but each is a fully 
satisfying comedy in its own right and a key chapter in Portis' 
chronicle of the increasing goofiness of our trash-ridden strip mall 
and talk show culture. 

Jimmy Burns, the narrator of Gringos, is an American expatriate, living 
in the Yucatan Peninsula. He has a small trucking business and 
supplements his income by turning in runaway American kids for the 
reward. As he twice has occasion to show, he can be proficiently violent if the 
need arises, but for the most part, he's an amiable, easy-going sort. 
In fact, like other Portis protagonists, he initially comes across as a rather 
folksy bumpkin. But, as his comments on the life he sees around him 
accumulate, it becomes evident that he is a product of a culture that 
was once dominated by strong women of the same stripe as Mattie Ross, 
the narrator of True Grit, an aging, one-armed, hard-eyed Arkansas 
banker and pillar of the Southern Presbyterian Church. Accordingly, 
rather than being taken in by the trash and nonsense around him, Jimmy 
Burns sees it through Mattie's eyes and knows exactly what it's worth. 

That doesn't necessarily mean he disapproves. For example, one of his 
fellow Americans is looking for UFO landing sites and checking out 
reports of "ancient television receivers, pre-Columbian Oldsmobiles, 
stone carvings of barefooted astronauts strapped into space ships." 

And when the fellow appropriates an ape-like cadaver that has been 
found in a river and dresses it up in aluminium foil and a bathing cap 
and packs it in a travelling case, Jimmy has this to say: 

"I was pleased for him myself. Erich von Dniken had never found the 
least bit of extraterrestrial flesh, as far as I knew, and here was 
Rudy Kurle with a complete captain all his own, if a small and very 
old one . . . Rudy was well launched on the career he had dreamed of, 
a life at the lectern, of captive listeners in jails and schools, of 
long days and nights spent hanging around the hallways of public 
buildings, radio stations and television studios, a life of 
confabulation." 

The central action is a gathering of New Agers and vestigial hippies 
at a Mayan temple for a revelation and a human sacrifice. It is after 
Jimmy has thwarted this, and Rudy Kurle has gone north with his little 
space captain, that Jimmy begins to make sense of his own life. As he 
does so, the pattern of his seemingly random observations and actions 
is revealed, and you realize that the blurb writer was right in at 
least one respect: Portis is at the top of his form.