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
My favorite newish book of the year is (surprise) the Autobiography of Mark Twain, and I wrote about it for Salon, where there are also best of 2010 contributions from my friends Laura Miller and Laura Lippman, and from other writers, including David Grann, Ted Conover, George Pelecanos, Dave Eggers, Elizabeth Kolbert, Anthony Shadid, James Fallows, and Rebecca Traister. And . . .