![]() ![]() ![]() The Little Rock, Arkansas-based Jennings, who is also the author of “Carry the Rock: Race, Football and the Soul of an American City,” knows Portis’s work well: He edited the excellent 2012 book, “Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany,” which collected Portis’s nonfiction, short stories and a play. “But any people who like him like them all … and that’s unusual for any writer.”Īlong with the engaging Jennings, fans include writers Donna Tartt, Ed Park, Jonathan Lethem, Maria Semple, Wells Tower, Roy Blount Jr. and Ron Rosenbaum, as well as filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, who made the second film adaptation of Portis’s “True Grit.” (The first starred John Wayne, Kim Darby and Robert Duvall.) Jennings adds that some of the writers of “The Simpsons” and “Arrested Development” have been fans. “People have different favorites,” says Jennings. “I’m sure there are a few 2-star Goodreads reviews of “True Grit” – I can’t pretend to understand those people – but yeah, he does seem to evoke an avid fandom.” “People just do attach to his books, to his whole body of work, in ways they don’t with a lot of other writers,” says Jay Jennings, the editor of “Charles Portis: Collected Works,” the recently published Library of America volume of novels, stories and other work. There are better-known writers than Charles Portis, author of the classics “True Grit,” “Dog of the South” and “Masters of Atlantis,” but everyone who reads him seems to become a fan. ![]()
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