True Grit

Anyone who knows me well knows I love the story of True Grit by Charles Portis, John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn, and the character Mattie Ross.

The book, movie, whiskey flask and eye patch, as well as a statue of Rooster Cogburn sits on a shelf in my room. It is one of my most favorite stories I have ever read and I loved Mattie Ross from the first page and Rooster from the moment he stepped foot on the page.

The new remake of the movie is going to be closer to the book which is told by Mattie as an old, starchy, spinster woman with a ruined arm remembering the year she hired Rooster Cogburn to help avenge her father's death. Mattie is matter of fact, direct and unsentimental but her actions are matter of fact, direct and extraordinarily sentimental. As a young fourteen year old girl determined to right a wrong, she found a man with just as much grit and determination as she had herself.

It is their relationship I love and his sense of humor and her no nonsense manner. Some of the meaningful moments in the book are when she crosses the river on her horse. She will not be told she cannot go. She climbs on her horse and swims it across the river and beats both Rooster and LaBoeuf to the other side. They do not let her come with them but she continues to follow them until finally Rooster says, "She has got the best of us." During their journey we learn more about Rooster and the kind of man he is. When Mattie is hurt and unconscious Rooster holds her like a child, drags her, carries her on his back, and ends up cutting into and riding her horse to its death to save her.

Rooster got her to a doctor and came to check on her twice but she was sick and delirous. She never sees him again but she hears bits of news about him throughout her life. Twenty five years later an article in the newspaper appears about him and she finally goes to see him. When she arrives he has died three days earlier. There was no one to claim him.

She brings his body home on a train and buries him in her family's plot and put up a $65 slab of marble too. Some day she will rest beside him. "People here in Dardanelle and Russellville said, "well she hardly knew the man but it is just like a cranky old maid to do a stunt like that. In the end she says people will talk, people will always talk but it does not matter......."I care nothing of what they say."

I read this book for the first time fourteen years ago in May of 1996. I have a journal full of notes about this story and all that it reminds me of. I was 29 years old at the time and a few days after reading it Mike and I watched it with our four kids, Dad&Mom, and Erin&Shane.

My kids were raised on this story, the movie, and the music. I'm so happy they will get to relive a little bit of their childhood when it comes out on December 22nd. And I'm so happy that a book that was and still is so important to me is being made into a movie again. I can hardly wait.