Gringos: A Novel [Hardcover]

Charles Portis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1991

Jimmy Burns is an expatriate American living in Mexico. For a time, Jimmy spent his days unearthing pre-Colombian artefacts. Now he makes a living doing small trucking jobs and helping out with the occasional missing person situation. However, Jimmy's laid back lifestyle is being seriously imposed upon by a ninety-pound stalker called Louise whose particular fascination with Jimmy is a mystery to him. Add to this a sudden wave of "hippies" (led by a murderous ex-con guru) in search of psychic happenings, archaeologists unearthing (illegally) the Mayan tombs, and Louise and her bizarre husband's quests for UFO landing sites, and Jimmy's simple existence is facing a clear and present danger.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Portis's "gringos" are a motley bunch of archaeologists, UFO-ologists, New Age mystics, Mormons, teenage runaways, Mayan artifact smugglers, and assorted expatriates floating around the Yucatan peninsula like so much flotsam. But most of them are there for a reason. They are all trying to make some kind of contact: with the ancient Mayan civilization, an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, the supernatural, even their inner selves. Portis grandly spoofs some of these ridiculous quests, but realizes his gringos travel in a world that can turn deadly and may even demand blood sacrifice. It is a world where things rarely are what they seem and where connections are often made only by chance. Readers who delighted in the author's True Grit ( LJ 5/1/68) or The Dog of the South ( LJ 4/15/79) will not be disappointed.
- Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

'I've always thought Charles Portis had a wonderful talent - original, quirky, exciting. Gringos demonstrates that he's only gotten better. It's an engaging, touching book.' Larry McMurtry --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 269 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1St Edition edition (January 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671724576
• ISBN-13: 978-0671724573
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #980,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heart of Darkness - But more wry, November 26, 2000

By 

S. McHale (Costa Mesa, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gringos (Mass Market Paperback)

Disclaimer: This is my first Portis read, so I have no basis for comparison.

That being said, this is one of the most enjoyable reads I can recall. All the other Amazon reviewers have it right: it is a wonderful menagerie of characters as sized up by the narrator.

What I can add to the list of reviews is the striking parallels to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. You have an odd-job protagonist who, along with is unique travelling companions, goes on a strange journey into the Mexican jungle to search for a missing friend. Along the way, he encounters excesses in human behavior, archeological adventurers, cultists and hippies. At the end of his journey, he finds a self-styled Captain Kurtz-like character: a self-imposed spiritual shaman-cum-criminal. Note that this is not the character that the protagonist is tracking down, but it does lead to an unexpected climax. Of course, the journey really isn't the point to the novel. The point is to capture all the colorful personalities along the way - Portis succeeds marvelously!

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another rollicking adventure from an American master, February 8, 2000

By 

[e-mail] (Charlottesville, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gringos: A Novel (Hardcover)

The one constant in a Charles Portis novel is the tone: dry, deadpan, but never condescending. Often the tone serves as a buffer between the characters and the harsh, arbitrarily violent world around them. In Portis's first novel, _Norwood_, the strategy is largely successful, though in Portis's second and most famous novel, _True Grit_, violence assumes a fundamental place in the narrative.

Portis's latest novel, _Gringos_, about a group of American expatriates in Mexico, may be his most disturbing yet. Although it begins slowly, introducing us to a seemingly random menagerie of locals, dropouts, and hippies, the novel builds to a brutal, unforgettable climax in the remote Mexican jungle.

_Gringos_ is alternately funny and brutal, yet leaves an unexpectedly sweet aftertaste. It's a rollicking, adventurous masterpiece from one of America's finest living novelists.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Stumble On The Way To The City Of Dawn, December 29, 2004

By 

Seachranaiche (USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Gringos (Mass Market Paperback)

I have just completed a frenzy of reading Charles Portis novels, and I had found them all to be very good or very funny or both until I stumbled and almost fell with Gringos. This is one of those books you read and think everyone else understands but you because there really is a lot going on: there are a lot of characters, a wiley protagonist, and Portis got good blurbs on the back jacket. But I didn't get it, not this time. The characters are all classic Portis-wacky and larger than life yet still very real somehow-and the quest is classic Portis too, a journey into the jungle in search of an ancient Mayan codex, UFOs, space aliens, hippie outlaws, and runaway children. I mean, how can you go wrong with a plot like that?

The dialog is not as snappy as other Portis novels, and the characters (so many of them this time that I couldn't keep up) did things for reasons that I wasn't able to follow. I suspect that with a second read, additional details will pop out to make Gringos more intelligible. So if I "get it" with a second reading, I'll dial back in and change my rating.