Portis and his fellow Arkansan Donald Harington might vie for the left-handed honor of being the least well-known great American writer, and while the superlative seems silly - none of us has ever heard of the genuine title holder - it is a handy way to begin a discussion of his work. There won't be a parade, but perhaps there should be. The Library of America's latest volume is "Charles Portis: Collected Works." It will be in bookstores April 4. A newspaper is a factory it employs mechanics and craftspeople, but whatever art its employees produce is produced on their own time.īut what if you are Hemingway? Or something close? Something close enough to get treatment from the literary establishment, to be collected in omnibus editions and anthologies? To have your books outlive you, to have your name serve as a password among a dwindling but hungry class of strong readers? "It ain't art, and you ain't Hemingway," more than one city editor has growled at a straining-to-rise cub. You put things off and then one morning you wake up and say - today I will change the oil in my truck.
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