His scant writings about his childhood are short on Proustian yearning and long on wry literalness. Born in 1933, Portis grew up in several small Arkansas towns-El Dorado, Hamburg, and Norphlet, where his father was a school superintendent. He had, of course, witnessed many other ages. Nevertheless, I do not imagine that Portis witnessed much in our age to make him regret withholding his private life from the scrutiny of strangers. Portis’s aversion to publicity perhaps explains why he never found a wider readership, and why all of his books but “True Grit” were for a time out of print, until the Overlook Press began reprinting his novels, in 1999. Before the release of the Coen brothers’ adaptation of “True Grit,” in 2010, he amiably consented to talk with a Times Magazine writer who had pursued him to Little Rock, on the condition that the writer not actually quote him for the piece. This earned him, unfairly, a reputation as a recluse, though he was reportedly an approachable presence at the Little Rock, Arkansas, beer joints he frequented. He spent much of his career dodging the press and literary society. When “True Grit,” published in 1968, was turned into a movie starring John Wayne and became a best-seller, a low-amplitude course through the world became something Portis had to work at.
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