True Grit divides Charles Portis’ admirers. Some, like Donna Tartt, believe it’s a classic on the order of Huck Finn; others, like Ron Rosenbaum, resent that it detracts attention from the rest. I like them all.
“When J. D. Salinger finished Catcher in the Rye, he drove to the Maxwells’ house in the country and in the course of an afternoon and evening read it to them on their porch.”
“If we tell other people our stories, we do it so badly — or so well — that we turn them into something else, art or lies or half-truths…, whatever can outlast the clean moments of real life.”
“I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.” — James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son