Book 28: True Grit – Charles Portis

Most people (like me) know of ‘True Grit’ because of the 2010 Coen brothers movie of the same name.

It’s a great film but it wasn’t the novel’s first adaptation for the screen. Back in the 1969, just a year after the book was published, John Wayne starred in another version. By all account it’s another classic, though not as true to the novel as the later film.

‘True Grit’ tells the story of a headstrong 14-year-old girl who sets about bringing her father’s killer to justice with the help of a Deputy U.S Marshal.

The young girl, Mattie Ross, narrates the story. She is stern, pragmatic, fiercely independent and full of starch. She begins her story in style:

People do not give it credence that a fourteen-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. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.

True Grit, P.1

This is a wild-west adventure, but throughout the book, there’s this kind of deadpan, almost unintentional humour. At times it’s hilarious but it’s dry, and a lot of the emotion you’d expect from a young girl just isn’t there. This fact, along with some anachronistic language (it’s set in the 1870s) took a few chapters to adapt to. Once you do though, you may find the book much funnier than you’d expect.

This is ultimately a revenge story full of salt and grit though:

“Who is the best marshal they have?’

The sheriff thought on it for a minute. He said, ‘I would have to weigh that proposition. There is near about two hundred of them. I reckon William Waters is the best tracker. He is a half-breed Comanche and it is something to see, watching him cut for sign. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don’t enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork. Now L.T. Quinn, he brings his prisoners in alive. He may let one get by now and then but he believes even the worst of men is entitled to a fair shake. Also the court does not pay any fees for dead men. Quinn is a good peace officer and a lay preacher to boot. He will not plant evidence or abuse a prisoner. He is straight as a string. Yes, I will say Quinn is about the best they have.’

I said, ‘Where can I find this Rooster?” 

True Grit, Charles Portis

True Grit is a short, exciting read. But there’s a true craftsmanship and precision in the writing and as such the book invites rereading — that’s what I plan to do. In the hands of another writer you might expect something twice as long but Portis has reduced the writing to the matter-of-fact, plainspoken essentials. You can see how the work would get into your bones and become a favourite as it has with writer Donna Tartt (she loves the book so much that she narrates it on audible.com)

The book ends just as well as it starts:

Time just gets away from us. This ends my true account of how I avenged Frank Ross’s blood over in the Choctaw Nation when snow was on the ground.

True Grit, Charles Portis P.215

Recommended.