{"product_id":"charles-portis-collected-works-loa-369-isbn-9781598537468","title":"Charles Portis: Collected Works (LOA #369)","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe ultimate Portis: for the first time in one collector's volume, the complete fiction and collected nonfiction of the author of \u003ci\u003eTrue Grit\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSummer reading recommendation in THE WASHINGTON POST, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, and THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Charles Portis is one of the great pure pleasures available in American literature.\" \u003cb\u003e—Ron Rosenbaum\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Like Mark Twain’s \u003ci\u003eHuckleberry Finn\u003c\/i\u003e and Thomas Berger’s \u003ci\u003eLittle Big Man\u003c\/i\u003e, Charles Portis’s \u003ci\u003eTrue Grit\u003c\/i\u003e captures the naïve elegance of the American voice.\" \u003cb\u003e—Jonathan Lethem\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"No living Southern writer captures the spoken idioms of the South as artfully as Portis does.\" \u003cb\u003e—Donna Tartt\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"His fiction is the funniest I know.\" \u003cb\u003e—Roy Blount, Jr.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwice adapted as a film, first in a version starring John Wayne and then by the Coen Brothers, \u003cb\u003eTrue Grit\u003c\/b\u003e 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 \u003ci\u003eThe Wizard of Oz\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAlice in Wonderland\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eAdventures of Huckleberry Finn\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePortis's deadpan debut novel \u003cb\u003eNorwood \u003c\/b\u003e(1966) is, like \u003ci\u003eTrue Grit\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A book that according to Roy Blount Jr. “no one should die without having read,” \u003cb\u003eThe Dog of the South \u003c\/b\u003e(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.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMasters of Atlantis \u003c\/b\u003e(1985) conjures the fictional cult of Gnomonism and takes an uproarious plunge into the dark heart of conspiratorial thinking and schismatic in-fighting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eGringos \u003c\/b\u003e(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.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA 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.”“A new volume by the Library of America, edited by the Arkansas journalist Jay Jennings, gathers all these characters and more, collecting Portis’s five novels together with his short stories and some of his journalism, including the parody of an advice column that ran in this magazine. It’s absurdly fun to follow his oddballs and their odysseys, but something more than fun, too. Portis’s genius went beyond character in the strictly literary sense, to reveal something about moral character and many somethings about the character of this country\u003cb\u003e.”—Casey Cep, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It is hard to imagine a greater or more valuable pleasure-per-ounce package than the collected works of Charles Portis.\" \u003cb\u003e— \u003ci\u003eThe New Republic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Now the five novels, the memoir, and some short stories, essays and newspaper articles have been gathered together in one tidy volume edited by Jay Jennings, and installed where they belong, in the pantheon of American letters, the Library of America… The comedy is ineffable, inextricable from its context, the ready-for-anything American mindscape. As P.G. Wodehouse is to England and Flann O’Brien to Ireland, so Charles Portis is to America: a writer whose comedy strikes a celestial chord and whose characters, to quote Evelyn Waugh on Wodehouse, “live in their own universe like the characters of a fairy story.””\u003cb\u003e—Katherine Powers, \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“There won’t be a parade, but perhaps there should be.”—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eArkansas Democrat-Gazette\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A meticulously curated new compendium from the Library of America, which collects his five novels and assorted other works, allows for a fresh opportunity to reckon with his slippery, unsettled legacy … In one sense, a Library of America edition of Portis’s work is a kind of surprise ending. It’s tempting to point out the disjunction between the author’s fundamental outsider stance and his postmortem embrace by the institutional intelligentsia.”\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e —The Washington Post\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eCharles Portis \u003c\/b\u003e(1933–2020) is the author of five novels, a handful of short stories, a play, and several essays, along with journalism written early in his career. His debut novel, \u003ci\u003eNorwood\u003c\/i\u003e, was published in 1966 and was made into a movie in 1970. His second and best-known novel, \u003ci\u003eTrue Grit\u003c\/i\u003e, has been twice adapted for the screen, most recently by the Coen brothers in 2010; in 2013 it was named a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read Library Selection.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJay Jennings\u003c\/b\u003e is Senior Editor at the \u003ci\u003eOxford American\u003c\/i\u003e, having formerly been a writer for \u003ci\u003eSports Illustrated \u003c\/i\u003eand a features editor at \u003ci\u003eTennis \u003c\/i\u003emagazine. His book \u003ci\u003eCarry the Rock: Race, Football, and the Soul of an American City \u003c\/i\u003ewas published in 2010. A native of Little Rock and a longtime friend of Portis, he is the editor of \u003ci\u003eEscape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany \u003c\/i\u003e(2012) and the co-author (with Graham Gordy) of an as-yet-unproduced film adaptation of Portis’s novel \u003ci\u003eThe Dog of the South\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"Library of America","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305253753061,"sku":"NP9781598537468","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781598537468.jpg?v=1767723570","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/charles-portis-collected-works-loa-369-isbn-9781598537468","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}