Macho Mush in Mexico
By Philip Herter
[
A review of Gringos, by Charles Portis,
Transcribed by Alex T. Moore from The St. Petersburg Times (January 20, 
1991), for non-commercial use on The Unofficial Charles Portis Website 
(http://charlesportis.cjb.net).
]

It's been a long time since Hemingway wrote his last book. Manly books 
about manly men living meandering, manly lives are less plentiful than 
they used to be. In Gringos, Charles Portis serves up a dose of 
masculine Meso Americana.  

Mexico is often a writer's shorthand for the exotic, passionate world 
we North Americans can't muster on our own. Gringos' Mexican setting 
offers an easy psychic geography. Spin this same yarn about rural 
Georgia, or Idaho, and Gringos falls like a dead duck.
 
Unfortunately, the atmosphere of Mexico's steamy southern highlands 
doesn't save this book. Blue collar in atmosphere, catatonic in tone 
and with only the dimmest sense of purpose, Gringos is a passionless, 
sluggish read.
 
  
The narrator, Jimmy Burns, is a part-time bounty hunter and raconteur 
cum junkman. He used to hustle artifacts but gave it up.  We're to take 
this as a sign of his strong moral stance. Except for a few token 
Mexicans, the rest of the crudely drawn characters are gringos in 
Mexico. Since the creaky plot hinges on their contrived accidents, it 
is hard to imagine why Portis did not bring more life to these folks. 
Among the pensioners and assorted flakes who inhabit Gringos, are a 
frustrated anthropologist, a pair of UFO hunters, and a team of 
archaeologists. One of whom, in my favorite scene, dies in the middle 
of his dinner from dysentery. Can expatriates be so dull?  

In Charles Portis' hands they can. To paraphrase the writer Ambrose 
Bierce, one of the first to coin the term "gringo" in his last letter 
to his brother, to read about gringos in Mexico, ah, that is 
euthanasia. 

Manly talk about guns and football, some well-researched information 
about cars and gas refrigerators create a semblance of atmosphere. The 
information directly about Mexican history and culture reads like it 
was overheard at the bar in the Cancun Sheraton and Scotch-taped into 
the story.
   
Gringos does have a plot, but it comes off like an afterthought. It can 
be summarized as a man meets creeps (of the Charles Manson, wicked 
hippie variety), man does errands for 150 pages, man kills creeps. At 
the end, he naturally refuses the reward.
 
Charles Portis had great commercial success with two previous books, 
Norwood and especially True Grit. Like books by other contemporary 
authors whose work has made it to the big screen (Robert Stone comes to 
mind), Gringos reads like it was written by a man with Hollywood 
looking over his shoulder. The characters are cutouts and the plot is 
so loose as to be incontinent. 
  
In other words, Gringos is movie ready. Most likely this book was 
intended as a movie blueprint. Maybe a Hollywood script-doctor is 
converting it into a melodrama we all want to see. But they get paid to 
read sketchy books. The rest of us should wait to see the movie.
 
Gringos is a primitive book in the worst ways. Forget about literature 
or even a decent read. Gringos has no thrills, no ideas and barely 
enough style to get you out of the gate.