‘True Grit’ Author Charles Portis, a Comic Genius, is Dead
I am not one of those people who always remember where they were when important things happened. But I remember exactly where I was the first time I read Charles Portis. I was lying on a hillside behind an elementary school in Greensboro, N.C, where I liked to take my dog and let her run. Sometimes I took a book along, and on this day in 1979, I lay there and began to read The Dog of the South.
I did not know much about Portis, only that he had written True Grit, which I had not read, nor even seen the movie, being at that time rather tired of John Wayne. But The Dog of South was an intriguing title, so, liking dogs and being fascinated by the South, I plunged in to see what it was all about.
The dog of the title was no dog at all but an old school bus, and it played only a minor part in the action, but that mattered hardly at all because a couple of pages in, I was laughing so hard that my dog gave up hunting squirrels and came over to check on me.