Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany

by Charles Portis, Jay Jennings (Editor)

Overview

A varied collection of writing from Charles Portis, a prolific essayist, travel writer, newspaper reporter, and “America’s least known great American novelist,” (New York Times Book Review)

Collected here in Escape Velocity, edited by Jay Jennings, is Charles Portis’s “miscellany” –– journalism, short fiction, memoir, and even the play Delray’s New Moon, published for the first time in this volume. Portis covers topics as varied as the civil rights movement, road tripping in Baja, and Elvis’s visits to his aging mother for publications such as the New York HeraldTribune and Saturday Evening Post.

Fans of Portis’s droll Southern humor and quirky characters will be thrilled at this addition to his library, and those not yet familiar with his work will find a great introduction to him here. Also included are tributes by accomplished authors including Donna Tartt and Ron Rosenbaum.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781468307399
Publisher:	The Overlook Press
Publication date:	08/27/2013
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	299,592
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Charles Portis (1933–2020) lived most of his life in Arkansas, where he was born and raised. He was a graduate of the University of Arkansas, which in 2018 awarded him an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters. He served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War, was the London bureau chief of the New York Herald-Tribune, and was a writer for The New Yorker. He is the author of four other novels, also available from the Overlook Press: Norwood, The Dog of the South, Masters of Atlantis, and Gringos. A selection of his writing has been collected in Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany.

Editorial Reviews

…a thoughtfully composed selection of published work spiced with rare and fresh material…Portis really shines in this collection as an essayist, especially as a travel writer—which makes sense, given his novels' tendency to put characters in revelatory motion through the landscape.
—Carlo Rotella

The New York Times Book Review

No other writer can so accurately be compared to greats as diverse as Twain, Garcia Marquez, Chaucer and McCarthy. Portis easily lives up to these laurels while remaining his own man, as displayed in the reportage, short fiction and drama assembled here by fellow Arkansan Jennings. Most famed as a novelist, particularly for True Grit and its two hit film adaptations, he also crafts cultural criticism as powerfully understated as contemporary Didion. Even covering subjects that could devolve into kitsch–Nashville's music scene, Elvis Presley's bedside vigil–he displays "deep knowledge worn lightly." A fascination with language that shines through the dialogue in his play Delray's New Moon, printed here for the first time, also produces such treasures in his nonfiction as an etymology of 'bayou.' His self-effacing Civil Rights journalism, meanwhile, effortless registers small, perfect details like young African-American marchers in 1963 Birmingham throwing U.S. flags into the street rather than cede them to arresting police. Portis rarely answers his own questions but does the reader one better, laboring over a far more elusive pleasure: the articulation of the unknown. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Widely known for his novel True Grit, Arkansan Charles Portis has attained cult status. Since beginning his career as a journalist for the Memphis Commercial Appeal more than 50 years ago, he has produced an eclectic body of work that includes reporting, travel essays, short stories, memoir, and drama. Much of that writing is collected here. Portis's voice is strongest in the journalism sections, from wry humor in early vignettes on "Southernness," small-town sports, and a half-hearted attempt to stop smoking, to important eyewitness accounts of Civil Rights tumult for the New York Herald Tribune. The eight short fiction and travel essays showcase the author's fascination with history and place, particularly in his native Arkansas on the Ouachita River ("The Forgotten River"); quirky, sometimes poignant first-person characters evoke the work of William Faulkner or Raymond Carver ("I Don't Talk Service No More"). Tributes from writers including Roy Blount Jr. and Donna Tartt round out the volume. Editor Jennings (Carry the Rock), an Arkansas journalist and humorist, offers a biographical introduction. VERDICT Jennings's insightful introduction provides substantive context for the unfamiliar—and, in some cases, unknown—work of an important American writer who has not sought the spotlight. Recommended for general readers—those who already admire Portis and those coming to him for the first time—as well as scholars seeking hard-to-find primary sources.—Patrick A. Smith, Bainbridge Coll., GA

Library Journal