True Grit 7

"They think because I have a little money I will be happy to fill up their Sunday columns just to see my name in print like Lucille Biggers Langford and Florence Mabry Whiteside." (43)

Lucille Biggers Langford and Florence Mabry Whiteside, referenced in the book as real people who had written for papers and magazines, are apparently fictional writers that Portis created for True Grit. A reader would be surprised to find that, when their names are put into a search engine, a majority of the results generated are for True Grit. This brings up the question of why Portis didn't just research and use real female journalists from that time period. There must have been some that he could have drawn from and written in to make it more authentic - however, he opted to create his own people that are only mentioned once in the book. Portis' reasoning for this was perhaps leaving a sense of unreality to the novel. Even though the history in True Grit is real and the setting is authentic, using real people would possibly make it too non-fictional and distract from the civil rights symbolism in the plot.