Won over by a writers' writer

Ihave caught the Charles Portis bug, the raging admirational virus that besets writers who first encounter the work of the 70-year-old Arkansas novelist. Portis's tireless champion, the New York Observer columnist Ron Rosenbaum, has called him "the most original, indescribable, sui generis talent overlooked by literary culture in America" and "the subject of a kind of secret society, a small but extremely elite group of admirers among other writers."

Portis is the greatest writer you've never heard of. It's the curse of the "writers' writer."

Here is how I joined the cult: Outward bound on a vacation to Mexico, I received a tip from a friend: Read "Gringos," Portis's 1991 novel set in Merida, the capital of the Yucatan. Pace Rosenbaum, I don't think any writer should use the adjective "indescribable"; it's like a plumber saying, "I can't fix this sink." And yet just a few weeks after finishing "Gringos" I have trouble relating why I loved the book so much.

For starters, Portis is funny. Roy Blount Jr., who used to give away copies of Portis's novels to younger writers, has compared him to Mark Twain. He's right, certainly in terms of the two authors' wonderfully understated prose. When I read -- I suppose I should claim "reread" -- "Huckleberry Finn" to one of my sons a few years ago, I marveled at how the un-showy words rolled off the page. A readers' writer, to be sure. Portis also has the trademark empathy for lost souls that resonates with writers. If we were found souls, we wouldn't be writing. It is ironic that Portis himself has become a cult figure, because he understands our need to form insular microreligions to keep sane. His accessible 1985 novel, "Masters of Atlantis," paints this picture in broad strokes.

I have another theory that explains Portis's popularity with writers. (So many theories, and the week less than half over!) I think writers feel possessive about Portis, about his erudite but not recondite vocabulary, and about his enviable amblings through the language. Readers think John Grisham, Tom Clancy, and Stephen King are writers, but I think of them more as brands, or as successful businessmen. For me, and I suspect for other journalists, Portis is the answer to the question: What kind of a writer would you like to be?

Portis is a famous refugee from daily journalism, having left the staff of the New York Herald Tribune to try his hand at writing novels. "The Herald Tribune was like the main Tijuana bullring for feature writers," his former colleague Tom Wolfe wrote in the essay "The Feature Game," ". . . Portis, [Jimmy] Breslin, [Dick] Schaap." "Portis quit cold one day," Wolfe went on, "and moved into a fishing shack in Arkansas. In six months, he wrote a beautiful little novel called `Norwood.' Then he wrote `True Grit,' which was a best seller. . . . It was too goddamned perfect to be true, and yet there it was."

There is one more relevant detail about Portis: He is quite reclusive, not in the diagnosable manner of J. D. Salinger, but shy enough. "If you are going to an event, he won't let you pick him up," says his fellow Arkansan Bill Whitworth, the former editor of The Atlantic magazine. "He needs to feel that he can escape whenever he needs to."

I think Whitworth softened up Portis for me, because he didn't hang up the phone when I called. "I find interviews troublesome," Portis said, "because if you talk, you look like a fool, and if you don't, you come off as a recluse." But importuning people is what newsmen do, right? "Yes, I used to bug people in my time," he answered. "It seems unfair for me not to be talking now."

The news in a nutshell is that Portis is working on a novel set in Mexico, which will swell the hearts of his admirers. He is always amused to hear about his miraculous conversion from Herald Tribune hack to literary novelist; "It wasn't as easy as it looked," he grunted.

Yes, but you made it look easy, Mr. Portis, and that is high praise.

(All five of Portis's novels are back in print with the Overlook Press of Woodstock, N.Y. The site www.charlesportis

.cjb.net is a useful, one-stop shop window for Portisiana. It even has a scanned copy of a characteristically gruff letter Portis wrote to an academic seminar, asserting, "I wasn't part of any Herald Tribune `literary movement' in the 1960s.")

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His

e-dress is beam@globe.com.