Norwood

When my level of ambition rises just above staring into the middle distance, nothing suits me better than reading Charles Portis. Unfortunately, after I read Masters of Atlantis, which is now on my Kindle, I will have exhausted his œuvre. Norwood was his first (1966), followed by True Grit (1968), The Dog of the South (1979), Masters of Atlantis (1985), and Gringos (1991). Although he is still alive, one hears that he just doesn’t feel like writing a sixth novel. What a shame!

As a sample of Portis’s easygoing style, the book’s beginning will do:

Norwood had to get a hardship discharge when Mr. Pratt died because there wasn’t anyone else at home after Vernell. Vernell was Norwood’s sister. She was a heavy, sleepy girl with pad posture. She was old enough to look after herself and quite large enough, but in many ways she was a great big baby. Everybody out on the highway said, “What’s going to happen to Vernell now?” Several people out there on the highway put this question to Brother Humphries and his reply was a thoughtful, “I don’t know. I’m trying to work something out.” He talked to a man in Texarkana who worked something out with the Red Cross man at Camp Pendleton and the Red Cross man in turn worked it out with the major who handled hardship discharges. Norwood had to see the major three times and talk to him about personal and embarrassing things. The major had a 105-millimeter ashtray on his desk. He was not an unkingly man and he expedited the matter as best he could. Norwood took his discharge, which he

And that’s the end of the Kindle page.