Rollin' Down the Forgotten River 
By Charles Trueheart
[
A review of Gringos, by Charles Portis,
Transcribed by Alex T. Moore from The Washington Post (September 1, 1991), 
for non-commercial use on The Unofficial Charles Portis Website 
(http://charlesportis.cjb.net).
]

"The forest rangers at Mena were all very nice but they could tell me 
only approximately where the Ouachita River began." From these opening 
words to "The Forgotten River," readers know they're in the hands of 
not just any writer. In fact, the writer is Charles Portis, an 
exceptionally funny novelist ("Norwood," "True Grit," "Dog of the 
South," "Gringos") who is an unfortunately well-kept secret. Here he 
puts his hand to a rare piece of nonfiction prose about his native 
environs -- in Arkansas Times (September), the distinctive state 
monthly. 

Portis writes with his low-stated eccentricity about the Ouachita, 
traveling its 600-some miles in the figurative company of observant 
riverine sojourners many hundreds of years dead -- an officer in 
Hernando De Soto's expeditionary force and one of Jefferson's 
territorial scouts -- whose words (whose travel writing) survive them.
Knowledge, lore and texture dictate Portis's ports of call -- as do 
colorful characters such as Dee Brown, who wrote the books on the 
Indians, and John Norman Warnock, an obscure Ouachita River historian 
and lawyer who practices in a trailer in the woods surrounded by his 
bevy of pet black Cadillacs.  If you have the impression this is all 
dry history, you don't know Portis. He is, in fact, dry, in another 
sense of the word. His eyes are not buried in books; mainly, they're 
open:  "I paid $ 1.23 a gallon for regular gasoline at El Dorado, the 
oil city, more than at any other place along the way. On the other 
hand, my motel room cost only $ 21, and, a bonus, a man was practicing 
law in the next room. Two strange law offices in one day. This one, an 
ordinary motel room, had the lawyer's shingle fastened to the door, 
just above the number, with a single screw in the middle. There were 
bits of Scotch tape on the ends to keep it from tilting, and perhaps 
demoralizing his customers. I was all set if I woke up in the night 
with a start and the urgent feeling that I should dictate a codicil to 
my will. Against that piece of luck, however, I had to weigh this: The 
Cafe I like in El Dorado was no longer serving an evening meal. The 
new, shorter serving hours were explained to me this way: 'That woman 
that runs it, that was her sister that run it at night, and she got 
married and moved to Shreesport.'"

How much more we learn about a place and its vibrations from someone 
who observes and sets things down truthfully and artfully than from 
someone afloat in adjectives and details of tourist amenities. Like 
only the best reporters, Portis finds value even in unanswered 
questions:  "All along the lower river I stopped in towns and asked 
about the tonnage shipped on the river. The current tonnage, I thought, 
when compared to the tonnage of bygone years and the projected tonnage 
of the future, would give us all something to mull over. At city halls 
and chambers of commerce I would be shown into the office of a very 
courteous if puzzled man. 

He would tap a pencil on the desk. 'Yes, let's see now. The tonnage. 
Brenda, why don't you get Charles some coffee.' Brenda would later be 
sent here and there in search of an elusive folder that just might 
contain some river matter. Long after it became clear that no one knew 
or cared about the tonnage, I asked about the tonnage. I didn't care 
either, but I felt a nagging dreary duty to come up with some figures."
Arkansas Times, P.O. Box 34010, Little Rock, Ark. 72203-9855. 
One year/12 issues, $ 16. 
Single issues, $ 3.50 postage paid.