Where True Grit differs from the others is that it takes place in the past -- during the 1870s after the American Civil War.
It's an anti-western.
Mattie Ross is a 14-year-old girl whose father has been shot down by a hired hand named Tom Chaney.
She sets out after him with a Texas Ranger named LaBeouf (pronounced "LaBeef"), and a one-eyed federal marshall named Rooster Cogburn, who eats corn dodgers and drinks "double-rectified busthead."
On one level the book reads like a YA novel, particularly at its climax, which involves a cave inhabited by bats, snakes and a skeleton.
But it is rescued from this one misstep by great dialogue, Mattie's pungent observations, and an ending that is far from treacly.
A sample:
I sat at one corner of the table between her and a tall, long-backed man with a doorknob head and a mouthful of prominent teeth. He and Mrs. Floyd did most of the talking. He traveled about selling pocket calculators. He was the only man there wearing a suit of clothes and a necktie. He told some interesting stories about his experiences but the others paid little attention to him, being occupied with their food like hogs rooting in a bucket. "Watch out for those chicken and dumplings," he told me. Some of the men stopped eating. "They will hurt your eyes," he said. A dirty man across the table in a smelly deerskin coat said, "How is that?" With a mischievous twinkle the drummer replied. "They will hurt your eyes looking for the chicken." I thought it a clever joke but the dirty man said angrily, "You squirrelheaded son of a bitch," and went back to eating. |
The book contains laudatory quotes from Esquire, The New York Times, The Saturday Review and from Jonathem Lethem, Roald Dahl, and Walker Percy (the man who saved A Confederacy of Dunces from oblivion).
