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Charles Portis, Gringos
Apr. 2nd, 2011 11:21 amContinuing my excursion through the novels of Charles Portis, I took Gringos (1991) with me on the recent trip to Mexico, although it would have been even more appropriate to take it three years ago when we went to the Yucatán. The novel is about a loose community of American expats living in Mérida, the capital of the state of Yucatán. The narrator, Jimmy Burns, is a former scavenger of Mayan artifacts who is now trying to make a living hauling things with his pick-up and tracking down missing people. The other expats are a ragtag assembly of amateur scholars (and crackpots) of Mayan culture, New Age wanderers, UFO true believers, salesmen, retirees, and drunks.
The eccentric cast of characters and wild range of beliefs and lunatic theories is similar to Masters of Atlantis, as is the droll, absurdist, humane sense of humor. Gringos has more of a plot, however, even if it's a rambling one. Jimmy gets caught up in a great gathering of New Age hippies who believe that something cosmic is about to happen at one of the Mayan ruins. He has spotted a runaway teenager being held by a gang of hippie thugs (think Charles Manson), and he wants the reward money. Newcomer Louise is also concerned that her UFO-chasing husband has gone missing, and she wants Jimmy to find him. Jimmy pulls together his old scavenger pals for one last journey into the jungle. Gringos is a bit more like True Grit than Masters of Atlantis in coming to a violent climax, although it otherwise meanders much more than the compact, focused True Grit.
I really liked this book a lot. The writer who Portis most reminds me of is, oddly enough, Bruce Sterling, who is one of my favorite science fiction writers. They share the absurd sense of humor and the affinity for conmen and salesmen, for nagging, hectoring, bragging, bluffing, lecturing, optimistic, self-deluded idiot savants. The absurd humor allows for an absurd form of grace in a world in which everyone is wrong. Gringos is a comedy also in that Shakespearean sense of comedies being the ones that end in marriage. It's sweet that way -- good-natured under the wry satire. Like Sterling, Portis has a global awareness that sees his American characters as lost children of a sort. The expats have fled the dog-eat-dog world of the American empire for a more humble community in a foreign land.
Portis has published only five novels, and Gringos is the last one published to date. I thought I was only going to read the three, but I was poking around in Elliott Bay Books this week and read the blurb of The Dog of the South and discovered that it's about another journey into Mexico and Honduras. Sounds like just my cup of tea. I bought a copy.
The eccentric cast of characters and wild range of beliefs and lunatic theories is similar to Masters of Atlantis, as is the droll, absurdist, humane sense of humor. Gringos has more of a plot, however, even if it's a rambling one. Jimmy gets caught up in a great gathering of New Age hippies who believe that something cosmic is about to happen at one of the Mayan ruins. He has spotted a runaway teenager being held by a gang of hippie thugs (think Charles Manson), and he wants the reward money. Newcomer Louise is also concerned that her UFO-chasing husband has gone missing, and she wants Jimmy to find him. Jimmy pulls together his old scavenger pals for one last journey into the jungle. Gringos is a bit more like True Grit than Masters of Atlantis in coming to a violent climax, although it otherwise meanders much more than the compact, focused True Grit.
I really liked this book a lot. The writer who Portis most reminds me of is, oddly enough, Bruce Sterling, who is one of my favorite science fiction writers. They share the absurd sense of humor and the affinity for conmen and salesmen, for nagging, hectoring, bragging, bluffing, lecturing, optimistic, self-deluded idiot savants. The absurd humor allows for an absurd form of grace in a world in which everyone is wrong. Gringos is a comedy also in that Shakespearean sense of comedies being the ones that end in marriage. It's sweet that way -- good-natured under the wry satire. Like Sterling, Portis has a global awareness that sees his American characters as lost children of a sort. The expats have fled the dog-eat-dog world of the American empire for a more humble community in a foreign land.
Portis has published only five novels, and Gringos is the last one published to date. I thought I was only going to read the three, but I was poking around in Elliott Bay Books this week and read the blurb of The Dog of the South and discovered that it's about another journey into Mexico and Honduras. Sounds like just my cup of tea. I bought a copy.
