Norwood, by Charles Portis

Charles Portis is best known for his 1968 Western novel, True Grit, which was made into a 1969 film starring John Wayne. Portis's career as a novelist has been sparse, with only five novels to his name since his 1966 debut Norwood. While Norwood and True Grit have many similarities, notably in their use of Southern language and manners, Portis's debut novel has more humour and a looser, free wheeling plot.

Charles Portis began his writing career as a newspaper reporter. After serving in the U.S Marine Corps  during the Korean war, Portis graduated in 1958 with a degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He gave up journalism in 1964 to write full time. Two years later he published his debut novel.

Norwood could be described as a picaresque novel. It describes the adventures Norwood Pratt. He has quit his job from Nipper Independent Oil and is trying to strike out as a country singer. The shyster Grady King convinces Norwood to drive a Oldsmobile 98 with another car in tow to New York City. Norwood in part agrees to go because he needs to recover a debt of $70 from his Marine buddy Joe William Reese who is now living in New York. Things soon go pear shaped. Norwood dumps both cars, and unwanted passenger Yvonne Phillips, and finds his way to New York by other means. The rest of the novel finds Norwood meeting an array of other characters, like the midget Edmund B. Ratner, Rita Lee Chipman (with whom Norwood develops a romantic interest) and of course Joann, the Wonder Hen, a college educated chicken.

Much of the tone of Norwood is humorous and ironic. Portis describes a surreal world of misfits, conmen and lonely hearts. American capitalist culture is full of dodgy car salesmen, cheap wedding dresses and suspiciously sophisticated business models (always high sales volumes over quality and craftmanship). The naive and the jaded rub shoulders in this jaunty landscape where everyone seems familiar and yet strange. Norwood Pratt himself is an easy going character who takes everything in his stride. Double dealers and mean spirited women don't phase him too much. The debt he is owed by his friend Joe William Reese doesn't perturb him too much either. A patience that seems to go to the end of time means Norwood simply and methodically goes about recovering his money. Indeed, he seems to go about his business in a completely different time zone.

Norwood's basic honesty and charity to strangers gives him an everyman quality. He is the one stable force in the book that the reader can depend on to negotiate them through the topsy-turvy land of the 1950s American road and city. While all the characters Norwood encounters seem skittish and flighty, he single mindedly pursues his trip to New York City, collects his owed money and then returns home to Ralph, Texas.

Charles Portis's Norwood reminds irresistably of so many other Southern American writers. Classic authors such as Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and James Purdy come to mind, with their highly idiosyncratic irony and humour. Purdy's 1959 Malcolm, about a young boy looking for his father who is taken up by various eccentric characters, makes for a particularly apt comparison.

Norwood's clean, crisp prose, uncanny ear for dialogue and perfect comic timing make Norwood a mini classic that will remain a perrenial favorite.

Norwood, by Charles Portis. Published by Overlook TP. ISBN: 978-0879517038

Originally written March 2011