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Norwood
Out of the American Neon Desert of Roller Dromes, chili parlors, The Grand Ole Opry, and girls who want "to live in a trailer and play records all night" comes ex-marine and troubadour Norwood Pratt. Sent on a mission to New York by Grady Fring, the Kredit King, Norwood has visions of "speeding across the country in a late model car, seeing all the sights." Instead, he gets involved in a wild journey that takes him in and out of stolen cars, freight trains, and buses. By the time he returns home to Ralph, Texas, Norwood has met his true love, Rita Lee, on a Trailways bus; befriended Edmund B. Ratner, the second shortest midget in show business and "the world's smallest perfect fat man"; and helped Joann, "the chicken with a college education, " realize her true potential in life.
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First published January 1, 1966
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About the author
Charles Portis
13 books775 followersCharles McColl Portis was an American author best known for his novels Norwood (1966) and the classic Western True Grit (1968), both adapted as films. The latter also inspired a film sequel and a made-for-TV movie sequel. A newer film adaptation of True Grit was released in 2010.
Portis served in the Marine Corps during the Korean war and attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He graduated with a degree in journalism in 1958.
His journalistic career included work at the Arkansas Gazette before he moved to New York to work for The New York Herald Tribune. After serving as the London bureau chief for the The New York Herald Tribune, he left journalism in 1964 and returned to Arkansas to write novels.
Portis served in the Marine Corps during the Korean war and attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He graduated with a degree in journalism in 1958.
His journalistic career included work at the Arkansas Gazette before he moved to New York to work for The New York Herald Tribune. After serving as the London bureau chief for the The New York Herald Tribune, he left journalism in 1964 and returned to Arkansas to write novels.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 689 reviews
July 8, 2022
Charles Portis, born in 1933 in the state of Arkansas, one-time Marine sergeant, is an American author best known for his classic Western novel True Grit. Such a darn good writer who created eccentric characters and comic plots.
Part of the American Vintage Contemporaries series published back in the 1980s, this road novel by Charles Portis features 23-year old guitar pluckin’ ex-marine Norwood Pratt who lives (if you call this living) way down in the grit of rural East Texas. For me, when it comes to road novels the spice is in what prompts hitting the road in the first place and all the encounters on the trip. This one penned by Sir Charles is a real doozy. Since so much of the color and texture of reading Charles Portis is in his homespun, down-to-Texas-earth language, by way sampling Daddy’s literary cookin’, here are a few direct quotes from the beginning of the book along with my comments:
On The Visitors Norwood Invites To Stay At His House For A Couple Of Days
“Sometime during the night the Remleys decampted, taking with them a television set and a 16-gauge Ithaca Featherweight and two towels.”
You have to love those Remleys, dirt poor husband and wife with a baby, steeling the Red River Texas version of the basic human necessities of food, clothing and shelter: a TV, shotgun and towels.
On One Of The Houses Where Norwood Grew Up
“Once near Stamps, they lived in a house between a Tasee-Freez stand and a cinder-block holiness church. There had been a colorful poster on the side of the house that said ROYAL AMERICAN SHOWS OCT. 6-12 ARKANSAS LIVESTOCK EXPOSITION LITTLE ROCK. On the other side of the house somebody with a big brush and a can of Sherwin-Williams flat white had painted ACTS 2:38."
Great combination – go see all the horses, cattle, sheep and pigs and an in-your-face reminder of what you need to believe to get your ass into heaven.
On A Feature Attraction At The Gas Station Where Norwood Works
“On top of the station there was a giant billboard showing a great moon face with eyeglasses. A little cartoon body had been painted on beneath the face, with one hand holding a gas hose and the other extending to the public in a stage gesture, palm outward, something like Porky Pig when he is saying, 'That’s all folks.'"
Such a billboard is a clear, bold expression of American freedom. No wonder communism or socialism could never take hold – imagine living in a land where you can’t display your very own version of Porky Pig to sell gas. Impossible!
On Norwood Making Home Improvements
“He ripped off the imitation brick siding on the house – Norwood’s father had called it nigger brick- and slapped two coats of white paint on the walls in three days."
But one example of racism in the book. Racism is so much taken for granted by Norwood and others that, in a way, it isn’t even seen as racism; rather, it is viewed as simply the way things are.
On Norwood’s Sister’s New Husband Coming To Live In Norwood’s House
“Then with absolutely no warning Vernell married a disabled veteran named Bill Bird and brought him home to live in the little house on the highway.”
Vintage poor people: Vernell does what she damn well pleases and now that she’s married, she has her new husband move in, Norwood be damned.
On What Drives Norwood To Hit The Road
“Norwood did not like the sound of Bill Bird’s voice. Bill Bird was originally from some place in Michigan and Norwood found his brisk Yankee vowels offensive. They argued about the bathroom. Bill Bird had made himself a little home in that bathroom. He used all the hot water. He filled up the cabinet with dozens of little bottles with typing on them, crowding Norwood’s shaving gear out and onto the windowsill. He used Norwood’s blades. He left hairs stuck around in the soap – short, gray, unmistakable Bill Bird hairs. Norwood had built the bathroom, it was his, and the thought of Bill Bird’s buttocks sliding around on the bottom of the modern Sears tub was disagreeable."
Turns out, not only disagreeable but completely and totally unlivable. Just think of having a Bill Bird plop his Bill Bird buttocks in your house, speaking with an annoying accent, using all your hot water and taking over your bathroom.
Again, all these quotes are from the first pages. The story only gets better, including the part where a shyster businessman talks Norwood into driving a car to New York City. When Norwood shows up, the car smells of fresh paint, is towing a second freshly painted car and there is a young lady Norwood is obliged to take with him on his drive. But Norwood is no fool. Although he agrees, once on the road, the whole shyster plan is turned on its head when Norwood senses serious danger. Very entertaining read.
February 20, 2011
I agonized over whether to give Norwood three or four stars—which tells me three things: (1) I’m prone to exaggeration; (2) I really need to get a life; and (3) Goodreads should add half-star ratings instead of worrying about retarded mascot contests and adding mostly pointless Facebookish features to the site which inevitably cause that damnable Alice picture/Bertrand Russell quote to show up (again!). Get your act together, Goodreads. This site is too big now to be run out of somebody’s garage with a week-old burrito oozing into the ventilation slits on the server. This is the big league, and the big league demands fractional stars—which brings me back to point number two above.
Norwood is another triumph of characterization, knee-deep in Texarkana white trash color. These are people who still pepper their speech with ‘nigger’ and wear outlandish cowboy accoutrements unironically. Norwood Pratt, the protagonist, like other Portis protagonists, is a few increments more thoughtful and broad-minded than his peers, as liable to befriend an overweight showbiz midget and a frizzy New York Jew (which he does) as a huckster in a Stetson trafficking stolen cars or a freeloading redneck army veteran. He also seems to prefer the word Negro. And the only evidence we really need to prove Norwood’s moral worth is that he liberates a fortune-telling chicken from its entrepreneurial captivity, motivated by pity for the harried creature. Did I mention the chicken is college-educated and wears a mortarboard? So from this we can surmise that Norwood isn’t prejudiced against intellectuals either.
I know. It sounds a little ‘quirky,’ doesn’t it? In the disparaging, Little Miss Sunshine sense of the word. Lots of eccentrics crowded into a single phone booth to see what comes of it. Usually that kind of stuff sends me clambering for something dry-as-a-bone—maybe a book on Basque history or some cute thing by Immanuel Kant. But Portis wisely treats all his eccentrics as just run-of-the-mill anybodies, so it doesn’t grate on your nerves. I imagine that could be Portis’s point—if he in fact has one, other than mere yarnspinning. Depeche Mode said it more succinctly, but also more embarrassingly: ‘People are people.’ Even if people happen to travel from Texas to New York City, in stolen cars and, later, freight trains, to collect a debt of seventy bucks. If you’re as poor and principled as Norwood, it’s not an inconsequential matter. And it’s not an exceptional thing either. It’s just what anybody should or might do.
So what’s the problem with Norwood? Well, do you know those times when the wine or other libation has been flowing around a dinner table and you’re with friends or serviceable acquaintances, and all of a sudden one or another of them starts in on a loooong but entertaining story about some strange or noteworthy occurrence? There are usually a lot of laughs in such stories—abetted by the liquor, maybe—and you have no problem keeping interested, but sometimes when the end arrives, you end up thinking, ‘So what?’ In other words, why was the story told at all, how was it relevant to any conversation that preceded it, and what in the name of Sweet Jeezus was the point of the whole thing? The point is clearly in just the storytelling for Portis, but I kind of wanted a little something more than just mindless entertainment. Not much, just a little more. The Norwood who finishes up the story, you see, is the same Norwood who starts it. Maybe that’s another point of the story? People like these are impervious and indomitable? Perhaps. Or maybe the point was just to amuse me. All the same, I’m still suspicious.
Norwood is another triumph of characterization, knee-deep in Texarkana white trash color. These are people who still pepper their speech with ‘nigger’ and wear outlandish cowboy accoutrements unironically. Norwood Pratt, the protagonist, like other Portis protagonists, is a few increments more thoughtful and broad-minded than his peers, as liable to befriend an overweight showbiz midget and a frizzy New York Jew (which he does) as a huckster in a Stetson trafficking stolen cars or a freeloading redneck army veteran. He also seems to prefer the word Negro. And the only evidence we really need to prove Norwood’s moral worth is that he liberates a fortune-telling chicken from its entrepreneurial captivity, motivated by pity for the harried creature. Did I mention the chicken is college-educated and wears a mortarboard? So from this we can surmise that Norwood isn’t prejudiced against intellectuals either.
I know. It sounds a little ‘quirky,’ doesn’t it? In the disparaging, Little Miss Sunshine sense of the word. Lots of eccentrics crowded into a single phone booth to see what comes of it. Usually that kind of stuff sends me clambering for something dry-as-a-bone—maybe a book on Basque history or some cute thing by Immanuel Kant. But Portis wisely treats all his eccentrics as just run-of-the-mill anybodies, so it doesn’t grate on your nerves. I imagine that could be Portis’s point—if he in fact has one, other than mere yarnspinning. Depeche Mode said it more succinctly, but also more embarrassingly: ‘People are people.’ Even if people happen to travel from Texas to New York City, in stolen cars and, later, freight trains, to collect a debt of seventy bucks. If you’re as poor and principled as Norwood, it’s not an inconsequential matter. And it’s not an exceptional thing either. It’s just what anybody should or might do.
So what’s the problem with Norwood? Well, do you know those times when the wine or other libation has been flowing around a dinner table and you’re with friends or serviceable acquaintances, and all of a sudden one or another of them starts in on a loooong but entertaining story about some strange or noteworthy occurrence? There are usually a lot of laughs in such stories—abetted by the liquor, maybe—and you have no problem keeping interested, but sometimes when the end arrives, you end up thinking, ‘So what?’ In other words, why was the story told at all, how was it relevant to any conversation that preceded it, and what in the name of Sweet Jeezus was the point of the whole thing? The point is clearly in just the storytelling for Portis, but I kind of wanted a little something more than just mindless entertainment. Not much, just a little more. The Norwood who finishes up the story, you see, is the same Norwood who starts it. Maybe that’s another point of the story? People like these are impervious and indomitable? Perhaps. Or maybe the point was just to amuse me. All the same, I’m still suspicious.
May 6, 2015
Here's an eerie coinkydink - I finished this almost exactly a year to the day that I finished The Dog of the South. Even stranger, two years ago at this time, I was reading True Grit. I guess there's just something about the month of May that makes me yearn for a Portis tale.
This one, Portis's first novel, reminded me SO much of The Dog of the South. Our hero, Norwood Pratt, could have been the prototype for Dog's Raymond Earl Midge. Both men are earnest and plain spoken, single-minded in their determination to retrieve what's rightfully theirs: Norwood's seventy dollars, owed to him by a military buddy and Raymond Earl's runaway, cheating wife. Both men embark on memorable road trips, peopled by eccentric and colorful characters.
The humor here is fairly subtle and stems mostly from Norwood's personality. Here he is showing his suave, sophisticated side as he converses with a young woman he meets on a bus:
Norwood stirred his coffee and talked to her with his head turned just slightly; he knew he wouldn't be able to talk straight if he looked directly into her face. What a honey! It might even knock him off his seat. "This ain't a bad looking bus station for Richmond," he said. "You'd be surprised how little that one is in New York."
"I know a girl that went to New York and got a suckruhturrial job right off making ninety-five dollars a week. She was the FHA Charm Queen two years running. And smart? She didn't know what a B was."
"They put butter on ham sandwiches up there," he said.
(Smooth, Norwood. She'll be putty in your hands after that butter comment.)
The back cover of my copy mentions a Portis fan "who couldn't decide decide whether to marry the woman he loved until she read Norwood."
I think that's an excellent idea. All potential mates should have to pass a literary standard. Don't you agree?
This one, Portis's first novel, reminded me SO much of The Dog of the South. Our hero, Norwood Pratt, could have been the prototype for Dog's Raymond Earl Midge. Both men are earnest and plain spoken, single-minded in their determination to retrieve what's rightfully theirs: Norwood's seventy dollars, owed to him by a military buddy and Raymond Earl's runaway, cheating wife. Both men embark on memorable road trips, peopled by eccentric and colorful characters.
The humor here is fairly subtle and stems mostly from Norwood's personality. Here he is showing his suave, sophisticated side as he converses with a young woman he meets on a bus:
Norwood stirred his coffee and talked to her with his head turned just slightly; he knew he wouldn't be able to talk straight if he looked directly into her face. What a honey! It might even knock him off his seat. "This ain't a bad looking bus station for Richmond," he said. "You'd be surprised how little that one is in New York."
"I know a girl that went to New York and got a suckruhturrial job right off making ninety-five dollars a week. She was the FHA Charm Queen two years running. And smart? She didn't know what a B was."
"They put butter on ham sandwiches up there," he said.
(Smooth, Norwood. She'll be putty in your hands after that butter comment.)
The back cover of my copy mentions a Portis fan "who couldn't decide decide whether to marry the woman he loved until she read Norwood."
I think that's an excellent idea. All potential mates should have to pass a literary standard. Don't you agree?
August 17, 2024
As I turned to the last page of this novel I emitted a groan. That was it?! Noooo…. Mr Portis, where’s the next 100 pages? It’s so short….I was having so much fun, what happened? Did you get kidnapped half way through? So this is a terrific deadpan tale of how Norwood Pratt, a man who knows all about car engines and their problems in great detail, tries and fails and stumbles and recovers and woozily lunges through a brief section of his life that involves hot cars, an intelligent chicken, an elegant person of restricted stature, a garrulous eccentric, an uncouth brother in law and an unceasing flow of wry comedy about low level American life in the late 50s, mostly rural but with an unhappy spell in New York.
Charles Portis is famous for True Grit which is a masterpiece and not so famous for his other four novels. So this is the third I have read, the other one being The Dog of the South, which is also great and also a road trip story featuring a man who knows about car engines and their problems in great detail, a garrulous eccentric…. Wait ! I now realise Charles Portis rewrote the same novel multiple times, like how Neil Young rewrites the same song a jillion times. But it’s okay, so long as the novel you keep rewriting is this funny and sweet and pure.
Recommended…but heck, it’s out of print. Amazon is only selling a French translation at the moment. But you can find it in the Library of America’s collected works volume, which is where I had to find it.
Charles Portis is famous for True Grit which is a masterpiece and not so famous for his other four novels. So this is the third I have read, the other one being The Dog of the South, which is also great and also a road trip story featuring a man who knows about car engines and their problems in great detail, a garrulous eccentric…. Wait ! I now realise Charles Portis rewrote the same novel multiple times, like how Neil Young rewrites the same song a jillion times. But it’s okay, so long as the novel you keep rewriting is this funny and sweet and pure.
Recommended…but heck, it’s out of print. Amazon is only selling a French translation at the moment. But you can find it in the Library of America’s collected works volume, which is where I had to find it.
September 11, 2015
What can I say about Norwood? I simply adored it. Portis writes the most uncluttered prose imaginable and employs a deceptively simple style, yet he has the eye of a poet. The writing flows with such ease it can sometimes deceive the reader into thinking that the author doesn’t seem to be working very hard at all. Simple stream of consciousness stuff you may think - think again! Portis’ use of language is masterly, the characterisations are wonderful and the dialogues his cast enter into, sublime. It strikes me as verging on the criminal that Norwood was actually out of print for a while. Hurumph!
I suspect that Charles Portis is underrated because his instinct as a writer is always to make us smile, and it seems to be the way that the literati only truly respect and value a writer if by the end of their novels the main characters are either dead, dying, or so utterly devastated by their experiences that we understand they’ll never manage to smile again. Portis is a dead loss when it comes to dishing-up pain and angst; he only ever seems to want to nudge his characters along with gentle nurturing. He can however paint a picture with a very few words: “Vernell was Norwood’s sister. She was a heavy, sleepy girl with bad posture.”
I’m not going to give a blow by blow account of what happens in Norwood, how it starts and ends in Ralph, Texas and all the humorous stuff that happens in between - it’s a slim read, find out for yourself. For my money this is a superbly-crafted book and deserves its place on my favourites shelf. I feel a lightening of the heart and a turning-up at the corners of my lips just thinking about Norwood Pratt. I will most certainly be re-reading this again very soon.
I suspect that Charles Portis is underrated because his instinct as a writer is always to make us smile, and it seems to be the way that the literati only truly respect and value a writer if by the end of their novels the main characters are either dead, dying, or so utterly devastated by their experiences that we understand they’ll never manage to smile again. Portis is a dead loss when it comes to dishing-up pain and angst; he only ever seems to want to nudge his characters along with gentle nurturing. He can however paint a picture with a very few words: “Vernell was Norwood’s sister. She was a heavy, sleepy girl with bad posture.”
I’m not going to give a blow by blow account of what happens in Norwood, how it starts and ends in Ralph, Texas and all the humorous stuff that happens in between - it’s a slim read, find out for yourself. For my money this is a superbly-crafted book and deserves its place on my favourites shelf. I feel a lightening of the heart and a turning-up at the corners of my lips just thinking about Norwood Pratt. I will most certainly be re-reading this again very soon.
January 3, 2013
Phenomenal. I don't really know what to say. I've been struggling to find a novel lately that completely captured my attention and pulled me fully into its world. This one did the trick. Norwood hooked me from the first page and never let go. The characters are quirky without being stupidly over the top. The dialogue is wonderfully Southern without being overwrought. It's a perfect little novel you really could read in a single sitting. It took me two sittings.
One thing that struck me about this novel I must say is its prodigious yet fascinatingly casual use of the 'n-word' for a book published in 1966. I nkow the book is set in the mid-1950s, but I still found it to be a bold (but to my mind certainly not racist) move during the ascendancy of the Black Power movement. It certainly would have been the way these characters would have talked--and it's fascinating to see the moments when certain characters stray from the word. I'm trying to imagine this book on a reader's nightstand with Stokely Carmichael on the evening news. Maybe it didn't even register at the time, but I have to say it struck me in its historical context of a literary book from the mid-1960s.
Highest recommendation. Charles Portis is a badass. Please write another book.
One thing that struck me about this novel I must say is its prodigious yet fascinatingly casual use of the 'n-word' for a book published in 1966. I nkow the book is set in the mid-1950s, but I still found it to be a bold (but to my mind certainly not racist) move during the ascendancy of the Black Power movement. It certainly would have been the way these characters would have talked--and it's fascinating to see the moments when certain characters stray from the word. I'm trying to imagine this book on a reader's nightstand with Stokely Carmichael on the evening news. Maybe it didn't even register at the time, but I have to say it struck me in its historical context of a literary book from the mid-1960s.
Highest recommendation. Charles Portis is a badass. Please write another book.
December 13, 2025
Norwood is mildly entertaining, but there isn't much here to really sink your teeth into beyond its broad farce. The rambling road-trip plot drifts along at a languid pace, anchored by a slack-jawed hillbilly protagonist. Perhaps its Seinfeld-like "story about nothing" portrayal of the American south's underbelly felt more risqué at the time of publication, but today it comes across as more curious than compelling.
May 24, 2022
This is a story about twenty four year old Norwood and a journey he takes across the U.S. from Texas to New York and back again. This is in the 60s. Sent off by a swindler with two stolen cars and a surprise companion. He was at the start extremely naïve; he hadn’t a clue as to what he was getting himself into. His eyes are opened on the road trip. He comes back a little, little bit wiser although not essentially changed. And he comes back with something else, something picked up along the way. Don’t be silly—I am not going to tell you what!
The book has humor, but that which we laugh at is so deplorable it’s kind of sad.
I do nevertheless like the book, and here’s why. Many of the characters are down and out people. Life’s reality for many is drawn. Even those who have nothing behave honorably. No, not all of them, but at least some.
In this book I took a little journey with people foreign to my own way of life. Their company is enjoyable This trip is not something I’d like to do in reality, but in a book? Sure!
The audiobook is very well narrated by David Aaron Baker. Every single word is clear. I like how he reads. He knows when to pause. He doesn’t overdo drama. Four stars for the narration. Really, I have no complaints at all with the narration.
***********'
*True Grit 4 stars
*Norwood 3 stars
*The Dog of the South TBR
The book has humor, but that which we laugh at is so deplorable it’s kind of sad.
I do nevertheless like the book, and here’s why. Many of the characters are down and out people. Life’s reality for many is drawn. Even those who have nothing behave honorably. No, not all of them, but at least some.
In this book I took a little journey with people foreign to my own way of life. Their company is enjoyable This trip is not something I’d like to do in reality, but in a book? Sure!
The audiobook is very well narrated by David Aaron Baker. Every single word is clear. I like how he reads. He knows when to pause. He doesn’t overdo drama. Four stars for the narration. Really, I have no complaints at all with the narration.
***********'
*True Grit 4 stars
*Norwood 3 stars
*The Dog of the South TBR
January 30, 2011
This is the best one to read if you only read one other Portis novel besides ‘True Grit.’ Everyone should read ‘True Grit.’
In a charming first novel, Portis establishes his mastery of language, in particular the Texarkana vernacular, of well-chosen detail that goes beyond apparent mundane triviality and really captures the American ambience as well as the human condition, and of pitch-perfect dialogue.
Norwood Pratt—another one of Portis’s strengths is names—is the title character, a poor, ignorant redneck who’s also a philosopher and philanthropist. After getting a hardship discharge from the Marines when his daddy dies in the early 1960s, the disappointed Norwood returns to his lackluster life in Ralph, Texas, as a Nipper gas station attendant and caretaker for his sister Vernell, whose lack of get-up-and-go is either the result of social and cognitive impairment or just plain old absence of motivation.
Norwood finds some purpose in sprucing up the dilapidated family property and getting his sister working, but his life is empty until a shady entrepreneur—Grady Fring the Kredit King—employs him to transport some automobiles of shady provenance—they turn out to be stolen—to New York. Norwood jumps at the opportunity to collect on a seventy dollar loan from a Marine friend who’s supposed to be in Gotham, and maybe the chance to become a country music star.
For Portis, it’s an excuse to dive into what will become his trademark, a rambling and disjointed Odyssey stuffed with witty, sly, homespun observation that manages to be at once sardonic and sympathetic. Echoes of Mark Twain and other great American writers.
In New York, Norwood finds his service buddy has gone back south. On a homeward-bound Trailways bus, he runs into a “pretty little girl with short black hair and bangs and bejeweled harlequin glasses.” Of course he falls in love with Rita Lee.
She isn’t his only traveling companion. There’s also Edmund B. Ratner, a British midget, the second shortest in show business and ‘the world's smallest perfect fat man.’ Not to mention Joann, ‘the Wonder Hen, the College Educated Chicken,’ rescued by Norwood from a penny arcade. These delightful oddballs compose only the core of Portis’s eccentric and motley cast.
‘Norwood,’ like all of Portis’s work (except‘True Grit’) is hardly earthshaking. But it’s still one heck of a novel.
In a charming first novel, Portis establishes his mastery of language, in particular the Texarkana vernacular, of well-chosen detail that goes beyond apparent mundane triviality and really captures the American ambience as well as the human condition, and of pitch-perfect dialogue.
Norwood Pratt—another one of Portis’s strengths is names—is the title character, a poor, ignorant redneck who’s also a philosopher and philanthropist. After getting a hardship discharge from the Marines when his daddy dies in the early 1960s, the disappointed Norwood returns to his lackluster life in Ralph, Texas, as a Nipper gas station attendant and caretaker for his sister Vernell, whose lack of get-up-and-go is either the result of social and cognitive impairment or just plain old absence of motivation.
Norwood finds some purpose in sprucing up the dilapidated family property and getting his sister working, but his life is empty until a shady entrepreneur—Grady Fring the Kredit King—employs him to transport some automobiles of shady provenance—they turn out to be stolen—to New York. Norwood jumps at the opportunity to collect on a seventy dollar loan from a Marine friend who’s supposed to be in Gotham, and maybe the chance to become a country music star.
For Portis, it’s an excuse to dive into what will become his trademark, a rambling and disjointed Odyssey stuffed with witty, sly, homespun observation that manages to be at once sardonic and sympathetic. Echoes of Mark Twain and other great American writers.
In New York, Norwood finds his service buddy has gone back south. On a homeward-bound Trailways bus, he runs into a “pretty little girl with short black hair and bangs and bejeweled harlequin glasses.” Of course he falls in love with Rita Lee.
She isn’t his only traveling companion. There’s also Edmund B. Ratner, a British midget, the second shortest in show business and ‘the world's smallest perfect fat man.’ Not to mention Joann, ‘the Wonder Hen, the College Educated Chicken,’ rescued by Norwood from a penny arcade. These delightful oddballs compose only the core of Portis’s eccentric and motley cast.
‘Norwood,’ like all of Portis’s work (except‘True Grit’) is hardly earthshaking. But it’s still one heck of a novel.
March 30, 2021
Portis' debut novel is sly, slight sleight-of-hand. It reads a bit like stream-of-consciousness piffle. Its only real plot point is that, a long time ago, somebody borrowed $70 off the titular character - and he wants it back, even if he has to go from Texas to NYC to get it.
Well, there's a bit more to it than that: Dissatisfied with his ex-marine lot in life, 23-year-old Norwood has dreams. He can play guitar some and he wants to be a singer like one of them Hank guys. But first he has to get that $70.
What we read is Norwood's road trip - episodic by design, with most people Norwood meets leaving his life almost as quickly as they enter it. Of these, my favorite by far is Edmund B. Ratner - a showbiz midget on the downside of his 'career'; easily the best-drawn character after Norwood: a Capote-esque raconteur.
If 'Norwood' gives scant indication of the kind of fireworks Portis would display 20 years later in 'Masters of Atlantis', it's nevertheless laced with a knowing intelligence and still comes equipped with patches of the author's singularly acerbic barbs:
The work is rather like what a stand-up comedian hillbilly might concoct if he had the mental wherewithal to write a novel. Though the result is pint-size, it's a well-intentioned orphan in the house of literature.
I've heard it was made into a rather terrible movie. That tends to figure - even though a read of it suggests that, in the right hands, it would make a rather pleasant flick.
Well, there's a bit more to it than that: Dissatisfied with his ex-marine lot in life, 23-year-old Norwood has dreams. He can play guitar some and he wants to be a singer like one of them Hank guys. But first he has to get that $70.
What we read is Norwood's road trip - episodic by design, with most people Norwood meets leaving his life almost as quickly as they enter it. Of these, my favorite by far is Edmund B. Ratner - a showbiz midget on the downside of his 'career'; easily the best-drawn character after Norwood: a Capote-esque raconteur.
If 'Norwood' gives scant indication of the kind of fireworks Portis would display 20 years later in 'Masters of Atlantis', it's nevertheless laced with a knowing intelligence and still comes equipped with patches of the author's singularly acerbic barbs:
She claimed descent from the usurper Cromwell and she read a long paper once on her connections at a gathering of Confederate Daughters, all but emptying the ballroom of the Albert Pike Hotel in Little Rock. This was no small feat considering the tolerance level of a group who had sat unprotesting through two days of odes and diaries and recipes for the favorite dishes of General Pat Cleburne.
The work is rather like what a stand-up comedian hillbilly might concoct if he had the mental wherewithal to write a novel. Though the result is pint-size, it's a well-intentioned orphan in the house of literature.
I've heard it was made into a rather terrible movie. That tends to figure - even though a read of it suggests that, in the right hands, it would make a rather pleasant flick.
April 3, 2023
update on my 3rd or 4th read: i dont understand how this book manages to feel slapdash and written on a bar napkin but also like flaubert-level precise down to each individual letter. nothing happens/everything happens. for my money this time the fight between norwood and the two random guys in the philadelphia trainyard is the best scene. it's like don quixote flavored potato chips
been on my rear end with a herniated disc for a week so i turned to my version of comfort food. i can see a criticism of portis that experiences his books as really well-turned shaggy dog stories -- a boob wanders off in the world, bumps into things, wanders home. that's more or less what happens in all of his novels, with some tweaks to the formula (although i haven't read Gringos yet). but that's all that really happens in the odyssey. what portis shares with homer is the pure beauty of his language, although portis' beauty is this perfected mid-century american arkansas parking-lot fatalism. i dont know how charles portis will sound/read to someone not as proximate to the world his characters move through, but god damn i love the dude.
some illustrative joy:
been on my rear end with a herniated disc for a week so i turned to my version of comfort food. i can see a criticism of portis that experiences his books as really well-turned shaggy dog stories -- a boob wanders off in the world, bumps into things, wanders home. that's more or less what happens in all of his novels, with some tweaks to the formula (although i haven't read Gringos yet). but that's all that really happens in the odyssey. what portis shares with homer is the pure beauty of his language, although portis' beauty is this perfected mid-century american arkansas parking-lot fatalism. i dont know how charles portis will sound/read to someone not as proximate to the world his characters move through, but god damn i love the dude.
some illustrative joy:
Tilmon said “Tee-hee-hee.” His tongue fell out as if to receive a coin.
The bread man began to rumble with quiet laughter. “That coyote or whatever he is, a wolf or something, every time he gets up on a clift or somewhere with a new plan, why the Road Runner comes along on some skates or has him some new invention like a rocket or a big wrecker’s ball and just busts that coyote a good one.” He laughed some more, then fell into repose.
In a minute or two his face clouded with a darker memory. “Noveltoons are not any good at all,” he said. “It’s usually a shoemaker and a bunch of damn mice singing. When one of them comes on I get up and go get me a sack of corn or something.”
Soon it was so thick with flour dust in the car that he had to slam one of the doors back and stick his head out for air. The trouble was, two of the sacks had broken. After he caught his breath he dragged them over and pushed them out. The second one snagged on the bad door and hung there for a moment blowing flour up in his face. Then he began flinging sacks out, good ones, till he got a cramp in his neck. The train entered the
A bow-tied man across the aisle, not much himself but maybe some pretty girl’s father, was watching him. Norwood stared back. The man looked up at the light fixture on the ceiling to calculate its dimensions and efficiency. There were no girls on the train, no women at all, only these clean men. They bathed every day, every morning. He caught another one looking at him down the way.
She had black hair piled up high and dark tiger eyes. She came back and gave the counter a quick wipe with a blue sponge that had one cornflake riding on the stern. She looked at the dime and nickel in his hand.
There was a man in a Mr. Peanut outfit in front of the Planters place but he was not giving out sample nuts, he was just walking back and forth. The Mr. Peanut casing looked hot. It looked thick enough to give protection against small arms fire.
“Do they pay you by the hour or what?” Norwood said to the monocled peanut face.
“Yeah, by the hour,” said a wary, muffled voice inside.
“I bet that suit is heavy.”
“It’s not all that heavy. I just started this morning.”
“How much do you get a hour?”
“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
“Do you take the suit home with you?” “No, I put it on down here. At the shop.”
“The one in Dallas gives out free nuts.”
“I don’t know anything about that. They didn’t say anything to me about it.”
“He don’t give you many, just two or three cashews.”
“I don’t know anything about that. I work at the post office at night.”
“Well, I’ll see you sometime, Mr. Peanut. You take it easy.”
“Okay. You too.”
The air smelled of electricity and dirt.
Fatigue and unhappiness were in their faces, as of young men whose shorts are bunching up.He has little pig eyes that glitter and burn with malice.
August 14, 2023
This is the third book by Charles Portis which I've read, and I would be interested to re-read True Grit to examine how Portis develops the character of Mattie Ross. In the other two I have read, Dog of the South and now Norwood, the women who populate the stories are not strong, intelligent females (to say the least), but Mattie Ross is the quintessential strong, determined woman. Maybe I just have not read enough of Portis' novels. And I suppose the grandmother in Dog of the South, though a bit odd, could be considered strong.
Norwood has a lot in common with the protagonist of Dog of the South in his lack of sophistication. I wonder sometimes if Portis enjoyed imagining how his Arkansas compatriots saw him, the highly literate journalist and editor, and decided to write books from the point of view of the uneducated man for that reason. There is always an erudite misfit in his novels, the Struther Martin character in the 1969 film version of True Grit being a fine exemplar of the type, and most of these characters' witty banter flies over the head of the small town rube protagonist, with much comedic effect. So it is in Norwood.
Norwood is an easy read, with a good bit of comedy and enjoyable dialogue, but I preferred Dog of the South, and I preferred True Grit to either of the other books. That said, I've enjoyed all three, and I have hugely enjoyed getting to know Charles Portis' work, however belatedly.
Norwood has a lot in common with the protagonist of Dog of the South in his lack of sophistication. I wonder sometimes if Portis enjoyed imagining how his Arkansas compatriots saw him, the highly literate journalist and editor, and decided to write books from the point of view of the uneducated man for that reason. There is always an erudite misfit in his novels, the Struther Martin character in the 1969 film version of True Grit being a fine exemplar of the type, and most of these characters' witty banter flies over the head of the small town rube protagonist, with much comedic effect. So it is in Norwood.
Norwood is an easy read, with a good bit of comedy and enjoyable dialogue, but I preferred Dog of the South, and I preferred True Grit to either of the other books. That said, I've enjoyed all three, and I have hugely enjoyed getting to know Charles Portis' work, however belatedly.
December 18, 2011
I read this book in three sittings, the longest while getting some shading work done a large side piece. The three things that stand out is the specificity of the language, the dryness of the humor, and the protagonist's heroic transformation in spite of making bad decisions at every turn. Norwood conducts himself with propriety, which, sad to say, makes him something of a throwback, yet one would be hard-pressed to call him good natured. In life, I run from these kinds of people: guided by other people's perceptions of the right thing to do, but it's this rightness that makes the story taut. A looser moral register and the story falls apart. I like characters that are unnecessarily formal to the point of fussiness. These kinds of characters present countless opportunities for humor. This is where Charles Portis is a master. There were places where I chuckled out loud, which means something, I think, when someone is jabbing a needle in you. There's a long conversation toward the end where Norwood tactfully recounts his adventures on the road from Texas to New York City and back again. However, his clumsy attempts at summarizing make the trip seem even stranger than it was, which his friend pounces on. We've all known people like this, who make us see the humor in our situations when we can't. The humor is lost on poor Norwood, but not on the reader.
October 27, 2022
I know others may disagree, but I'm sorry - this was just a total waste of time. It was like an endless Forrest Gump story without any of the interesting plot points - shrimp, Elvis, tennis, Vietnam, et al. Even the bit about Joanne, "the chicken with a college education" (which is always mentioned in any description of this book) only appears well beyond the 3/4's point for just a coupla pages and otherwise plays absolutely no role in...well, was gonna say "the plot," except that is just being WAY too generous.
If you haven't already, PLEASE read True Grit - it is an outstanding book and one of the best Westerns out there. But then take my advise and tell Mr. Portis "thank you and goodbye," because based on this and Dog of the South, ol' Charlie is the Billy Ray Cyrus of Southern lit - an absolute one-hit wonder.
If you haven't already, PLEASE read True Grit - it is an outstanding book and one of the best Westerns out there. But then take my advise and tell Mr. Portis "thank you and goodbye," because based on this and Dog of the South, ol' Charlie is the Billy Ray Cyrus of Southern lit - an absolute one-hit wonder.
October 12, 2020
Another comic highlight. Portis is wonderful, inimitable. He can tell a story about nothing like no one else I know. George Saunders has inherited some of this, but Saunders can be a little more brittle and mannered, his characters and situations more surreal. Portis is interested in all the little details of ordinary, not-always-so-bright folks struggling with their drives and limitations, their idees fixes and confusion about the world. Like many of his other books (True Grit, Dog of the South), this is a story about a quest: Norwood's quest to find the man who owes him seventy dollars. That seventy dollars drives the story all the way to New York and back, through a cast of Portis's usual vivid, hilarious characters. This one is a little slighter than Dog of the South, and a little lighter. That's okay; it's a great novel with Portis's stamp all over it. **Reread Oct 11, 2020.**
July 17, 2021
Charles Portis is one of the best writers I never heard of until just a few years ago. His crazy road trip novels always put me into a good mood. Flip to any page of this, or any of his novels, and you will get a good chuckle going. His snappy dialogue bounces off the page, carrying the action along with it just as fast as you please. If I lingered here to describe this hilarious caper from Texas to New York and back, and the nutty characters Norwood meets along the way, including a chicken liberated from a penny arcade, it would just spoil the fun. A truly American novel not to be missed.
September 5, 2017
Funnier than throwing a hardboiled egg into an electric fan, this reads like the bastard son of Flannery O'Connor and John Fergus Ryan.
February 21, 2016
If character development is your thing, this book will not do for you. By the end of the book, I was quite certain that Norwood Pratt will be essentially unchanged at 75. I suspect that is one of the main points of the book.
This is a great road story about a Texarkanan Odysseus. Some of the prose is memorable: "...they had moved a lot, back and forth along U.S. Highway 82 in the oil fields and cotton patches between Stamps, Arkansas, and Hooks, Texas. There was something Mr. Pratt dearly loved about that section of interstate concrete. They clung to its banks like river rats."
This is a great road story about a Texarkanan Odysseus. Some of the prose is memorable: "...they had moved a lot, back and forth along U.S. Highway 82 in the oil fields and cotton patches between Stamps, Arkansas, and Hooks, Texas. There was something Mr. Pratt dearly loved about that section of interstate concrete. They clung to its banks like river rats."
August 11, 2016
Delightful picaresque road-trip novel. I'd never read Portis and I don't know if this is representative of his usual style, for it was pretty damn silly and over-the-top. But I loved the audio narrative by Barrett Whitener who performs all the voices and has perfect comic timing. I'm from the Midwest and have kin (normally I'd say family but Norwood Pratt would say kinfolk!) in Arkansas and I would emerge out of the audiobook with a tinge of Texarkana in my voice. (Which my partner always made me aware of. I explained and defended myself. Now I've got him listening to this .... ).
March 1, 2014
Portis' first novel, kind of hilarious in a low key kind of way. Good prose but basically a road story about a slightly above average Texas ordinary workingman in the 50's. A short book, good characters including an obese midget and manipulative shyster who sends Norwood on a wild goose chase. Not sure if I'll read Portis again, though.... would read True Grit by my memory contaminated by John Wayne and Jeff Bridges.
June 5, 2023
05/2014
Very funny and pretty adorable. Portis has (had) a remarkable way with language. But what was it really about? Being poor and innocent in the 60s south?
Very funny and pretty adorable. Portis has (had) a remarkable way with language. But what was it really about? Being poor and innocent in the 60s south?
July 10, 2017
This book is so much fun :) Norwood, who wants to be a singer, accepts a task to take two cars to NY and then come back to Texas. During the trip, he meets a series of memorable characters.
January 19, 2019
These people.... what a world! When I read books like this I remember how wonderful the human race really is. Amusing, quirky, original, hilarious.
June 10, 2020
Most people won’t enjoy Norwood quite as much as I did, I think. It’s like Napoleon Dynamite meets Flannery O’Connor, and I love Napoleon Dynamite more than most, so there you go.
January 20, 2024
Not sure how hot of a take this is but I really think Charles Portis is like a Twain-level Great American Writer.
Read
December 12, 2025Hilarious, laugh-out-loud picaresque flawed for me by a hefty larding of slurs.
April 9, 2020
You know, I'm not quite sure what to make of Norwood, either the book or the main character. I liked it - and I liked him - and I laughed out loud a few times while reading it. Maybe that's the point. Maybe the point is that there is no point.
After reading such a magically cohesive and brilliant book as True Grit earlier this year, I was interested in what else Charles Portis had to offer. Norwood seemed to be the one folks were gravitating toward most, so I selected this from Audible and launched in.
I think Portis' best trick in the book is to present a whole wealth of unlikable characters and then make you like them. Norwood, who isn't entirely bright and who isn't entirely kind, but is at least a little of both, gets hoodwinked in the first few pages by the Kredit King, who basically tricks Norwood into running stolen cars for him. Norwood doesn't know they're stolen until midway through his trip. What he does with them, and the woman who's along for the ride, sets this whole story in motion.
Well; stories. Except for The Sisters Brothers, I have never read a book that cold be described as accurately as picaresque. Characters and the bare bones of Norwood's journey carry through from chapter to chapter, but each chapter also feels like an entire situation with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It's like binge-watching a dark-humor sitcom. And so much of it is patently absurd, from the girl Norwood picks up on a bus to the little person he meets in a rooming house to the "college-educated" chicken named Joanne he liberates from her life of servitude. None of these characters and situations should go together. The fact that they all seem perfectly normal in the course of the book is Portis' genius.
I think I'm going to be thinking about this book for awhile. True Grit was brilliant, but its brilliance was accessible. Norwood might also be brilliant, but its charms are a little less on the surface. I wonder what's next for me and Portis.
After reading such a magically cohesive and brilliant book as True Grit earlier this year, I was interested in what else Charles Portis had to offer. Norwood seemed to be the one folks were gravitating toward most, so I selected this from Audible and launched in.
I think Portis' best trick in the book is to present a whole wealth of unlikable characters and then make you like them. Norwood, who isn't entirely bright and who isn't entirely kind, but is at least a little of both, gets hoodwinked in the first few pages by the Kredit King, who basically tricks Norwood into running stolen cars for him. Norwood doesn't know they're stolen until midway through his trip. What he does with them, and the woman who's along for the ride, sets this whole story in motion.
Well; stories. Except for The Sisters Brothers, I have never read a book that cold be described as accurately as picaresque. Characters and the bare bones of Norwood's journey carry through from chapter to chapter, but each chapter also feels like an entire situation with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It's like binge-watching a dark-humor sitcom. And so much of it is patently absurd, from the girl Norwood picks up on a bus to the little person he meets in a rooming house to the "college-educated" chicken named Joanne he liberates from her life of servitude. None of these characters and situations should go together. The fact that they all seem perfectly normal in the course of the book is Portis' genius.
I think I'm going to be thinking about this book for awhile. True Grit was brilliant, but its brilliance was accessible. Norwood might also be brilliant, but its charms are a little less on the surface. I wonder what's next for me and Portis.
April 15, 2023
I have often said that if you had no knowledge of the chronological order of the Coen brothers' filmography, you'd be hard pressed to place the movies in any kind of order, much less pick out their first film. Their movies are so stylistically sure-handed from the beginning and the tone of their storytelling so distinct and fully-formed that it's hard to note maturing or progression.
I mention this for two reasons. First, the Coens are still the best adapters of Charles Portis's work. Second, Portis's work displays the same accomplished and confident style and timeless sensibility from the very first book, which is Norwood.
Here, Portis's story already teems with his trademarks--the naive Southerner with Arkansas connections on a rambling, episodic, picaresque journey; the flabbergasting family members; the loquacious conmen; the haughty cranks with pet theories about everything; the finely observed details of everyday awkwardness and petty indignities; and, always, the pitch-perfect dialogue and the hysterically funny understatement. As colorful as Portis's characters are, they always feel like real people you've actually met, and his carefully crafted dialogue sounds like real conversations you've overheard.
I first read this eight years ago, when Sarah and I were just dating. I've been meaning to reread it, and Portis's death last week finally motivated me to listen to the audiobook on my commute. It's a fast read and a fast listen. Wonderful to revisit. I regret that we won't get any more novels from Portis.
I mention this for two reasons. First, the Coens are still the best adapters of Charles Portis's work. Second, Portis's work displays the same accomplished and confident style and timeless sensibility from the very first book, which is Norwood.
Here, Portis's story already teems with his trademarks--the naive Southerner with Arkansas connections on a rambling, episodic, picaresque journey; the flabbergasting family members; the loquacious conmen; the haughty cranks with pet theories about everything; the finely observed details of everyday awkwardness and petty indignities; and, always, the pitch-perfect dialogue and the hysterically funny understatement. As colorful as Portis's characters are, they always feel like real people you've actually met, and his carefully crafted dialogue sounds like real conversations you've overheard.
I first read this eight years ago, when Sarah and I were just dating. I've been meaning to reread it, and Portis's death last week finally motivated me to listen to the audiobook on my commute. It's a fast read and a fast listen. Wonderful to revisit. I regret that we won't get any more novels from Portis.
March 22, 2023
Around the time Charles Portis died in 2020, a writer called him the best little-known novelist in America. Now that I have read four of his five novels, of which Norwood is the first, I am inclined to agree. He is best known for True Grit, which was turned into a movie twice. A native of Arkansas, Portis wrote novels that were fun to read -- in the same way that Mark Twain's books were fun to read.
Norwood Pratt is owed a $70 debt by a fellow ex=Marine, so he decides to go to New York to collect the debt. On the way, he runs into a number of picaresque adventures, such as losing his fancy boots while riding a boxcar. He arrives in New York only to find that his friend left for Arkansas two days before. On the road back, he picks up a girlfriend, a circus midget, and a trained chicken.
Norwood Pratt is owed a $70 debt by a fellow ex=Marine, so he decides to go to New York to collect the debt. On the way, he runs into a number of picaresque adventures, such as losing his fancy boots while riding a boxcar. He arrives in New York only to find that his friend left for Arkansas two days before. On the road back, he picks up a girlfriend, a circus midget, and a trained chicken.
March 11, 2020
Portis’ debut novel takes you by surprise. The characters creep on you both for their charming and often disastrous candor but also for their moral clarity. Even the crooks seem straight-forward in *Norwood*. Portis’ magnificent prose and simple style complete what is a subtly magnificent reading experience for one of the middle 20th centuries quiet classics.
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