Escape Velocity
Page 41
“The Book that Changed My Life: Gringos,” by Wells Tower, originally appeared in GQ, June 2011. Reprinted here by permission of the author.
Acknowledgements
First of all, I thank Charles Portis for allowing me to edit this collection, and Rod Lorenzen of Butler Center Books for making it happen. Even before it looked like there would ever be a book like this, Mike Reddy expressed his desire to work with me on anything Portis related, and his art is a wonderful complement to the words. Mr. Portis’s agent, Lynn Nesbit, was supportive and helpful in bringing the project to fruition, and my own agent, Chris Parris-Lamb, went beyond the call of duty, as always. H. K. Stewart worked with some knotty obstacles to bring an elegant design to the interior of the book. Ali Welky saved me from making some embarrassing mistakes and gave the book a loving but exacting copyedit.
Eddie Dean, Portis fan extraordinaire, was crucial in narrowing down selections from the Arkansas Gazette. Margaret Schlankey of the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas aided me in unearthing some hidden gems in the morgue of the New York Herald Tribune, and the entire staff there was very gracious during my days in Austin. Judy Trice, through Kathryn Pryor, was most generous in lending me her script of Delray’s New Moon. Especially notable among those who helped research or grant permissions were Chris Peck of the Commercial Appeal, Frank Fellone of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Gerald Braun of PARS International, Lindsey Millar of the Arkansas Times, Marc Smirnoff of the Oxford American, and David Jácome of Peer Music.
The authors of the appreciations in the appendix—Roy Blount Jr., Ed Park, Ron Rosenbaum, Donna Tartt, and Wells Tower—get great appreciation in turn from me for their eagerness to allow their work to be reprinted here. Along the way, Kathy Robbins and Arielle Asher in the Robbins Office and Amanda Urban and Shira Schindel at ICM greased the gears.
Special thanks to those who lent their talents to the launch of the hardcover publication in New York City at Housing Works Bookstore Café, including Roy Blount Jr., Amanda Bullock of Housing Works, Ian Frazier, Luke Harlan, Roger Hodge of the Oxford American, Rhett Miller, Emily Perkins, Kathryn Pryor, Judith Roberts, Will Trice, and Calvin Trillin. At this event, I also met filmmaker Katrina Whalen, who has directed a short film of “I Don’t Talk Service No More,” and I’m grateful that she and John Parlante alerted me to the existence of “Damn!”
Providing moral, practical, and/or liquid support throughout the project were Jay Barth, Sheila Callaghan, Chuck Cliett, Graham Gordy, Walter Jennings, Michelle Kaemmerling, Jonathan Portis, Annie Stricklin, David Stricklin, the entire Butler Center staff, and not least the crew at the Faded Rose—Rick Cobb, Sam Ulmer, Brian Poole, Mitch McCollum, Chess Green, and the much-missed Terry McCoy and Mike Scott—all of whose “humorous sallies” deserve to be transcribed in Hester’s Red Letter.
ALSO BY CHARLES PORTIS
AVAILABLE FROM THE OVERLOOK PRESS
MOVIE TIE-IN EDITION • 978-1-59020-459-7 • $14.95
The basis for two movies, including the Academy Award-nominated 2010 version directed by the Coen brothers, True Grit is a great American novel that tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is just fourteen when the coward Tom Chaney kills her father. Determined to avenge the killing, Mattie outdickers and outmaneuvers the hard-bitten types in her path. An instant bestseller upon its first publication, True Grit was recently added by the National Endowment for the Arts to the Big Read Library. It is available from Overlook in a movie tie-in edition and a mass market edition, both of which include an afterword by Donna Tartt, as well as a young readers edition, with an afterword by Leonard S. Marcus.
“Like Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn… Charles Portis’s True Grit captures the naïve elegance of the American voice.”
––Jonathan Lethem
ALSO BY CHARLES PORTIS
AVAILABLE FROM THE OVERLOOK PRESS
Mass Market edition
Afterword by Donna Tartt
978-1-4683-0629-3 • $7.99
Young Adult edition, Afterword by
Leonard Marcus with review questions
978-1-4683-0125-0 • $7.99
“Mattie Ross should soon join the pantheon of America’s legendary figures such as Kit Carson, Wyatt Earp, and Jesse James.”
––The Washington Post
“Like Twain, Portis respects his young narrator as a human being with a fully developed moral sensibility, even when the adults in the novel don’t.”
––Los Angeles Times
“Teens will be drawn into the book’s adventure-packed storyline, strongly delineated characters, and moments of unexpected humor.”
––School Library Journal
“An instant classic… Read it and have the most fun you’ve had reading a novel in years, maybe decades.”
––Newsday
ALSO BY CHARLES PORTIS
AVAILABLE FROM THE OVERLOOK PRESS
NORWOOD • 978-0-87951-703-8 • $14.95
“One of the pure pleasures available in American literature”
—ESQUIRE
“[Norwood] should be in every home.” —ROY BLOUNT JR.
ALSO BY CHARLES PORTIS
AVAILABLE FROM THE OVERLOOK PRESS
THE DOG OF THE SOUTH • 978-1-58567-931-7 • $15.95
“Hilarious and heartbreakingly odd… You find yourself laughing so hard in sections that tears run down your face.”
—THE BALTIMORE SUN
ALSO BY CHARLES PORTIS
AVAILABLE FROM THE OVERLOOK PRESS
MASTERS OF ATLANTIS • 978-1-58567-021-5 • $15.95
“As much as I love Charles Portis’s other books, I believe Masters of Atlantis takes off even higher into the comic empyrean.” —ROY BLOUNT JR.
ALSO BY CHARLES PORTIS
AVAILABLE FROM THE OVERLOOK PRESS
GRINGOS • 978-1-58567-093-2 • $15.95
“Charles Portis is perhaps the most original, indescribable sui generis talent overlooked by literary culture in America.”
—RON ROSENBAUM, ESQUIRE
© Jonathan Portis
Charles Portis lives in Arkansas, where he was born and educated. He served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War, was the London bureau chief of the New York Herald-Tribune, and was a writer for The New Yorker. He is the author of True Grit and four other novels, also published by The Overlook Press: Norwood, The Dog of the South, Masters of Atlantis, and Gringos.
Jay Jennings is a freelance writer whose work appears regularly in The New York Times Book Review. His book Carry the Rock: Race, Football, and the Soul of an American City was named a 2010 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.