Screen LibraryCollected works /
"Charles Portis is now recognized as a singular American genius, a writer whose deadpan style, picaresque plots, and unforgettable characters have drawn a passionate following among readers and writers. 'His fiction,' Roy Blount Jr. has said, 'is the funniest I know.' Librar...
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| Group Author: | ; |
| Published: |
The Library of America,
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| Publisher Address: | New York : |
| Publication Dates: | [2023] |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Series: |
The Library of America ;
369 |
| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
"Charles Portis is now recognized as a singular American genius, a writer whose deadpan style, picaresque plots, and unforgettable characters have drawn a passionate following among readers and writers. 'His fiction,' Roy Blount Jr. has said, 'is the funniest I know.' Library of America now presents the definitive Portis collection, featuring all five of his novels--Norwood (1966), True Grit (1968), The Dog of the South (1979), Masters of Atlantis (1985), and Gringos (1991)--and his collected stories, including the imaginary travelogue 'Nights Can Turn Cool in Viborra' and the haunting 'I Don't Talk Service No More,' set in a psychiatric facility. A selection of Portis's nonfiction highlights his journalism from the civil rights movement, his coverage of the Nashville music scene in the 1960s, and the beguiling family memoir 'Combinations of Jacksons.'"--Dust jacket. "Twice adapted as a film, first in a version starring John Wayne and then by the Coen Brothers, True Grit is a wonder of novelistic perfection, told in the unforgettable voice of 14-year-old Mattie Ross as she sets out to avenge her murdered father in a quest that brings her out of her native Arkansas and into the wilds of the Choctaw Nation of the 1870s. One of the great literary Westerns, it is also a novel that has invited comparison with The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Portis's deadpan debut novel Norwood (1966) is, like True Grit, the story of a quest, though here the stakes are far lower: an auto mechanic from Texas embarks on a madcap journey to New York City to try and recover $70 owed to him from an Army buddy. A book that according to Roy Blount Jr. 'no one should die without having read,' The Dog of the South (1979) is yet a third saga of pursuit, this time all the way to Central America. Ray Midge is on the road looking for the man who has run off with his car (and of somewhat less interest to him, his wife). Masters of Atlantis (1985) conjures the fictional cult of Gnomonism and takes an uproarious plunge into the dark heart of conspiratorial thinking and schismatic in-fighting. Gringos (1991), set in Mexico, follows an expatriate ex-Marine in his search to find a UFO hunter gone missing in the Yucatan, amid a supporting cast of archaeologists, drug-addled hippie millenarians, and the son of the 'bravest dog in all Mexico.' A generous gathering of the nonfiction reveals Portis's skills as a reporter, above all in his coverage of the Civil Rights Movement; his appreciation of Arkansas history and landscape, as in 'The Forgotten River'; and his poignancy as a family memoirist, on display in his recollection 'Combinations of Jacksons.'" -- Penguin Random House website. |
| Carrier Form: | 1096 pages ; 21 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 1059-1096). |
| ISBN: |
9781598537468 1598537466 |
| Index Number: | PS3566 |
| CLC: | I712.45 |
| Call Number: | I712.45/P852-2 |
| Contents: |
Norwood -- True grit -- The dog of the south -- Masters of Atlantis -- Gringos -- |