Haunted Man's Report

Robert Cochrans Haunted Mans Report is a pioneering study of the novels and other writings of Arkansan Charles Portis (19332020), best known for the novel True Grit and its film adaptations. Hailed by one critic as the author of classics on the order of a twentieth-century Mark Twain and as Americas least-known great novelist, Portis has garnered a devoted fan base with his ear for language, picaresque characters, literary Easter eggs, and talent for injecting comedy into even the smallest turn of phrase. As a former Marine who served on the front lines of the Korean War and as a journalist who observed firsthand the violent resistance to the civil rights movement, Portis reported on atrocities that came to inform his fiction profoundly. His novels take aim at colonialism and notions of American exceptionalism, focusing on ordinary people, often vets, searching for safe havens in a fallen world. Haunted Mans Report, a deeply insightful literary exploration of Portiss singular and underexamined oeuvre, celebrates this novelists great achievement and is certain to prove a valuable guide for readers new to Portis as well as aficionados.