Thanks for your time, your conversation and your book!
07.03.2026 14:44
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Thanks for your time, your conversation and your book!
"There's a case to be made for Elizabeth Nelson as the best rock lyricist of this moment. Nelson and the Paranoid Style are the most persuasive argument I know for the ongoing vitality of rock and roll." Psyched by this rad review of 'Known Associates' on Fresh Air today! www.npr.org/2026/03/06/n...
Draft of “Visions of Johanna”
Really loved Woody’s art too, this expressionistic one of kids in a band.
A total pleasure to meet @bdralyuk.bsky.social IRL on a quick trip to Tulsa. He told me a touching story about how Portis came to mean so much to him and we shared Berryman lines. Also, for those like me with meager output, a visit to the Guthrie and Dylan centers is both enthralling and humbling.
Closest you’ll get for now is the “Chronology” in the back of the Library of America volume.
Congrats to Brett Martin on a National Magazine Award nomination for this story. You can never go wrong reading Brett.
Your mention of Mickey Raphael reminded me of this story: oxfordamerican.org/magazine/iss...
Newsletter from Rep. French Hill has headline showing Arkansas spelled “Arkasnas.”
Shouldn’t expect anything from politicians but this went out to his constituents (me, unfortunately), without any follow-up apology or acknowledgment.
Report: High-energy and hilarious long-form storytelling for an hour and a half. A master.
Photos by Jesse Chan-Norris.
In 2009, I “opened” for John Mulaney at an event put on by the Lowbrow Reader comedy zine. I was introducing neglected novelist Gilbert Rogin, whose works I helped get back into print. Tonight I’m seeing @mulaney.bsky.social perform live again, in a basketball arena in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
Thirty years ago today, I attended the book party for Infinite Jest. Just after Dave’s death I wrote a little about the party — and about editing a story of his for Tennis magazine — in a blog post on @mcsweeneys.net (along with contributions from @mattbucher.bsky.social and others).
The others are very different from this one and all different from each other but all are great.
Now wondering if we’re related.
Your reminder that Charles Portis published only one short humor piece there and that likely only because his friend Bill Whitworth was an editor. He somehow managed to get himself into the Library of American without having won any prizes. Keep writing what you need to write…
Thank you!
“…by end of business…” says it all.
and, of course, sold the book, which isn’t as much this year’s writing but does portend some level of future writing bsky.app/profile/oliv...
Nicely put. Even without the True Grit best-sellerdom and movie money, he would have gone his own way.
So true. He asked me about using a word processor one time, saying, “How do you consider other options when you can’t write them between the lines?” The collection also has some great letters to him from Bill Whitworth, Bob Gottlieb and Lynn Nesbit.
The final paragraph from an early draft of Charles Portis's novel TRUE GRIT. Between the typed lines, he's exploring alternate phrasings in pen. He still hasn't decided on whether he should keep the name LaBoeuf or change it to Beaufort. His pen wasn't working at first, so he primed it with some circular squiggles. He's also calculating the ages of the characters and as a result changes LaBoeuf's age from "eighties" to "seventies."
#BOTD in 1933: Charles Portis. Here's the final paragraph from an early draft of TRUE GRIT. (His papers are in the Wittliff Collections at Texas State U.) He's still working out the final lines but what strikes me is how much of this draft resembles the final book. A master from the start.
The book I would give anyone — a ten-year-old boy, an eighty-year-old woman, a neighbor, a coworker, a loved one — is True Grit by Charles Portis.
And the gift I would give anyone is a knife. Kitchen, steak, pocket, utility, multi-tool, etc. You can always use another knife.
How about you?
"I refuse." This is it. There's no reason we should accept a narrative of an already settled future which marginalizes humans and individual agency. No one wants this. No one asked for it.
Brenner, by Hermann Berger. One of the most bonkers books, in the best way, I’ve ever read but no one I know has read it.
The illustrator of the great cover is Dagmar Frinta. www.dfrinta.com
I remember the bartender at Town Pump asking him, “Charlie, are you going to put me in your next book?” And he replied “You don’t want to be in that one.” That would be Gringos, which came out in 1991.
The cover of the first edition of the novel Masters of Atlantis, depicting an art deco style illustration of two men in hats, coats and ties standing behind a conical hat called a “poma” in the book.
The signature of Charles Portis under which he has written the date “Oct 22 1985” and the location “Little Rock”
I’m late on the exact anniversary but 40 years ago on Oct 22 I first met Charles Portis in person at the Town Pump for lunch after buying his just-published Masters of Atlantis at WordsWorth Books in Little Rock. Both places are still around and I think of him and miss him every time I visit one.
“I am so bored by AI. One of the things I love about the theatre is AI can’t do it.”
Ethan Hawke is a dude 👌🏻
Can recite whole sides of Firesign Theatre albums…
Come hear Sam Tanenhaus talk about his magisterial new book on William F. Buckley at the Clinton Center in Little Rock @clintonfoundation.bsky.social
Tuesday at 6pm.
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