True Grit by Charles Portis

A Western masterpiece, even for those who don’t like Westerns

Charles Portis’s novel True Grit was first published in 1968. The famous film adaptation starring John Wayne was released the following year. While the film may have made Portis’s novel a household name, it may also have discouraged potential readers who might think of the book as merely “that John Wayne movie.” In fact, the True Grit novel has less in common with the John Wayne film than it does with the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of 2010. That later film really captures some of Portis’s delightful sense of humor, which permeates this entire novel. True Grit may be a Western, but one doesn’t have to be a habitual reader of the Western genre to enjoy it. If there is one Western novel that transcends the genre to appeal to a wider literary audience, it’s this one.

True Grit is narrated by Mattie Ross, an elderly woman looking back on an adventure from her youth. At the age of 14, Mattie’s father is murdered by a no-good drunk named Tom Chaney. From her Arkansas farm she ventures to the city of Fort Smith to claim her father’s body. While there, she decides to engage a marshal to help her track down Chaney and bring him to justice. She deliberately chooses the marshal with a reputation for violence and “grit”: Rooster Cogburn, an overweight, aged, one-eyed gunslinger. Meanwhile, another lawman named LaBoeuf also shows up in Fort Smith, likewise chasing Chaney on another charge. Hearing that Chaney has fallen in with the outlaw gang of Lucky Ned Pepper, Cogburn and LaBoeuf decide to team up and hunt Chaney together. What they didn’t bargain for, however, is that Mattie Ross insists on coming along on their manhunt, and won’t take no for an answer.

The strength of this novel rests on Mattie Ross’s voice, which Portis renders exquisitely. The narration reads as if it were penned in the 1870s but imbued with an underlying humor that’s still funny today. Through Mattie’s speech, Portis manages the impressive feat of capturing both the spunky teenage girl and the proud elderly spinster. The other characters in the book, from the major players of Cogburn, LaBoeuf, and Pepper, on down to the briefest bit parts, are portrayed equally well, with idiosyncratic quirks and subtle nuances of personality that give multiple dimensions to each role. The novel is probably about 90 percent dialogue, so the story unfolds through the conversations of these characters in their unique voices that combine period realism with contemporary savvy. The characters aren’t always intelligent, in fact many of them are not, but Portis’s writing always is. The dialogue is so natural, smoothly flowing, and downright interesting that once you get into it, you just don’t want to put the book down.

True Grit is more than just a great Western. It is a great work of American literature that deserves to be more widely read. It definitely does not deserve to be confined to a genre-ghetto of mass-market Western paperbacks. Given its portrayal of a strong and intelligent teenage girl, this book should be assigned reading in American high school English courses. True Grit not only provides a good role model for young readers, but it is an intelligent, adult narrative that, unlike many books in the English-class canon, students would actually enjoy reading. And even if you normally don’t like Westerns, so will you.
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