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    Norwood
    Norwood
    Norwood
    Audiobook4 hours

    Norwood

    Written by Charles Portis

    Narrated by David Aaron Baker

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Norwood, Charles Portis’s first novel, displayed right out of the gate the wit, style, and singular voice that made him one of our great American writers. Out of the Neon Desert of Roller Dromes, chili parlors, the Grand Ole Opry, and girls who
    want “to live in a trailer and play records all night” comes ex-marine and troubadour Norwood Pratt. Sent on a mission to New York by Grady Fring, the Kredit King, Norwood has visions of “speeding across the country in a late model
    car, seeing all the sights.” By the time he returns home to Ralph, Texas, Norwood has met his true love, Rita Lee, on a Trailway bus; befriended Edmund B. Ratner, the self-described “world’s smallest perfect man”; and helped Joann, “the chicken
    with a college education,” realize her true potential in life. As with all of Portis’s fiction, the tone is cool, sympathetic, funny, and undeniably American.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 1, 2013
    ISBN9781470337438
    Author

    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.

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    Reviews for Norwood

    4/5

    169 ratings24 reviews

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    • 4/5
      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

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      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. . . . "

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      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!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      As with other Portis novels, I actually chuckled out loud several times while listening to this as I took my daily walk. The dialogue — spare, artless, but colorful — hits not a single false note, and once again Baker’s reading is brilliant. I feel sure the book works better in his voice than on the printed page. Be warned that the story is pretty much plotless and shapeless, and that except for a handful of characters, almost everyone in it talks likes an IQ-80, most notably Norwood himself; and although they’re generally amusing, at times one is tempted to say, “Okay, I get it, these people are really dumb!” Be warned, too, that there’s at least one midget in the book (along with, I believe, a dwarf); in the freakshow world of Southern Gothic literature, there always seems to be a midget on hand. But this particular character is extremely endearing, and you’re glad to have made his acquaintance.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Excellent reader. Some funny writing . Light reading but entertaining
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      Funniest novel I’ve read in a long time. Like the Coen brothers rewriting Beckett. A kaleidoscope of whacked Americana stuffed with gutbusting dialogue. Gotta get me some more Portis pronto!
    • 4/5
      This is the first Charles Portis book I’ve read, and I’m still not completely sure what to think. It was hilarious in parts, witty in parts, and down right confounding in parts. The confounding part was basically the entire story (completely character driven) that just refused to conform to any sort of expected plot points. But the writing is so good that it didn’t matter.

      This book is unlike anything I’ve ever read. I enjoyed it enough to grab his more well-known books and keep exploring his work.
    • 5/5
      I don't know when I enjoyed reading a straight piece of fiction, like I did with Norwood. I can't even put my finger on why I liked it so much. I think it might be because Norwood is such a character and stays true to himself throughout the book, much like Iggy in Confederacy of Dunces (although they are nothing alike).
    • 5/5
      A fun road trip!
    • 4/5
      Norwood was a quick read. If you liked True Grit (as I did) , you'll recognize the author's style and humor in this, his first novel. However, being that this takes place in the 1960s or so (published 1966) in the South, unfortunately there's a lot of casual usage of the n-word in conversations. Beyond that, I enjoyed this especially the banter between Norwood and the girl he meets on a bus and how they decide they're soul mates. More of a road trip book, with mishaps and escapades, rather than a novel with a traditional plot. I will continue to seek out the rest of Charles Portis' books -- not that there are too many of them.
    • 5/5
      Start here and if you like it, keep going. I'm one of those who thinks that Portis is a national treasure.
    • 4/5
      Hilarious and romping---and adventure that reminds me so much of the Coen brothers it hurts. Not quite as good as Gringos, but tight and hilarious, like a country western antithesis of Kerouac's pretension vision of the American highway. Unlike On the Road, Portis' narrator does not attribute over-significance to all of life's little quirks, and instead passes thru the world like a true open mind, interacting with the strange cast of characters with an almost christlike ambivalence.

      Truly there is no more patient character in literature than a Charles Portis protagonist. They are constantly condemned and accused and accosted and robbed, and all they ever manage is a brief attempt at levity and a casual shrug.

      Love it. The only complaint is that nothing really happens, and the ending is a bit soft. But, really, how can you end a travelogue like this other than having Norwood ramble on down the road?
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      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.