The Good Stuff

True Grit and the war in the Pacific

The Collected Works of Charles Portis

As you may know, America’s greatest living novelist recently passed away. No, I’m not talking about Cormac McCarthy – I am referring to Charles Portis.

It would be understandable if your reaction was “Charles who?” Portis only wrote one well-known novel – True Grit, which is famous more for the two popular movies based on its story than for the book itself. But he is one of the great American masters. Do you wish to quarrel with the McCarthy comparison? I agree with Roy Blount, Jr.’s assessment: “Charles Portis could be Cormac McCarthy if he wanted to, but he’d rather be funny.”

Portis was born and educated in rural western Arkansas near the Texas border, and most of his novels are rooted in that hardscrabble region. Four of his five novels center on a quest undertaken by a first-person narrator. Each of these narrators is a comic figure, but none of them are aware of it, and unconsciously produce stream of deadpan humor. I laugh out loud when I read these books, which is significantly more emotion than I show on most occasions.

In general, I’m not a fan of novels that attempt to reproduce local dialects. Writers tend to try too hard. Reading The Grapes of Wrath, I found myself wincing again and again at false notes. There’s Faulkner, of course, but the baroque lavishness of his characters’ speech sometimes seems more Faulkner-esque than authentic. Portis’s spare writing is pitch-perfect. He leaves me thinking that a perfectly rendered vernacular is the closest thing we have to a universal language.

The Library of America recently published Portis’s Collected Works, containing the five novels and a handful of stories. Not a very substantial oeuvre for a lifetime of writing, but that means you can read them all again and again. Get started. You can thank me later.

-        Jack Jr,

Downfall and Retribution in the Pacific

It’s always a little tough to recommend a book after dad recommends books – I’m not trying to compete, after all. But in this case, my picks are about as different from a Charles Portis novel as could be imagined.

In my experience, if people know much at all about World War II, it tends to be focused on the European theatre, particularly from Normandy on until Germany’s surrender. This might have surprised Americans living 80 years ago, as America’s wrath was primarily directed at Japan, not Germany. The Nazis loom so large in the imagination, that people forget that America’s war with them was a byproduct of our declaring war on Japan and not the other way around.

The two best books I have read on the war in the Pacific both deal with its ending. Retribution by Max Hastings, is comprehensive without feeling like a slog. His take on the question of America’s use of atomic weapons is the most even-handed and helpful I have ever come across.

In 1995, an enormous amount of classified documents pertaining to intelligence gathered during World War II were released. They contained thousands of intercepted Japanese communications and were invaluable for gaining a better understanding of the mindset of Japan’s leaders in 1944-45. Were they preparing to surrender? Was dropping the atomic bombs unnecessary? Downfall by Richard Frank, was written after he spent years sifting through those documents and he builds his case, chapter by chapter. What is Frank’s perspective on the end of the war with Japan? You’ll have to read perhaps the best World War II book I have ever encountered to find out.

-        Jack III