Pay It Forward

Norwood
by Charles Portis
1966, Simon and Schuster


This past summer I read an essay from The Believer on the author Charles Portis. I don't recall the specific details of the article now, but I was sufficiently persuaded to run out to the library and procure a copy of his Western True Grit within the week. I devoured that novel in a matter of a day and a half; its protagonist, the young bull-headed Mattie, was one of the most fiercely and humorously written narrators I have ever had the pleasure of getting to know.

What I love about Portis's writing is his eye for wasted words. Portis writes in his character's vernacular and, as such, the text is laden with none of the writerly subtext and imagery one is accustomed to reading in serious adult novels. He in fact utilizes the vernacular to mine it for seeming non sequiturs and other amusing idiosyncrasies of speech.

Norwood is the character whose perspective Portis adopts for relating the narrative. Norwood is a young ex-marine who spends his time working a boring job at a gas station/convenience store. He shares a house with his sister, who is incapable of handling the upkeep after their parents die. Norwood convinces his sister to get a job waitressing and she meets and eventually marries a prissy stuck-up man named Bill Bird who flaunts his education and more advanced militaristic career over Norwood, who responds to his jabs with sullen tolerance.

Eventually Norwood is offered a job driving stolen cars to New York. While he is suspicious of the job, he is also owed a sum of seventy dollars by a former Marine pal who lives in NYC and so Norwood, with singularity of mind, makes off for New York from his hometown in Texas.

En route he encounters a number of amusing setbacks and strange characters (including a former circus midget). Norwood's view of the world is bogged down neither by political correctness nor by bigotry; he accepts the people with whom he crosses paths and is inclined to speak honestly with all of his companions.

Honesty and forthrightness seem to Norwood's staple traits of interpersonal relationships. He professes to most people he meets his aspiration to become His dogged pursuit of the seventy dollars owed to him is not motivated by greed or by indignation. And after collecting on the debt, he promptly loans the money out to a needy acquaintance.

The strength of the book comes from its incredible sense of humor which uses Norwood's small town perspective without ridiculing his naivete. Take for example, this hysterically funny passage from Norwood's first experience with a subway:

The subway was cleaner and more brightly lighted than Norwood had expected, and it moved faster. He jostled his way forward to the front car and looked through the glass with his hands cupped around his face. He was disappointed to find the tunnel so roomy. Only a very fat man could be trapped in it with a train coming. The air smelled of electricity and dirt.

In one of the pedestrian tunnels at the Union Square stop a man was stretched out on the concrete having a fit and forcing people to step around him in the narrow passageway. Norwood watched him as he gave a few terminal jerks and a long sigh. He knew he should look to see if the man had swallowed his tongue, the way they used to have to do with that Eubanks boy in the fifth grade, but he didn't want to put his finger in the man's mouth unless he had to. It was all right for doctors, they didn't care where they put their hands.

The description is fresh but simplistic - and simplistic without being condescendingly folksy. Norwood's ridiculous thoughts take center stage here - the tunnel being dangerous to only the morbidly obese, doctors' lack of concern for hygiene - and yet Portis is not making fun of Norwood's peculiar thoughts.

In this regard, Norwood reminds me a great deal of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, which also successfully straddled the line between ridiculing his subject. Toole quite clearly dips repeatedly into poking fun at Ignatius Reilly and yet does not objectify him as a buffoon worthy of our derision - Reilly is humanized consistently throughout Toole's novel so that our amusement feels as though it has some element of empathy. Portis walks the other side of the line, refusing to let his reader feel superior to Norwood, but all the while mining him for comedy. Norwood is occasionally played as the perplexed straight man to the characters around him - Bill Bird's urbane syntax, for example, or the intensely neurotic frivolity of his first female companion.

After enjoying in the last year the incredibly funny and brilliant simplicity of both True Grit and Norwood, Charles Portis is quickly becoming a favorite author. I have tried twice now to convince friends to read the former title, with its deliciously toughened self-assured narrator and have yet to be successful in that endeavor. I can only hope someone will be interested enough to investigate Portis's breezily short and utterly delightful Norwood.