Newspaper Article

A cinematic comedy set amid the Mayan ruins of Yucatan

Reviewed by Alan Cheuse, An author whose most recent novel is "The Light Possessed".

1991

Overview

The author of \"True Grit,\" \"Norwood\" and \"The Dog of the South,\" Charles Portis has a devoted readership. It's a group relatively small in number by populist standards, though when \"True Grit\" hit the movie screens it became a ready phrase in contemporary American phraseology. I wish I could say \"Gringos\" was as moving as it was entertaining. Perhaps if Portis had turned the screw on his narrator, the expatriate American Jimmy Burns, one turn tighter, his story might have had more bite or, for that matter, more grit. As it is, Burns' story remains nearly poignant, but not quite. Burns is living down in the Yucatan, where Mayan ruins dot the jungle and Americans languish about the cafes and little hotels. He runs errands for gringo archeologists, but given his observations about the foibles and mores of his compatriots, he's as much an anthropologist as handyman and driver. His descriptions of his fellow Americans down among the ruins do have a nice comic edge, as in his take-out on a pair of American UFO aficionados, Louise and Rudy Kurle.

• Publisher: Tribune Publishing Company, LLC