Rating: WORTHY!
It's so nice to end the month on an up note, especially given that it's an audiobook, which tend not to do so well with me because they're more throw-away reads than other formats. Anything to take one's mind off the tedium of driving, right?! But not too far off!
True Grit was published in 1968 and it's has stood the test of time well, spinning off two movies. The first was in 1969 and featured such luminaries as John Wayne, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Strother Martin, and Kim Darby, who played the 14-year-old Mattie Ross when she was twenty-one, and a married woman with a child! They started young back in th' ol' west! By various accounts the cast and crew did not get along on this set! The 2010 remake featured Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, and Hailee Steinfeld who, when she starred in her film debut here, was actually the same age as character Mattie Ross. Paramount pictures also spun-off a twenty-seven page comic book from the movie which is available free from Barnes and Noble and other online outlets.
The earlier script has its own interesting background since it was written by Marguerite Roberts who refused to testify before the dumb-ass House Un-American Activities Committee (aka witch hunt) and was blacklisted for a decade because of it. The story in the novel, but not the film, is told by a mature Mattie, who is looking back on her adolescent adventure in pursuit of Tom Chaney, the man who shot and killed her father. She tells us how she hired US Marshall Reuben J Cogburn to go after him into Indian territory (now Oklahoma - they wuz dun robbed agin). The third man in their party is a Texas Ranger name of LaBoeuf (but consistently mispronounced "LaBeef"), who has long been on the trail of Chaney.
The novel was read surprisingly well by author Donna Tartt, who really digs deep into Mattie's central Arkansas accent. I'm not a fan of Tartt's own novels, and I sure wouldn't want to listen to her speak in person for any length of time, but she did a decent narration job here, emulating young Mattie. Neither am I a fan of 1PoV, but again, some authors can get away with it and Charles Portis evidently is one of them - at least in this novel.
Mattie is feisty, humorless, no-nonsense, and definitely not a retiring sort of a girl. She speaks plainly, holds nothing back, and sticks up for what she believes is right. She and will not back down once her mind is made up. The two lawmen hate her and aren't that fond of each other. They try to lose her, and leave her behind, but eventually she wins their respect and the three pursue their goal and eventually win through, with some heroic deeds backed by a sterling spine.
I loved this novel and found it amusing and entertaining, and though I have no idea how folks really spoke back then, this novel felt authentic as hell to me - and that's all I ask from author!
