These are American stock characters and stereotypes stood on their head. It’s easy to see why the Coen brothers - avowed Portis fans who adapted his second novel, “True Grit,” in 2010 - have cited him repeatedly as a central influence. Induced to fence some stolen cars by driving them east, Norwood quickly loses interest in his central journey, collects an old debt, garners a girlfriend and eventually beats the instigating grifter half to death when he is threatened with repercussions for his apostasy. But what a weird feature! Norwood Pratt is an earnest gas station employee who gets wrapped up in a roustabout grifter’s web. Mirroring his journalism training, there is an emphasis on economy of language: Slender, at 190 pages, it possesses the character of a well-written travel feature. “Norwood” is a brief but compelling introduction to the offbeat and exciting prose style Portis would develop as a fiction writer. Luckily, he was an even better novelist than he was a journalist.
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