Western Justice
Charles Taylor
[
General praise for Charles Portis,
Transcribed by Alex T. Moore from Newsday (May 20, 2001), 
for non-commercial use on The Unofficial Charles Portis Website 
(http://charlesportis.cjb.net).
]

"People do not give it credence that a 14-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." 
Mattie Ross, the protagonist of Charles Portis' True Grit is an old woman 
when she begins telling her story with those words. But as we read of her 
journey with Marshall Rooster Cogburn to bring her father's killer to 
justice, that cocksure and upright old woman seems to have always existed 
inside the young girl, just as intimidating, just as stubborn. But then Mattie 
seems always to have existed. "True Grit" flirts with myth and tall tale, but 
reading it is like encountering a voice speaking to us directly from 
America's past. Mattie at times seems less a character than a fact, the fact 
of what pioneer life was-hardship and sorrow and mortal danger-accepted 
with no expectation of sympathy.  
 
"True Grit" was both critically acclaimed and a bestseller when it was 
published in 1968. But today most people are more likely to be familiar 
with the John Wayne movie version that appeared in 1969, and that's a 
pity. The film sticks to the plot and gets the tone wrong: It's picturesque 
instead of possessed of a rough beauty; it's antic and contrived, while the 
book is plain, direct and deep, like an old ballad. The book is currently out 
of print; Overlook Press is trying to acquire the rights for inclusion in its 
series of Portis reissues. It needs to. Books are born to tumultuous acclaim 
and then spend decades playing possum. "True Grit" is a great American 
novel waiting to be rediscovered. The order and duty, if not the fussiness, 
of the "sivilized" life that Huck Finn couldn't stand is in some ways the 
life that Mattie Ross longs for. But like Huck she springs from the blood 
and memory of the American past, her every word a hymn to the plain 
grace of Puritan forbearance.