True Grit And A Theory Of Adaptation

I've had this on my mind for a while. I have been re-reading Linda Hutcheon's excellent textbook A Theory of Adaptation and what led me to pull it off the shelf was watching the 1969 film of True Grit, mostly remarkable since it won John Wayne his only Oscar, an honorary consolation aside. The 1969 film is good but not great. Wayne is fine but the role is not remotely on a par with his work in two brilliant movies, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Searchers. As Rooster Cogburn Wayne wears his eye-patch on the left. Glen Campbell as LaBoeuf is, sad to say, rather dreadful. As I say, a good film. 65/100.

2010 saw the estimbale Coen Brothers giving us their take on True Grit and it was watching this that made me want to read the source novel. The Coen offering is a far better film than the Wayne vehicle. Jeff Bridges is superb as Cogburn, wearing his eye-patch on the right. Having now read Charles Portis's novel (1968) I can safely say that the later film is not so much a remake of the earlier, rather it is a more faithful adaptation of the novel. Which brings me back to Hutcheon who nails the nature of artistic adaptation: 'An adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative -  a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing.' 

True Grit (2010)? 86/100. A worthy adaptation of what transpires to be a very fine novel. If the book comments on which eye Cogburn has covered, I have forgotten it. This is the best novel I have read in an age. Brevity can be the soul of wit and this is a brief novel, 206 pages. The Great Gatsby is not a long book and that fact does not stop it being spoken of as the Great American Novel. All of which speculation is silly but I will say this - True Grit is a great American Novel.