I agonized over whether to give Norwood three or four stars—which tells me three things: (1) I’m prone to exaggeration; (2) I really need to get a life; and (3) Goodreads should add half-star ratings instead of worrying about retarded mascot contests and adding mostly pointless Facebookish features to the site which inevitably cause that damnable Alice picture/Bertrand Russell quote to show up (again!). Get your act together, Goodreads. This site is too big now to be run out of somebody’s garage with a week-old burrito oozing into the ventilation slits on the server. This is the big league, and the big league demands fractional stars—which brings me back to point number two above.Norwood is another triumph of characterization, knee-deep in Texarkana white trash color. These are people who still pepper their speech with ‘nigger’ and wear outlandish cowboy accoutrements unironically. Norwood Pratt, the protagonist, like other Portis protagonists, is a few increments more thoughtful and broad-minded than his peers, as liable to befriend an overweight showbiz midget and a frizzy New York Jew (which he does) as a huckster in a Stetson trafficking stolen cars or a freeloading redneck army veteran. He also seems to prefer the word Negro. And the only evidence we really need to prove Norwood’s moral worth is that he liberates a fortune-telling chicken from its entrepreneurial captivity, motivated by pity for the harried creature. Did I mention the chicken is college-educated and wears a mortarboard? So from this we can surmise that Norwood isn’t prejudiced against intellectuals either.I know. It sounds a little ‘quirky,’ doesn’t it? In the disparaging, Little Miss Sunshine sense of the word. Lots of eccentrics crowded into a single phone booth to see what comes of it. Usually that kind of stuff sends me clambering for something dry-as-a-bone—maybe a book on Basque history or some cute thing by Immanuel Kant. But Portis wisely treats all his eccentrics as just run-of-the-mill anybodies, so it doesn’t grate on your nerves. I imagine that could be Portis’s point—if he in fact has one, other than mere yarnspinning. Depeche Mode said it more succinctly, but also more embarrassingly: ‘People are people.’ Even if people happen to travel from Texas to New York City, in stolen cars and, later, freight trains, to collect a debt of seventy bucks. If you’re as poor and principled as Norwood, it’s not an inconsequential matter. And it’s not an exceptional thing either. It’s just what anybody should or might do.So what’s the problem with Norwood? Well, do you know those times when the wine or other libation has been flowing around a dinner table and you’re with friends or serviceable acquaintances, and all of a sudden one or another of them starts in on a loooong but entertaining story about some strange or noteworthy occurrence? There are usually a lot of laughs in such stories—abetted by the liquor, maybe—and you have no problem keeping interested, but sometimes when the end arrives, you end up thinking, ‘So what?’ In other words, why was the story told at all, how was it relevant to any conversation that preceded it, and what in the name of Sweet Jeezus was the point of the whole thing? The point is clearly in just the storytelling for Portis, but I kind of wanted a little something more than just mindless entertainment. Not much, just a little more. The Norwood who finishes up the story, you see, is the same Norwood who starts it. Maybe that’s another point of the story? People like these are impervious and indomitable? Perhaps. Or maybe the point was just to amuse me. All the same, I’m still suspicious.
Phenomenal. I don't really know what to say. I've been struggling to find a novel lately that completely captured my attention and pulled me fully into its world. This one did the trick. Norwood hooked me from the first page and never let go. The characters are quirky without being stupidly over the top. The dialogue is wonderfully Southern without being overwrought. It's a perfect little novel you really could read in a single sitting. It took me two sittings. One thing that struck me about this novel I must say is its prodigious yet fascinatingly casual use of the 'n-word' for a book published in 1966. I nkow the book is set in the mid-1950s, but I still found it to be a bold (but to my mind certainly not racist) move during the ascendancy of the Black Power movement. It certainly would have been the way these characters would have talked--and it's fascinating to see the moments when certain characters stray from the word. I'm trying to imagine this book on a reader's nightstand with Stokely Carmichael on the evening news. Maybe it didn't even register at the time, but I have to say it struck me in its historical context of a literary book from the mid-1960s. Highest recommendation. Charles Portis is a badass. Please write another book.
Do You like book Norwood (1999)?
Fantastic piece of characterization, on a small-scale Americana-esq adventure. This story is interesting but it does stagnate here and there, in terms of shewing away consequences. Norwood is either the luckiest man alive or Portis simply chose to do away with the negative feedback loop many stories are prone to. It's his first novel, it's short, and it certainly suffers from some technique issues, such as the time jumps from night to day or place to place being rather jarring. At any rate, it is still a fantastic read, quick and certainly funny.
—Joseph S
"Norwood" is about the most absurdest travel literature that you'll read but also probably one of the best. In it Norwood Pratt is a country-bumpkin former Marine who settles back in the small town of Ralph, Texas. He spends his days working on cars in a little gas station that only pays him enough to survive. On that note he has plans on making it to New York City to hunt down a fellow Marine, Joe Williams, who owes him $70. He stays in a house with his sister Vernell who just recently married an older man named Bill Bird. Opportunity knocks in the form of former lawyer-turned-entrepreneur Grady Fring who hires Norwood to drive two cars from Ralph up to NYC and take along a woman named Yvonne Phillips. Along the way Norwood meets hobos, a travel writer who doesn't travel, a bread delivery man, and a pot-bellied former circus midget. He also falls in love with a girl named Rita Lee who was holding out for another Marine and picks up a fortune-telling chicken. Apologies for any who wanted to be surprised about Norwood or the people he meets on his seemingly convoluted mission. This book is much about Norwood and his journey and is not so much the people but the journey en whole. I recommend it.
—Chas Andrews
Deze bescheiden cultklassieker uit 1966 stond al even op het leeslijstje. Portis (°1933) schreef slechts vijf romans, waarvan Norwood de eerste is. Het is door en door Amerikaans, onderscheidt zich door z’n aparte, wat absurde humor en nadruk op gesproken Engels. Dat typisch Amerikaanse manifesteert zich niet via seks, geweld en oppervlakkigheid, maar door de Americana, de reis door de buik van het land, het Amerika van Flannery O’Connor en Mark Twain, een wereld die het midden lijkt te houden tussen de geschifte onzin van A Confederacy Of Dunces en de wereldvreemde halvegaren van de komische Coen-films.Het heeft iets van een onwaarschijnlijke road movie, waarbij de anti-held, de van bescheiden intelligentie voorziene pompstationbediende Norwood, die de ambitie koestert om het te maken als countryzanger, het land doorkruist om in New York 70 dollar te gaan innen, en onderweg in aanraking komt met misdadigers, een dwerg, hobo’s, zijn toekomstige en… een gediplomeerde kip. Het is een vaag surreële trip, opvallend origineel, met kleurrijke dialogen en een paar goeie oneliners (“Don’t let your mouth write a check that your ass can’t cash”), maar zeker in de tweede helft mist het verhaal samenhang en lopen de karakters rond in een richtingloze carnaval die moeilijk de aandacht weet vast te houden. (***)
—Guy
