Charles Portis fulfilled the dream of many newspaper types to leave behind the grind of daily journalism and write books.
Portis, who wrote the classic novel "True Grit" after saying farewell to the legendary New York Herald-Tribune in 1964, died at age 86 Monday in a hospice in Little Rock, Ark., according to his New York Times obituary. Poris had battled Alzheimer's disease for several years.
"True Grit," made into two acclaimed movies, is considered an American comic masterpiece, the 20th century's "Huckleberry Finn." Narrated by the elderly Mattie Ross, the book looks back on her journey as a young girl to find her father's murderer. She's aided by the aging lawman Rooster Cogburn.
Set in frontier Arkansas, the book like Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" gave new energy and literary luster to the Western genre. Steeped in the vernacular of rural Arkansas, Ross's voice beguiles the reader like those of Huck, Nick Carraway, Augie March, Holden Caulfield and Scout Finch.
A native of Arkansas, Portis embarked upon a newspaper career after serving with the Marines in the Korean War and receiving his degree from the University of Arkansas. After stints at the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, the Arkansas Gazette and other regional papers, Portis joined the Herald Tribune in its late glory days.
Like fellow Arkansas native Roy Reed, who worked for The New York Times, Portis made his mark covering the civil rights movement in the South. Reed, who died in 2017, wrote Portis' New York Times obituary published Tuesday.
Standing out on a Herald-Tribune staff that included Tom Wolfe, Nora Ephron and Jimmy Breslin, Portis was named the newspaper's London correspondent. Along with covering racial turmoil in the South during the civil rights movement, he interviewed Malcolm X and J.D. Salinger. At the height of his newspaper career, he surprised his colleagues by going home to a fishing camp in Arkansas to write novels.
His first book, "Norwood," was made into a movie starring Glen Campbell and Kim Darby. "True Grit," published in 1968 as an outlier among books registering the era's cultural conflict, gave John Wayne his only Academy Award. Wayne played the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, with Darby and Campbell joining him on the book and movie's epic quest, echoing one of literature's oldest themes.
The Coen brothers remade "True Grit" in 2010, a rawer version truer to the novel, starring Jeff Bridges as Rooster and Hailee Steinfield in Darby's role of Mattie.
While the movies gained widespread popularity, Portis' novel is often cited by other writers for its literary style and memorable characters. If it's not already, the novel should join "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "A Catcher in the Rye" on junior high and high school reading lists.
Portis wrote several others novels, short stories and essays. His journalism, essays and a play are collected in "Escape Velocity, a Charles Portis Miscellany." In his later years, Portis was known as a recluse, although he pointed out that his phone number was listed in the Little Rock phone book.
Like other noted writers, Portis turned an unlettered American vernacular into high literature. He claimed he learned rural Arkansas speech patterns dealing with rural correspondents as a newspaper editor.
Many authors find success exiled from home. Portis proved that a writer can go home again.