Norwood

Written by Charles Portis

Narrated by Barrett Whitener

Sent on a mission to New York by Grady Fring, the Kredit King, Norwood Pratt has visions of “speeding across the country in a late model car, seeing all the sights.” Instead, he gets involved with incredible characters in a wild journey that takes him in and out of stolen cars, freight trains, and buses before he returns home to Ralph, Texas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio
• Release date: Jun 22, 2005
• ISBN: 9780786120123

Charles Portis

Charles Portis lives in Arkansas, where he was born and educated. He served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. As a reporter, he wrote for the New York Herald-Tribune, and was also its London bureau chief.

Reviews for Norwood

[unkletom_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed True Grit and had high hopes for this book about a road trip through places that I personally took road trips through back in my misspent youth. Unfortunately, The book is mostly about unpleasant people having tedious conversations. There is little story progression and even less plot. If this isn't bad enough, Portis, or at least his publishers, are guilty of an egregious case of false advertising. The title and the books cover suggest, and on some covers state outright, that the story is about a road trip through Mexico in a retired school bus named "The Dog of the South". Nothing could be further from the truth. In Mexico, they would refer to such claims as mentiras or basura. Up where I come from we aren't quite so refined so I just call it bullshit. The truth is that, although said school bus does make an appearance but it is broken down when we encounter it and it never gets repaired. It occupies maybe one page out of the entire book. Bottom line: I had high hopes for this book but in the end was very disappointed. Nevertheless, my thanks to the folks at the On the Southern Literary Trail group for giving me the opportunity to read and discuss this and many other better books.

[bookladychris · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A man finds that his wife had taken off with her ex-husband, his credit card, and his car. Thinking he wanted his car back, he sets out to find them by the receipts from the credit card. There's a lot of humor in the story as you wonder why this guy is even bothering. Later you discover that he wants to get his wife back.

[lucybrown_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In Portis's darkly funny picaresque the reader joins in on Ray Midge's quixotic quest to restore his honor. Midge is a small man in every way. His ambitions are small. His desires even smaller. Note his name, Midge. He is just a gnat of a being. Incidentally, if you note his name, you will be the only one on the journey who does. No one ever seems to remember it. No one listens to him either. He has ethics, ethics which run the line of how to properly care for guns and cars. He is full of small prejudices, petty anxieties, a meager life, scant social outlets. On any given day he is that hapless sap you avoid. Then one day his hermetic, tiny life is shaken up when his wife runs of with Guy Dupree, who is Midge's sort of friend, the wife's ex-husband and a conspiracy theorist who has threatened to shoot the president.
It isn't so much that Midge wants his wife back. He want his car; Dupree took his Gran Torino leaving Midge a wreck of a Buick which vies for unreliability with Don Quixote's hag Rocinate.

Midge sets off to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico with the aim of tracking down the couple and getting back his car and credit cards. The trek though takes him to Belize. Along the way he picks up Reo Symes, a seedy old man with a con artist past. Symes rambles on spouting his drug addled versions of his own dubious history, his racist paranoia, and his hero worship of an insignificant self help writer. Midge feels compelled to help the man despite his irritation with him. Midge often feels compelled to help others though in his ineffectualness rarely realizes his hope.

In Belize he mets up with more cranks, creeps and crooks. Plus an endearing boy named Webster, the Sancho to his Quixote.

Midge has ideals. The main one is the restoration of his honor; he may be a cuckold, but he is going to get his damn Torino back! And he is going to do it on his own. Would help if he actually had some money and a car that isn't held together by a coat hanger. Oh well!

[untraveller · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Couldn't wait to finish it....The sentence structure in this book is simplistic beyond belief....I/We/They, seems to start every other sentence. The plot was okay, but the results were boring. There was some humor, but not enough to drag me into reading another of Portis' books.

[nivramkoorb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very funny but as whole book it was a little too much. I heard a lot about the author and of course was familiar with True Grit. This is probably a style of writing that I would have like more when I was younger. If you like off the wall humor and very creative humor then you might really like this book.

[blanderson-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Blood Meridian meets the Simpsons, highlighting the different roles people search for in the world. I guess the only complaint is that the topic lacks weight, in that it doesn't seem eager to ask the big questions or attempt any revelations (which, given the constant revelations of the novel's odd cast, is probably the point).

The novel is an appreciation of the silly minutiae we use to pass the time.

[kltmd_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful example of absurdist fiction, with conversations straight from Eugene Ionesco,:The Dog of the South" is Charles Portis at his best. Midge a ne'er do well wannabe student and former journalist is bereft by the loss of his wife to her former husband and his former co-worker, as well as his shotgun and Ford Torino. He collects their American Express receipts, (they stole his card) to track them down. He follows them to British Honduras and along the way picks up a quack former physician. That is the plot. Everything else in this thin volume is preposterous. I mean that as a complement.

[markfinl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love this book. This is my second time reading it and it's one of the oddest, funniest books I have ever read. Ray Midge's wife has run off with Dupree, Ray's former friend and coworker. Ray uses his American Express statements to track them down, mostly because they have his car and they have left him with Dupree's vastly inferior car. Along the way, Ray meets Dr. Reo Symes, a quack doctor whose mother, "so old she is starting to walk sideways", runs a Christian mission in Belize.I think the secret to this book is that Ray, the narrator, is annoying and pedantic and it's no surprise that Norma would leave him, but Ray is the least annoying person in the book, so he becomes a hero by default.

[arsolot · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a very funny book by the author of True Grit. It's also very well written with some really odd-ball characters. There's not really much plot, but it's a road trip from Arkansas to Belize. I thought this was very well written. I got a big laugh out of this exchange between the main character, Ray Midge, and Dr. Reo Symes, who was speaking about his days as a medical student at Wooten Institute in New Orleans: He ended the long account by saying that Dr. Wooten "invented clamps.""Medical clamps?" I idly inquired."No, just clamps. He invented the clamp.""I don't understand that. What kind of clamp are you talking about?""Clamps! Clamps! That you hold two things together with! Can't you understand plain English?""Are you saying this man made the first clamp?""He got a patent on it. He invented the clamp.""No, he didn't.""Then who did?""I don't know.""You don't know. And you don't know Smitty Wooten either but you want to tell me he didn't invent the clamp." "He may have invented some special kind of clamp but he didn't invent THE CLAMP. The principle of the clamp was probably known to the Sumerians. You cant' go around saying this fellow from Louisiana invented the clamp." "He was the finest diagnostician of our time. I suppose you deny that too.""That's something else.""No, go ahead. Attack him all you please. He's dead now and can't defend himself. Call him a liar and a bum. . . . "

[sharonsommers · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A funny book From Little Rock to Mexico.I thought this book was so funny with lots of extreme characters. If you want a laugh to perk up your day then this is the book for you.

[hhs9staff · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An eccentric novel by the reclusive author from Eldorado, Arkansas (he also wrote TRUE GRIT, from which the award-winning film starring John Wayne was adapted and which I also read this summer). A fussy small-time journalist with way too much starch in his shorts (also, he is mad for military history) awakens to find that a co-worker and acquaintance has left town with his (the journalist's) wife and immaculate Gran Torino. The chase leads through Mexico to South America, and collects some...unusual characters along the way. Uniquely funny and wonderfully anticlimactic. My choice to read the book is a great example of how I read: I was reading an article on filmmaker Errol Morris' website in which Morris mentioned Ron Rosenbaum as one of his favorite authors; I then read EXPLAINING HITLER by Rosenbaum and liked it so much I picked up his feature collection THE SECRET PARTS OF FORTUNE, in the introduction of which Rosenbaum sang the praises of Charles Portis; after picking through SECRET PARTS, I checked out both TRUE GRIT and THE DOG OF THE SOUTH and loved them. Chance discovery and random direction--I wouldn't have it any other way!Reviewed by:Phil OvereemLanguage Arts teacher

[bjkelley · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read Norwood and REALLY enjoyed it, followed that book up with True Grit and I think True Grit is an American Classic (needs to be in schools along side Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn). So I was looking forward to reading The Dog of The South. Started out great, but about halfway through the book it really bogged down for me and became a chore to finish reading, although it did pick up some at the end.

[featherbear · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've been watching some of the afternoon covid-19 "briefings" on TV. In Dr. Reo Symes, Portis has somehow conjured up the POTUS before the miracle of his election by the American people. Also, the novel is pretty good, though probably not as good as [True Grit], but maybe it's apples and oranges. Best way to describe the tone is some kind of bastard commingling of Flannery O'Connor and Nathanael West.

[reenum_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this book based on an article about Portis in The Ringer. Portis has been on my radar for a while. This was a good opportunity to take the plunge.The book is very funny, but not in a madcap or slapstick way. Instead, the mannerisms and speech of the characters is what will make you chuckle. By the end of the book, Ray Midge, Rio Symes and the other characters will seem like old friends. There also isn't a lot of action in the book. Instead, the banter between the characters is what moves the story forward. The book moves at a languid pace, and that is not an insult.It goes too far to call this book absurdist. I think it's better to call this extremely unusual realism. Everything in the book could technically happen. The book is delightful. Highly recommended.

[hayduke_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An excellent first novel. I'm not sure that it quite lives up to the hype. I personally liked Portis's Dog of the South better.

[jeffome · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Sort of a cute little novel of minimal depth dealing with some farly simple (meaning uncomplicated) folks. My second Portis in a row, having just finished 'True Grit.' Portis does have an interesting method of just letting his characters ramble on about not much of anything, but once you've gotten through it, you realize that you just learned an awful lot about them. I like that sort of cleverness, and i do remember much of that in True Grit as well. A very quick read.

[hagelstein_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I don’t know if the opening line of The Dog of the South has ever been included in any of those “Best First Line” lists, but it’s worthy: “My wife Norma had run off with Guy Dupree and I was waiting around for the credit card billings to come in so I could see where they had gone.”We know what happened and what’s going to happen - it’s just a matter of getting there now.The narrator, Ray Midge, a self-described “predatory bird” look-alike who “can expect to be called a rat about three times a year” proceeds to track Norma and Guy Dupree through Texas, to Mexico, and finally to British Honduras (now Belize). As the first line suggests, Midge is a man of measured action. Instead of leading into the half-expected violence, The Dog of the South is a story of subtle humor. Along the way Midge runs into several eccentrics, including the shady Dr. Reo Symes, who dispenses such medical wisdom as “You’ll never find a red-headed person in a nuthouse.”As well as creating nuanced characters, Charles Portis can turn a phrase. A woman that finds herself in a hospital cheers up the sick “in the confident manner of a draft-dodger athlete signing autographs for mutilated soldiers.” The Dog of the South smolders with outstanding writing. I’m keeping it close because I know it’s going to be on my mind until I read it again.