Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Charles Portis worked as London Bureau Chief for the New York Herald Tribune. This is the same position once held by Karl Marx, father of Marxism. Coincidence? Well, yeah. Probably. (source)
Portis won the Oxford American's first Lifetime Achievement in Southern Literature award in 2010. (source)
Don't arm wrestle Charles Portis. He describes a previous arm wrestling incident and it is kind of gritty: "A reporter from The Times wanted to arm-wrestle, and as I recall, he kept challenging me," Portis once revealed in a rare interview with Roy Reed for the Little Rock Gazette. "So we went at it and there was a pop. His arm broke. Very strange. He went into a kind of swoon." (source)
Charles Portis interviewed civil rights leader Malcolm X. Radical! (source)
Apparently, "Mr. Portis doesn't use e-mail, has an unlisted phone number, declines interview requests, including one for this article, and shuns photographs with the ardor of a fugitive in the witness protection program. He hasn't published a novel in nearly 20 years." (source)