By: John Mark Boling,
on 12/5/2012
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By: John Mark Boling,
on 12/8/2011
Everyone knows that books make the best gifts, right? If you’re reading this blog you probably agree with us. Last year, Overlook got into the true spirit of the holiday season and spent twelve days in December giving away some of our favorite books that we’ve published over the past forty years. We had such a strong response that we’ve decided to continue the tradition this year, with another
By: Jerry Beck,
on 4/9/2011
Great moments in American literature… ?
After seeing the remake of True Grit a few months ago, Leonard Maltin decided to re-read the original Charles Portis novel and the rest of authors work. Imagine his surprise when, while reading Portis’ first book Norwood, he found a reference to both Warner Bros. Road Runner and Coyote AND Paramount’s Noveltoons!
Paramount Cartoons noted in great literature? Seymour Kneitel recognized for his directorial genius? I’m afraid not. It more likely reflects the general public’s attitude towards Chuck Jones mini masterpieces versus all other comers. And most Noveltoons are not very good (though a guilty pleasure of mine!).
Norwood was written in 1966 and has recently been reprinted along with True Grit and Portis’ other novels by Tusk, a division of The Overlook Press. I’ve posted the page from the book below, the relevant text in bold. The set-up is that good ol’ boy Norwood has just hitched a ride with a guy driving a bread-delivery truck, who turns out to be a talkative fellow.
(Thanks, Leonard Maltin)
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Post tags: Charles Portis, Norwood, Noveltoons
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By: Micol Ostow,
on 3/28/2011
By: John Mark Boling,
on 2/8/2011
In case you were stuck working at 1:30 this afternoon and missed the great discussion between Lynn Nesbit, Carlo Rotella and Overlook publisher Peter Mayer about TRUE GRIT and Charles Portis, WNYC has helpfully put the interview online!
Listen below or go here to listen to the talk and read a bit of background.
By: John Mark Boling,
on 1/25/2011
By: John Mark Boling,
on 1/20/2011
Yesterday, we got the extremely exciting news that True Grit will be the next #1 on the New York Times bestseller for trade paperback fiction. For a book that's been around since 1968, the "Portis revival" (The New Yorker) is incredibly welcome. While of course we love to see our books sell, we acquired Charles Portis' work long before the Coen Brothers film adaptation was planned--because we think they are truly American classics that deserved to stay in print.
To celebrate, we're giving away a FULL SET of Charles Portis' novels. At this point, everyone's heard of True Grit. But some of us are huge fans of Norwood here, and many consider The Dog of the South to be Portis' finest work. We also thought Gringos and Masters of Atlantis were absolute American classics. So we're giving away ALL FIVE books to one lucky winner. Leave a comment here, on Twitter or on Facebook to win--winners announced tomorrow!
Don't forget that these will all be available as ebooks next week and stay tuned for the announcement of the Academy Awards nominees on January 25--we're keeping our fingers crossed that the great reviews of the film translate into much-deserved Oscar nods! And check out this great book buzz from USA Today about True Grit.
Happy reading!
By: John Mark Boling,
on 12/9/2010
...to bring you this fantastic piece about TRUE GRIT by Malcolm Jones in Newsweek. Much like how dessert is our favorite part of any meal, the concluding paragraph is our favorite part of this column:
True Grit is one of the great American novels, with two of the greatest characters in our literature and a story worthy of their greatness. It is not just a book you can read over and over. It’s a book you want to read over and over, and each time you’re surprised by how good it is. In every Portis novel, someone makes some kind of journey. His protagonists all have a little Don Quixote in them. They are at odds with the ordinary ways of making do, and they don’t care what the world thinks. In True Grit, these elements are the raw ingredients for one of the finer epic journeys in American literature. The Coen brothers, with their wry, dry-eyed take on all things American, are supremely equipped to bring Portis’s vision to the screen intact. But do yourself two favors: read the novel before you see the movie. You won’t regret it. As for the second favor: do not loan this book out. You’ll never see it again.
True Lit: Movies eclipse their literary sources all the time, which is fine when the book is ‘Jaws.’ But when John Wayne overshadows a master such as Charles Portis, we have a problem.
When Charles Portis published True Grit in 1968, the novel became a critically praised bestseller. Then a year later the movie, starring John Wayne, came out, and after that no one even remembered there was a book. If we know how 14-year-old Mattie Ross hired Rooster Cogburn, a one-eyed U.S. marshal with a drinking problem, to hunt down the man who robbed and killed her father, it’s mostly because the movie never stops showing up on television. As a result, most of the pre-release chatter about the new Coen brothers version of True Grit, with Jeff Bridges as Rooster, continually calls it a remake of the John Wayne film. For Portis fans this is nothing short of a crime.
Criminal or not, there’s nothing unique going on here. Any time Hollywood takes a book and turns it into a successful movie, there’s every chance that the book, however good it may be, will be forgotten. For every To Kill a Mockingbird or Gone With the Wind, where the book and the movie are equally respected and neither trumps the other, there are five exam2 Comments on We depart from our regularly scheduled holiday giveaways, last added: 12/9/2010Display Comments Add a Comment
By: John Mark Boling,
on 12/2/2010
By: John Mark Boling,
on 11/4/2010
And of course, Matt Damon's not alone--Portis has long been considered one of the great living American novelists and True Grit is beloved among readers. But it's wonderful to hear people involved with the new Coen Brothers film acknowledge the influence of the original novel in the new adaptation.
"It's just a brilliant adaptation," enthuses Damon. "They change stuff to make a two-hour film out of it, but retain so much of the dialogue, and Charles Portis - who is still alive - has an ear for the way people talk. It's a really special script."
By: John Mark Boling,
on 10/26/2010
which hits stores on November 5! You've probably heard about the new movie based on the novel, opening December 25 from the Coen Brothers and starring Jeff Bridges.
Look for our new edition of this Charles Portis classic next week!
By: John Mark Boling,
on 3/24/2009
Joel and Ethan Coen are working on an adaptation of the classic western True Grit by Charles Portis for their next project. According to Variety, their adaptation of the 1969 picture will hew more closely to the Charles Portis book on which it is based. In the book, a 14-year-old girl, an aging US marshal, and another lawman track her father’s killer through Indian country. While the 1969 version focused on Wayne, the Coens’ version will highlight the girl’s point of view.
By: John Mark Boling,
on 9/16/2008
Check out this rave from Joshua Ferris in the September issue of GQ magazine for the great Charles Portis: "Forget the Apatow ascent. Forget the Stewart-Colbert juggernaut. Funny as they are the greatest testament to American laughter is a novel published in 1979, by Charles Portis, called The Dog of the South. . . . Portis's quirky improvised dialogue is why The Dog of the South is such a winning book. It's the funniest iteration of that particularly American specimen, the road novel, with a finicky and hapless version of Sal Paradise as hero and a cast of characters that is half Pynchon, half Bottle Rocket. As with all great novels - and great comedy - how things end up matters a whole lot less than the fun had in getting there."
By: John Mark Boling,
on 8/12/2008
The Baltimore Sun's Kevin Cowherd offers a money-back guarantee for readers of The Dog of the South, by Charles Portis: "If you're looking for a great summer read and have vowed to take a break from the usual trash that ends up on your nightstand, have I got a book for you. It's a wonderful comic novel by the great Charles Portis called The Dog of the South, first published in 1979. Oh, I know what you're thinking.You're thinking: Hey, Mr. Helpful, how about recommending a book we've actually heard of, or something that's been published in this century? Sure, go ahead, make your jokes. But this is a terrific book.I feel so strongly about it that I will personally refund the purchase price of the book, plus an additional 20 percent for your troubles, if you buy it and don't like it. (Note to editor: Run some kind of legal disclaimer here that gets me out of that. Thanks.) The Dog of the South is about a man named Ray Midge who sets out to track his wife, Norma, who has run off with her first husband, a sleazeball named Guy Dupree.To make matters worse, Norma and Guy have also taken Ray's credit cards and his car, not to mention his good raincoat and shotgun.So Ray waits for the credit card receipts to come in and sets off on the trail of the two lovebirds, tracking them from Arkansas to Mexico to Belize.Along the way, he meets all sorts of characters, including Dr. Reo Symes, a cranky physician who lives in a school bus called "The Dog of the South" and who's obsessed with the mysterious John Selmer Dix, a deceased writer of inspirational books for salesmen. OK, that might sound a little too off-the-wall for your tastes. But I'm telling you, this novel will draw you in with its themes of betrayal and revenge, its deadpan dialogue and its lineup of picaresque rogues looking for adventure in a world they don't quite understand. If you take this book to the beach and start reading it, you won't even take a break to go in the water. You'll just keep reading and reading, and finally you'll look up and it'll be dusk. The beach will be almost empty, except for a few dogs and maybe a guy surf-fishing and a couple of old guys in gym shorts and knee-high socks running those stupid metal detectors over the sand.Then you'll go home and get something to eat and start reading again. And you won't be able to stop reading until you pass out from exhaustion. Portis, by the way, was a Marine infantryman in the Korean War and later a reporter for a number of newspapers, including the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the New York Herald Tribune and the Arkansas Gazette.Then he left that low-brow racket and went legit, writing fiction full time, and we're all the better for it. His best-known novel is True Grit, which came out in 1968. The book is a taut tale of a 14-year-old girl who recruits an aging, drunken U.S. marshal named Rooster Cogburn to hunt down her father's killer.The book was made into a movie starring John Wayne, who won an Academy Award for best actor. And if you think Wayne was a good actor in that film, you must have a drinking problem, too. But that's how good the story was and how good Portis was, too. Portis made a few bucks off True Grit, of course. But for my money, The Dog of the South is his best work, and they should have made a movie out of it, too. Anyway, you'll love this book. Go buy it today. Remember my money-back guarantee." - [email protected]
By: John Mark Boling,
on 2/11/2008
Jenny Shank takes a look at Charles Portis's classic novel True Grit in New West, the fine magazine and website that bills itself as the "Voice of the Rocky Mountains." Shank suggests that "the irresistible voice of Mattie Ross rings as clear today as it must have in 1968." Overlook has reissued True Grit in new paperback edition featuring in introduction by novelist Donna Tartt.
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By: BookEnds, LLC,
on 7/9/2007
I recently rejected a work via email and got this in response:
I can’t blame you. Since I sent you the proposal, I fired the anal-retentive editor who I hired to help me write it and in the process sucked every bit of my personality out of it to make it a “best seller,” as he claimed. I have rewritten it in a completely different voice. I don’t suppose you want to give it another trial, but if you do, let me know. If not, thanks for reading the first version. It was dry and boring, and I apologize for putting you through it. At times, even a seasoned businessman gets blindsided by the promise of fame.What a great response and something we can all learn from. Editorial comments (whether from a hired editor, agents, your own editor, or a critique group) are wonderful, but we all need to follow our own voice and our own hearts first. The comments aren’t going to do anyone any good if they suck the life out of the book.
What an amazing Christmas giveaway! Please enter me!<br /><br />melissaseclecticbookshelf at gmail dot com
Wow, this is wonderful! I would love to enter: [email protected]
I've read Masters of Atlantis, would love to win this to read the others!!<br /><br />[email protected]
yay! I'm so glad you're doing this again, I loved it last year. Please enter me! :)
Loved the book and the movie "True Grit". Great giveaway!<br /><br />[email protected]
I would love to win this.
Many thanks for this wonderful giveaway. saubleb(at)gmail(dot)com
A beautiful and special selection of books. thanks. elliotbencan(at)hotmail(dot)com
Sign me up! Free books--WooHoo!<br />JNCL<br />asfooraabla AT gmail DOT com
This is amazing stack of books and I would be honored to own them and share them with my grands.<br /><br /><br />[email protected]
Would love to win this great collection of books!<br /><br /><br /><br />[email protected]
My two teenage sons are always looking for different authors to read. I would love to win these for my boys!
This is such a nice collection of books from a great author!<br />[email protected]
I remember reading True Grit many years ago. I would love the opportunity to read the rest of these books.