SPECIAL EVENT

Dinner to toast Arkansas novelist Charles Portis

Fifty years ago this week, Arkansas author Charles Portis' first novel, Norwood, hit bookshelves. Portis had left his job as the London bureau chief of the New York Herald Tribune in 1964 for a cabin b̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶W̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ ̶R̶i̶v̶e̶r̶ on Lake Norfork* back home, trading in journalism for fiction.

Norwood, which sold out after a small print run, told the story of a wry ex-Marine named Norwood Pratt who ventures from Ralph, Texas, to New York and back to recover a $70 debt from a service buddy. The ensuing travel tale sees Norwood encounter characters such as his love interest, Rita Lee, Joann the college-educated chicken, and Edmund B. Ratner, the second-shortest little person in show business and "the world's smallest perfect fat man."

Checking in at not much over 100 pages, Norwood is concise and whimsical. Later, Portis would write the classic True Grit. But Norwood established Portis' talent for portraying "the Southern eccentric," says Jay Jennings, a senior editor at the Oxford American magazine in Little Rock. "It's just hilarious all the way through. You could take it to the beach and read it in an afternoon."

On Saturday, the magazine will host a multi-course dinner of meals inspired by Norwood at the Capital Hotel, 111 W. Markham St., Little Rock, featuring humorists Roy Blount Jr. and Harrison Scott Key. Tickets cost $150 and are available at metrotix.com.

Oxford American will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the book's publication on Sunday with a variety show at its South on Main location (see Jack W. Hill's story on this page).

Portis grew up in Hamburg, has lived in Little Rock for the last four decades and is widely regarded as Arkansas' greatest novelist. Now 82, he will not be in attendance this weekend.

Jennings, who edited a collection of Portis' work, says the author carefully avoided stereotypes when writing about Southern characters, such as making them merely seem quirky in search of a quick laugh.

"He does it with such affection and humanity," Jennings says. "The people that he portrays, it would be my guess that everybody has a relative like that in their family if they're from the South."

Weekend on 07/28/2016

*CORRECTION: Arkansas author Charles Portis’ cabin was near the town of Gamaliel on Lake Norfork. This story had the wrong location of the cabin.

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