True Grit - Charles Portis

True Grit (Charles Portis, 1968)

It's not often a movie cleaves faithfully to the book on which it's based. If you've seen the John Wayne movie version of this, though, reading the novel will be a very familiar experience. Not only are pretty much all the major scenes intact, the movie uses pages of book dialogue, even incorporating some of the first person narrative into the script.

So is the book really worth reading if you've seen the movie? Absolutely. First, it's great writing: sharp, vivid, witty, and immediate. The story is a first person account by a grown up Mattie Ross of how she avenged her father's blood when she was 14 with the help of one-eyed U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn ("He is a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don't enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork.") and Texas Ranger LaBoeuf ("He needed a bath and a shave but you could tell that was not his usual condition."). The character of Mattie is perfectly conceived and communicated through the narration and the story: practical, determined, brutally honest, old before her time, yet still a teenage girl. She also has a razor wit that cuts down any antagonists. Of course, Cogburn and LaBoeuf have their fair share of witticisms as well. Some examples:

Rooster Cogburn being cross-examined by a hostile defense lawyer:

Mr. Goudy: "The gun was pulled and ready in your hand?"
Cogburn: "Yes sir."
Mr. Goudy: "Loaded and cocked?"
Cogburn: "If it ain't loaded and cocked it will not shoot."

LaBoeuf lecturing Mattie on being thankful for water:

"In my country you can ride for days and see no groundwater. I have lapped filthy water from a hoofprint and was glad to have it. You don't know what discomfort is until you have nearly perished for water."

Rooster said, "If I ever meet one of you Texas waddies that says he never drank from a horse track I think I will shake his hand and give him a Daniel Webster cigar."

"Then you don't believe it?" asked LaBoeuf.

"I believed it the first twenty-five times I heard it."

During an impromptu shooting contest, when Rooster misses his mark:

The bottle fell and rolled and Rooster shot at it two or three more times and broke it on the ground. He got out his sack of cartridges and reloaded the pistol. "The Chinaman is running them cheap shells in on me again."

LaBoeuf said, "I thought maybe the sun was in your eyes. That is to say, your eye."

One more, when Mattie is trying to hire Cogburn to find her father's killer. Cogburn says, while drinking:

"There will be expenses."

"I hope you don't think that I am going to keep you in whiskey."

"I don't have to buy that, I confiscate it. You might try a little touch of it for your cold."

"No thank you."

"This is the real article. It is double-rectified busthead from Madison County, aged in the keg. A little spoonful would do you a power of good."

"I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains."

The characters and dialogue are excellent, and the story is very realistic, even intense toward the end. Written with economic yet powerful clarity, this is a very good novel, even if you're not a fan of the Western.

Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 thieves in my mouth