Song and Swagger of the Old West
By Brian Garfield
[
A review of True Grit, by Charles Portis,
Transcribed by Alex T. Moore from Saturday Review (June 29, 1968), 
for non-commercial use on The Unofficial Charles Portis Website 
(http://charlesportis.cjb.net).
]

The frontier west is like a wild horse - few dudes can handle it; and 
few novelists achieve mastery over the vigorous Western myth.  Based 
on cliché and half-truth, the traditional horse opera is seldom as 
interesting, as spirited, as the actuality of the Old West.  Yet Italy 
and Hollywood keep grinding out Westerns, oaters continue to fill TV 
hours, and the market for Western novels is still growing.  In some 
ways the literature is just coming into its own:  scholars are turning 
more and more to the genre as a subject for study.  Also, the past few 
years have seen the publication of several excellent novels of the 
West (such as Robert Flynn's powerful North to Yesterday), which are 
marked not only by literary quality, but by the way they capture the 
vitality of the real American West, along with its melodrama and myth.

Charles Portis's new novel, True Grit, will lift the standards still 
higher - and may even take its place as an American classic.  This 
remarkably moving book possesses a universality long lacking in 
American fiction.  As delightful to a twelve-year-old as to a 
cultivated adult, True Grit is lively, uproarious high adventure.  It 
is also a commentary on the American character, then and now.  
Although the tale is straightforward, told in an ingenuous 
nineteeth-century style, its nuances are endless.

The narrator - Mattie Ross - is and old woman recalling an exploit at 
the age of fourteen, when, with practical ingenuity, she prevailed 
upon a sleazy pair of trepid manhunters to go into the Indian 
Territory and help her avenge the murder of her father.  Bred on 
McGuffey, the New Testament, and Horatio Alger, homely young Mattie is 
a hardy pioneer girl - tough, sassy, and free of self-doubt; in turn, 
LaBoeuf, the raffish Texas Ranger, and Rooster Cogburn, the mean 
one-eyed federal marshal from Hanging Judge Parker's court, are as 
woolly and as credible as Bonnie and Clyde.

Portis destroys absurdity by overwhelming it with truth.  Mattie Ross 
is nineteeth-century America; it is impossible to doubt her, 
impossible to doubt the tale that she tells.  Hers is a yarn with 
swagger, color and song.

"The Indian Woman spoke good English and I learned to my surprise that 
she too was a Presbyterian.  She had been schooled by a missionary.  
What preachers we had in those days!  Truly they took the word into 
'the highways and hedges.'  Mrs. Bagby was not a Cumberland 
Presbyterian but a member of the U.S. or Southern Presbyterian Church.  
I too am now a member of the Southern Church.  I say nothing against 
the Cumberlands.  They broke with the Presbyterian Church because they 
did not believe a preacher needed a lot of formal education.  That is 
all right but they are not sound on Election.  They do not fully 
accept it.  I confess it is a hard doctrine, running contrary to our 
earthly ideas of fair play, but I can see no way around it.  Read I 
Corinthians 6: 13 and II Timothy 1: 9, 10.  Also I Peter 1: 2, 19, 20 
and Romans 11:7.  There you have it.  It was good for Paul and Silas 
and it is good enough for me.  It is good enough for you too."  --From 
"True Grit," by Charles Portis