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The Dog of the South
The narrator is Ray Midge, down-at-the-heels Southerner after his wife. "Norma had run off with Guy Dupree and I was waiting around for the credit card billings to come in so I could see where they had gone." The fussbudget is assailed by tropical storms, grifters, hippies, car trouble, and candy wrappers at high speed "wind came up through the floor hole in such a way that the Heath wrappers were suspended behind my head in a noisy brown vortex". Leech Dr Reo Symes is a font of dubious financial schemes and fluff such as a circus "fifty-pound rat from the sewers of Paris, France. Of course it didn't really weigh fifty pounds and it wasn't your true rat and it wasn't from Paris, France, either. It was some kind of animal from South America."
246 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
About the author
Charles Portis
11 books688 followersCharles McColl Portis was an American author best known for his novels Norwood (1966) and the classic Western True Grit (1968), both adapted as films. The latter also inspired a film sequel and a made-for-TV movie sequel. A newer film adaptation of True Grit was released in 2010.
Portis served in the Marine Corps during the Korean war and attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He graduated with a degree in journalism in 1958.
His journalistic career included work at the Arkansas Gazette before he moved to New York to work for The New York Herald Tribune. After serving as the London bureau chief for the The New York Herald Tribune, he left journalism in 1964 and returned to Arkansas to write novels.
Portis served in the Marine Corps during the Korean war and attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He graduated with a degree in journalism in 1958.
His journalistic career included work at the Arkansas Gazette before he moved to New York to work for The New York Herald Tribune. After serving as the London bureau chief for the The New York Herald Tribune, he left journalism in 1964 and returned to Arkansas to write novels.
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August 11, 2014
Everybody’s either neurotic or unlikeable or both. The dialog is brilliant, the humour ironic, deadpan and dry – don’t look for belly laughs. This’ll work for anyone who still hankers for the good old days, the exhilaration of hittin’ the road in a beat up clunker held together with coat hangers and a prayer, destination a big fat question mark. For anyone who’s ever been dumped and figured out life goes on. For anyone who appreciates it’s all about the journey. I loved its honesty, its anti-climactic ending.
Ray Midge is a self-depreciating Arkansas redneck on a quest to get back his stolen Gran Torino and his cheating wife. Heads for Belize hooking up with an assortment of misfits and losers, most notable a con-artist by the name of Dr. Re Symes who’s hit the skids. “The kind of people I know now don’t have barbecues, Mama. They stand up alone at nights in small rooms and eat cold weenies. My so-called friends are bums. Many of them are nothing but rats. Some of them can even move their ears. They’re wife-beaters and window peepers and night crawlers and dope fiends. They peer up from cracks in the floor with their small red eyes and watch for chances.”
Back to Ray he's hard to pigeon hole, interesting - original. Passionless in an oblivious, oddly endearing way with his “weekly embraces.” So earnest and A for effort, but it's like he's adopted this philosophical resignation to failure. Guess it makes sense that Ray’s wife left him, explains why Ray never cast blame her way - personally I'd peg him a keeper:)
“Then I saw the answer. I’m slow but sure. I had read things and heard many songs about people being poleaxed by love and brought quivering to their knees and I thought it was just something people said. And now here it was, true love. She was in love with that monkey! I was amazed but I couldn’t really hold it against her.”
Meanderings: Convinced losing that car hurt Ray more than losing his wife, bit of an eureka moment for me. In my 20’s I was into muscle cars, a '67 Mustang GT-Fastback my pride and joy. Stolen around the same time I lost my man to another girl – devastating. Looking back I can barely remember his name but that Mustang? Still pining…such is love.
Cons: No getting around it, parts are politically incorrect. A bit dated as well but not annoying so.
Ray Midge is a self-depreciating Arkansas redneck on a quest to get back his stolen Gran Torino and his cheating wife. Heads for Belize hooking up with an assortment of misfits and losers, most notable a con-artist by the name of Dr. Re Symes who’s hit the skids. “The kind of people I know now don’t have barbecues, Mama. They stand up alone at nights in small rooms and eat cold weenies. My so-called friends are bums. Many of them are nothing but rats. Some of them can even move their ears. They’re wife-beaters and window peepers and night crawlers and dope fiends. They peer up from cracks in the floor with their small red eyes and watch for chances.”
Back to Ray he's hard to pigeon hole, interesting - original. Passionless in an oblivious, oddly endearing way with his “weekly embraces.” So earnest and A for effort, but it's like he's adopted this philosophical resignation to failure. Guess it makes sense that Ray’s wife left him, explains why Ray never cast blame her way - personally I'd peg him a keeper:)
“Then I saw the answer. I’m slow but sure. I had read things and heard many songs about people being poleaxed by love and brought quivering to their knees and I thought it was just something people said. And now here it was, true love. She was in love with that monkey! I was amazed but I couldn’t really hold it against her.”
Meanderings: Convinced losing that car hurt Ray more than losing his wife, bit of an eureka moment for me. In my 20’s I was into muscle cars, a '67 Mustang GT-Fastback my pride and joy. Stolen around the same time I lost my man to another girl – devastating. Looking back I can barely remember his name but that Mustang? Still pining…such is love.
Cons: No getting around it, parts are politically incorrect. A bit dated as well but not annoying so.
February 20, 2011
When I say something is funny and you say something is funny, I'm usually not sure if our funnies are congruous—or even related, really. For instance, I've been told (by 'them') that The Hangover was a great American comedy, but I'll be honest with you... there were more honest-to-goshness laughs in Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata for me. Like in that ripsnorting scene where Liv Ullmann's crippled daughter crawls out of her bedroom in a crime of melodrama so egregious that even drag queens would roll their sparkly-shadowed eyes. Bitch, please. All it needed was a kazoo soundtrack, and then abracadabra: sublimity, pure sublimity! But The Hangover had about as many yuks-per-minute as a holocaust museum. Let me get this straight... some doofuses party and can't remember anything the next day! Wow, that's fantastic! And there's a tiger! And a naked Asian! Ha ha ha ha! I've already signed up to pre-order The Hangover 2 on Amazon!
Anyway, this is all in the way of a disclaimer. When I say that The Dog of the South might just be the funniest novel I've ever read, you should not jump to any conclusions. It might be like reading an Elisabeth Kübler-Ross book for you. My sense of humor is particular. I [generally] don't go in for outright silliness or slipping-on-banana peels or pies-in-faces or Will Ferrell. Poor Will. I want to give him points for trying so damn hard all the time. You can see that he really, really, really wants to be funny, and it's his dream in the same way that other boys want to be astronauts, firemen, or high-stakes drug dealers. But wow. Effort only goes so far.
The Dog of the South is the exact kind of humor I like. It's the story of this twentysomething loser named Ray Midge (it's okay—this is the 1970s, well before the slacker and hipster eras) whose wife Norma leaves him for her first husband Dupree, a wannabe leftist radical who is really just an Arkansas redneck with authority issues. Not only that. Dupree steals Midge’s car and credit card and takes off with Norma through Texas and Mexico—eventually arriving in British Honduras. Ray follows their trail via credit card charges in a car with a hole in the floor accompanied by the eccentric and criminal Dr. Symes who hitches a ride to Honduras where he plans to persuade his missionary mother to turn over her island real estate to him so that he can build a luxury nursing home on it. Ray, needless to say, is hapless and bewildered. Dr. Symes is irritable and elliptical. They make for a strange pairing.
The novel is told from the idiosyncratic perspective of Midge who spends much of the novel taking in the strange world he lives in. He is something of a hick—likely by his own admission—who knows about cars and guns, as a matter of course, but he is, at the same time, self-deprecating, half-assed-worldly, and very, very smart. He has a talent for feeling people out and reacting accordingly. But his isn’t the reactive humor of, say, Bob Newhart who deadpans his exasperation at the inscrutable and intractable world in which he lives; no, Midge takes everything in stride—each and every peculiarity and catastrophe. The world, odd as it is, is something to marvel at, sure, but not for long. When all the marveling’s done, a crooked doctor, a deranged, gun-wielding radical, and a sudden hurricane are just more things-on-top-of-things to contend with.
Also, Midge has no idea that he’s funny. Not one clue. And that’s what magnifies the humor. There are no spaces kept clear for a laugh track. And none of those needy inflections reserved for the delivery of one-liners. It’s the totality of Midge’s addled but persevering perspective that frames a comedy he can’t quite recognize because he’s standing nose-to-nose with it.
Anyway, this is all in the way of a disclaimer. When I say that The Dog of the South might just be the funniest novel I've ever read, you should not jump to any conclusions. It might be like reading an Elisabeth Kübler-Ross book for you. My sense of humor is particular. I [generally] don't go in for outright silliness or slipping-on-banana peels or pies-in-faces or Will Ferrell. Poor Will. I want to give him points for trying so damn hard all the time. You can see that he really, really, really wants to be funny, and it's his dream in the same way that other boys want to be astronauts, firemen, or high-stakes drug dealers. But wow. Effort only goes so far.
The Dog of the South is the exact kind of humor I like. It's the story of this twentysomething loser named Ray Midge (it's okay—this is the 1970s, well before the slacker and hipster eras) whose wife Norma leaves him for her first husband Dupree, a wannabe leftist radical who is really just an Arkansas redneck with authority issues. Not only that. Dupree steals Midge’s car and credit card and takes off with Norma through Texas and Mexico—eventually arriving in British Honduras. Ray follows their trail via credit card charges in a car with a hole in the floor accompanied by the eccentric and criminal Dr. Symes who hitches a ride to Honduras where he plans to persuade his missionary mother to turn over her island real estate to him so that he can build a luxury nursing home on it. Ray, needless to say, is hapless and bewildered. Dr. Symes is irritable and elliptical. They make for a strange pairing.
The novel is told from the idiosyncratic perspective of Midge who spends much of the novel taking in the strange world he lives in. He is something of a hick—likely by his own admission—who knows about cars and guns, as a matter of course, but he is, at the same time, self-deprecating, half-assed-worldly, and very, very smart. He has a talent for feeling people out and reacting accordingly. But his isn’t the reactive humor of, say, Bob Newhart who deadpans his exasperation at the inscrutable and intractable world in which he lives; no, Midge takes everything in stride—each and every peculiarity and catastrophe. The world, odd as it is, is something to marvel at, sure, but not for long. When all the marveling’s done, a crooked doctor, a deranged, gun-wielding radical, and a sudden hurricane are just more things-on-top-of-things to contend with.
Also, Midge has no idea that he’s funny. Not one clue. And that’s what magnifies the humor. There are no spaces kept clear for a laugh track. And none of those needy inflections reserved for the delivery of one-liners. It’s the totality of Midge’s addled but persevering perspective that frames a comedy he can’t quite recognize because he’s standing nose-to-nose with it.
March 6, 2015
A test of patience? A proof of silliness? Pick your favorite.
MISLEADING TITLE
Certainly after that I read the excellent novel True Grit (See my review about that book HERE) I decided that I wanted to read more books by Charles Portis.
I even do some research about their books and while I found that all of them have an interesting premise, I had to choose one of them, and so, my pick was this one.
Well, first of all, the title The Dog of the South is very misleading if not a bad choice of title, just like in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (The Goblet of Fire? Sure the item has its moment on the story but hardly described about what it's the novel, I always thought that a best title could be "Harry Potter and the Tri-Wizard Tournament).
Well, getting back to this novel, in here, it's pretty much the same, since the "The Dog of the South" is the name of a bus, an old school bus, repainted and remodeled inside to serve as a trailer for journeys.
I was mesmerized by the idea of reading about this bus traveling the roads of Mexico and Central America, well, the bus barely appears twice brief moments in the book and the vehicle never moved itself an inch of the trailer park where it was abandoned.
The bus was abandoned!
Why the heck the book is named after a vehicle that ended being not important or relevant to the story?
Sure, the fact that the bus is broken, his owner, Dr. Reo Symes, needs to ask for a lift to Ray Midge (the main protagonist) and both of them became travelling partners.
However, I still find a poor choice to name the novel after a school bus that hardly appears in the plot.
HUMOR... REALLY?
About the characters, I labeled the book as "humor", mainly because I am a nice man, geez! Since I hardly smiled twice in the whole reading experience.
I didn't find the characters likable or amusing.
They are colourful? Oh, yes, they are colourful alright, but believe, that's not always a good thing.
When you are reading the moments of Ray Midge, the main character, when he is alone and/or not interacting with anybody else in the book, you find him moderately likable, you notice his peculiarities but you really didn't get uncomfortable with him, but once he starts to interacts with somebody especially Dr. Symes, oh boy! You don't know which side to pick, since even Midge became quite cumbersome.
However, the rest of characters are like a popurri of different styles of nuisance.
You just have to think in the most irritating person that you ever met at some moment in your life, and I am sure that you will find a personality twin over here, in this book.
And trust me, even when you think that some of them aren't so bad, sooner or later, they will come to your nerves.
UNEXPECTED READING EXPERIENCE
By the way, I don't know if all synopsis have a similar mistake, but the one that I read before of deciding to read the novel, it said that the road trip will end on Honduras, but it's not Honduras, it's British Honduras, in other words, it's Belize, that it's an entire totally different country.
Maybe, you won't bother with something like that, BUT since I am from Central America, I bother when people (the publishing house most likely) write synopsis about a book and making foolish errors like that.
At some point Honduras, the real Honduras is mentioned, but, it's not the same.
PORTIS-VERSE?
Since this is only the second book that I read by Charles Portis, I am not sure, but I almost can bet that at some moments in the story, Ray Midge did some brief encounters with characters and/or places from other of his novels Masters of Atlantis and Gringos, not matter that those books were written later of this one.
Anyway, I am not sure of that but it's a feeling that I got when I was reading due that I read the synopsis of those books.
NOT MY KIND OF ROAD TRIP NOVEL
Another thing that bothered me a lot was I think that the very purpose of a "road trip" novel is to acomplish what the main character set as his/her goal in the journey, and well, oh boy! I won't make spoilers but geez! I don't even want to go that point again.
Let's say that I still think that True Grit is one of the best novels that I ever read. Honest! I love True Grit!
And I still want to try some other books by Charles Portis in the future.
However, my only recommendation at this point is not to pick this book as your first and/or second choice to read about this author.
But, who knows? No two people read the same book. Maybe some of you will find it really amusing and a wonderful experience. I have not bad feelings or anything to the author due this particular novel. So, I'll be really glad if some other readers can get a positive reading experience out of this novel.
Sadly, it wasn't the case for me.
MISLEADING TITLE
Certainly after that I read the excellent novel True Grit (See my review about that book HERE) I decided that I wanted to read more books by Charles Portis.
I even do some research about their books and while I found that all of them have an interesting premise, I had to choose one of them, and so, my pick was this one.
Well, first of all, the title The Dog of the South is very misleading if not a bad choice of title, just like in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (The Goblet of Fire? Sure the item has its moment on the story but hardly described about what it's the novel, I always thought that a best title could be "Harry Potter and the Tri-Wizard Tournament).
Well, getting back to this novel, in here, it's pretty much the same, since the "The Dog of the South" is the name of a bus, an old school bus, repainted and remodeled inside to serve as a trailer for journeys.
I was mesmerized by the idea of reading about this bus traveling the roads of Mexico and Central America, well, the bus barely appears twice brief moments in the book and the vehicle never moved itself an inch of the trailer park where it was abandoned.
The bus was abandoned!
Why the heck the book is named after a vehicle that ended being not important or relevant to the story?
Sure, the fact that the bus is broken, his owner, Dr. Reo Symes, needs to ask for a lift to Ray Midge (the main protagonist) and both of them became travelling partners.
However, I still find a poor choice to name the novel after a school bus that hardly appears in the plot.
HUMOR... REALLY?
About the characters, I labeled the book as "humor", mainly because I am a nice man, geez! Since I hardly smiled twice in the whole reading experience.
I didn't find the characters likable or amusing.
They are colourful? Oh, yes, they are colourful alright, but believe, that's not always a good thing.
When you are reading the moments of Ray Midge, the main character, when he is alone and/or not interacting with anybody else in the book, you find him moderately likable, you notice his peculiarities but you really didn't get uncomfortable with him, but once he starts to interacts with somebody especially Dr. Symes, oh boy! You don't know which side to pick, since even Midge became quite cumbersome.
However, the rest of characters are like a popurri of different styles of nuisance.
You just have to think in the most irritating person that you ever met at some moment in your life, and I am sure that you will find a personality twin over here, in this book.
And trust me, even when you think that some of them aren't so bad, sooner or later, they will come to your nerves.
UNEXPECTED READING EXPERIENCE
By the way, I don't know if all synopsis have a similar mistake, but the one that I read before of deciding to read the novel, it said that the road trip will end on Honduras, but it's not Honduras, it's British Honduras, in other words, it's Belize, that it's an entire totally different country.
Maybe, you won't bother with something like that, BUT since I am from Central America, I bother when people (the publishing house most likely) write synopsis about a book and making foolish errors like that.
At some point Honduras, the real Honduras is mentioned, but, it's not the same.
PORTIS-VERSE?
Since this is only the second book that I read by Charles Portis, I am not sure, but I almost can bet that at some moments in the story, Ray Midge did some brief encounters with characters and/or places from other of his novels Masters of Atlantis and Gringos, not matter that those books were written later of this one.
Anyway, I am not sure of that but it's a feeling that I got when I was reading due that I read the synopsis of those books.
NOT MY KIND OF ROAD TRIP NOVEL
Another thing that bothered me a lot was I think that the very purpose of a "road trip" novel is to acomplish what the main character set as his/her goal in the journey, and well, oh boy! I won't make spoilers but geez! I don't even want to go that point again.
Let's say that I still think that True Grit is one of the best novels that I ever read. Honest! I love True Grit!
And I still want to try some other books by Charles Portis in the future.
However, my only recommendation at this point is not to pick this book as your first and/or second choice to read about this author.
But, who knows? No two people read the same book. Maybe some of you will find it really amusing and a wonderful experience. I have not bad feelings or anything to the author due this particular novel. So, I'll be really glad if some other readers can get a positive reading experience out of this novel.
Sadly, it wasn't the case for me.
October 28, 2023
The Hill family gathers at the breakfast table and, while eating Peggy’s prepared meal, discuss Charles Portis’ 1979 novel The Dog of the South.
Peggy: Bobby, the novel is known as a picaresque.
Bobby: A pack a’ rats??
Peggy: No, dear, a picaresque. Meaning, “The picaresque novel is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish but "appealing hero", usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt the form of "an episodic prose narrative" with a realistic style.” I found that definition on Wikipedia. This is a very humorous adventure filled with many colorful scenes and with a treasure of interesting characters.
Hank: Peggy, please do not fill the boys head with a bunch of literary mumbo jumbo.
Peggy: Hank Hill! I most certainly am not filling Bobby’s head with any such thing. I am trying to bring culture and refinement to this home, humble though it may be.
Hank: I hardly think some guy from Arkansas, who writes a book every decade, will bring any more culture or refinement to this house. Why just the other day, Bobby was reading my propane magazine, The Gassy Times.
Bobby: I wonder what Mr. Portis would think of propane and propane accessories?
Hank: It’s 6am and already the boy ain't right. What in the tarn hill is so special about Portis?
Peggy: [adjusting her glasses] Well, Hank, let me inform you that Charles Portis was the same writer who authored the classic True Grit. What say you now?
Hank: Just because he wrote a book that would later be used by The Duke does not mean that any other book of his is special.
Bobby: Daddy, don’t forget that the Coen Brothers also made an adaption of True Grit.
Hank: Damn it, Bobby, while I can respect Bridge’s performance in The Big Lebowski, excusing the incessant profanity, he does not rise to the level of John Wayne!
Bobby: What does incest mean?
Peggy: Bobby! We do not use that filthy word in this home!
Bobby: [looking confused] But you both said True Grit.
Peggy: Incest! It is not a polite word, and we will not use it. Now, getting back to Mr. Portis’ wonderfully funny novel, it is set in Arkansas where the protagonist Ray Midge goes on a journey of self discovery where he travels to central America to find his wife. Who has … strayed.
Bobby: Like a dog?
Peggy: No, Bobby, a woman is not like a dog. She has returned affections to her former husband. Ray drives all the way down to Honduras to find her.
Hank: He was also trying to get his car back. A Gran Torino.
Peggy: Hank, I hardly think the car was as important as Nora.
Hank: Peg, maybe I read the book closer than you did.
Bobby: I’m getting an “F” in English.
Hank: An “F” in English? Bobby, you speak English!
Peggy: Bobby, the novel is known as a picaresque.
Bobby: A pack a’ rats??
Peggy: No, dear, a picaresque. Meaning, “The picaresque novel is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish but "appealing hero", usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt the form of "an episodic prose narrative" with a realistic style.” I found that definition on Wikipedia. This is a very humorous adventure filled with many colorful scenes and with a treasure of interesting characters.
Hank: Peggy, please do not fill the boys head with a bunch of literary mumbo jumbo.
Peggy: Hank Hill! I most certainly am not filling Bobby’s head with any such thing. I am trying to bring culture and refinement to this home, humble though it may be.
Hank: I hardly think some guy from Arkansas, who writes a book every decade, will bring any more culture or refinement to this house. Why just the other day, Bobby was reading my propane magazine, The Gassy Times.
Bobby: I wonder what Mr. Portis would think of propane and propane accessories?
Hank: It’s 6am and already the boy ain't right. What in the tarn hill is so special about Portis?
Peggy: [adjusting her glasses] Well, Hank, let me inform you that Charles Portis was the same writer who authored the classic True Grit. What say you now?
Hank: Just because he wrote a book that would later be used by The Duke does not mean that any other book of his is special.
Bobby: Daddy, don’t forget that the Coen Brothers also made an adaption of True Grit.
Hank: Damn it, Bobby, while I can respect Bridge’s performance in The Big Lebowski, excusing the incessant profanity, he does not rise to the level of John Wayne!
Bobby: What does incest mean?
Peggy: Bobby! We do not use that filthy word in this home!
Bobby: [looking confused] But you both said True Grit.
Peggy: Incest! It is not a polite word, and we will not use it. Now, getting back to Mr. Portis’ wonderfully funny novel, it is set in Arkansas where the protagonist Ray Midge goes on a journey of self discovery where he travels to central America to find his wife. Who has … strayed.
Bobby: Like a dog?
Peggy: No, Bobby, a woman is not like a dog. She has returned affections to her former husband. Ray drives all the way down to Honduras to find her.
Hank: He was also trying to get his car back. A Gran Torino.
Peggy: Hank, I hardly think the car was as important as Nora.
Hank: Peg, maybe I read the book closer than you did.
Bobby: I’m getting an “F” in English.
Hank: An “F” in English? Bobby, you speak English!
May 3, 2020
Reading this whole novel was a displacement activity – I’m supposed to be reading the Cormac McCarthy masterpiece Blood Meridian according to my Currently Reading list here. But that’s so grim, so very grim, that I found myself idly picking up The Dog of the South and after the first page I found myself cheating on my Currently Reading list and breaking the cardinal rule Thou Shalt Not Read Two Novels at the Same Time.
Charles Portis was a master of American voices, it seems. Mattie Ross from True Grit has a unique unwittingly-funny deadpan way of describing her desperate adventures, one of the greatest characters of modern fiction. In this later novel, our man Ray Midge, who is 25-going-on-45, is second-cousin-twice-removed to Mattie, with again a whole lot of deadpan humour.
Ray is himself on a road trip from Arkansas to British Honduras to try to find his vamoosed wife. Ray’s account of the whole thing tries to omit nothing, particularly the details of all the cars involved.
With this support gone the least acceleration would throw the engine over to the right from the torque, and the fanblades would clatter against the shroud. I straightened out two coat hangers and fastened one end of the stiff wires to the exhaust manifold on the left side, and anchored the other ends to the frame member…I thought it was a clever piece of work even though I burned my fingers on the manifold.
Ray is fairly meek and geeky and he has to steel himself to confront Guy Dupree, the bounder who has run off with Norma, Mrs Midge. Once found, Dupree says stuff like
I have a 44 Magnum out here in the glove compartment. It’s as big as a flare pistol. You can fire just four more rounds from it and the next day the arch of your hand is so sore and numb you can’t pick up a dime. That may give you some idea of its power and range.
In response to these manly growlings, later on Ray organises two small boys to throw stones at Dupree’s house.
Ray has opportunity to observe Dupree’s manners, and is understandably critical :
He went over to the green tractor and climbed on it and tried to start it. It was a diesel and by nature hard to start. Dupree lacked patience. His contempt for machinery was unpleasant to watch. He slammed and wrenched things about.
Naturally he likes to contrast Dupree’s rubbishness with his own excellent qualities :
I watched the windows for Norma…I was always good at catching roach movement or mouse movement from the corner of my eye. Small or large, any object in my presence had only to change its position slightly, by no more than a centimeter, and my head would snap about and the thing would be instantly trapped by my gaze.
So this is a road trip story and of course has to include a garrulous eccentric. So we get Dr Reo Symes who talks like a Tom Waits monologue. He’s the veteran of a thousand failed get rich quick schemes, and says stuff like
This was my arthritis clinic. The Brewster Method. Massive doses of gold salts and nuxated zinc followed by thirty push-ups and a twelve-minute nap. None of your thermo tubs or hydro baloney. You don’t hear much about it anymore but for my money it’s never been discredited.
One page later he’s still rattling on about medical matters
He had an interest in a denture factory in Tijuana and he was trying to get a US patent on their El Tigre model. They were wonderful teeth. They had two extra canines and two extra incisors of tungsten steel. Slap a set of tiger plate in your mouth and you can throw your oatmeal out the window.
Well True Grit is a beautiful sublimated love story and this one is just a blast of fun so no 5 stars and really this is a solid 3.5 stars, but perfect for taking your mind off the end of civilisation as we know it.
Charles Portis was a master of American voices, it seems. Mattie Ross from True Grit has a unique unwittingly-funny deadpan way of describing her desperate adventures, one of the greatest characters of modern fiction. In this later novel, our man Ray Midge, who is 25-going-on-45, is second-cousin-twice-removed to Mattie, with again a whole lot of deadpan humour.
Ray is himself on a road trip from Arkansas to British Honduras to try to find his vamoosed wife. Ray’s account of the whole thing tries to omit nothing, particularly the details of all the cars involved.
With this support gone the least acceleration would throw the engine over to the right from the torque, and the fanblades would clatter against the shroud. I straightened out two coat hangers and fastened one end of the stiff wires to the exhaust manifold on the left side, and anchored the other ends to the frame member…I thought it was a clever piece of work even though I burned my fingers on the manifold.
Ray is fairly meek and geeky and he has to steel himself to confront Guy Dupree, the bounder who has run off with Norma, Mrs Midge. Once found, Dupree says stuff like
I have a 44 Magnum out here in the glove compartment. It’s as big as a flare pistol. You can fire just four more rounds from it and the next day the arch of your hand is so sore and numb you can’t pick up a dime. That may give you some idea of its power and range.
In response to these manly growlings, later on Ray organises two small boys to throw stones at Dupree’s house.
Ray has opportunity to observe Dupree’s manners, and is understandably critical :
He went over to the green tractor and climbed on it and tried to start it. It was a diesel and by nature hard to start. Dupree lacked patience. His contempt for machinery was unpleasant to watch. He slammed and wrenched things about.
Naturally he likes to contrast Dupree’s rubbishness with his own excellent qualities :
I watched the windows for Norma…I was always good at catching roach movement or mouse movement from the corner of my eye. Small or large, any object in my presence had only to change its position slightly, by no more than a centimeter, and my head would snap about and the thing would be instantly trapped by my gaze.
So this is a road trip story and of course has to include a garrulous eccentric. So we get Dr Reo Symes who talks like a Tom Waits monologue. He’s the veteran of a thousand failed get rich quick schemes, and says stuff like
This was my arthritis clinic. The Brewster Method. Massive doses of gold salts and nuxated zinc followed by thirty push-ups and a twelve-minute nap. None of your thermo tubs or hydro baloney. You don’t hear much about it anymore but for my money it’s never been discredited.
One page later he’s still rattling on about medical matters
He had an interest in a denture factory in Tijuana and he was trying to get a US patent on their El Tigre model. They were wonderful teeth. They had two extra canines and two extra incisors of tungsten steel. Slap a set of tiger plate in your mouth and you can throw your oatmeal out the window.
Well True Grit is a beautiful sublimated love story and this one is just a blast of fun so no 5 stars and really this is a solid 3.5 stars, but perfect for taking your mind off the end of civilisation as we know it.
March 20, 2016
I tell you I can't answer questions like that. You see me as a can-do guy from the States, but I don't have all the answers. I'm white and I don't dance but that doesn't mean I have all the answers.”
― Charles Portis, The Dog of the South
Charles Portis isn't God. But I believe he can do no wrong and can walk on water when I read his books. In fact, while reading his novels, the exact feeling I get can only be described as eating an overcooked eucharist; some crunchy, holy, wafer of truth that has been burnt by the absurdity of the modern world. I open the world-weary pages of a Portis novel and suddenly I am taken-up in a vision that contains the body and the blood of all that is great with American Fiction. He reminds me of some unholy combination of Cormac McCarthy and Walker Percy -- with a bit of Saul Bellow thrown in for flavor.
Let's get out of the way: the truth. This is the same dude from Arkansas that wrote True Grit. Great book. Fantastic novel and both movies were fantastic. Great. Good. Hallelujah! Now let's put that away. There is so much more to Charles Portis than just one amazing book. This isn't some one-hit wonder novelist. This guy is the real deal. Serious, put him next to Flannery O'Connor. Yes, he is that fantastic. OK, perhaps, we can't get ahead of ourselves. So, put him close to Flannery, looking up at her, but not with a craned neck. Roy Blount, Jr. has posited that "No one should die without having read [The Dog of the South]". Ron Rosenbaum thinks Charles Portis is America's Gogol. I shit you not.
Basically, the story is about a man's search for his runaway wife. She has run off with her ex-husband to Mexico and Belize and the narrator, Ray Midge, is going to track them down. This is a world where cars don't run well, the pelicans get struck by lightening, and people and fabricators, are either running to something or away from something. This is a book that is as much about figuring out where one is and where one belongs. It reminds me of that space which exists for a brief second between sleep and wake, after a crazy dream, where one is unsure about which side of the fog is real; and question gets begged which side of the fog one really belongs.
― Charles Portis, The Dog of the South
Charles Portis isn't God. But I believe he can do no wrong and can walk on water when I read his books. In fact, while reading his novels, the exact feeling I get can only be described as eating an overcooked eucharist; some crunchy, holy, wafer of truth that has been burnt by the absurdity of the modern world. I open the world-weary pages of a Portis novel and suddenly I am taken-up in a vision that contains the body and the blood of all that is great with American Fiction. He reminds me of some unholy combination of Cormac McCarthy and Walker Percy -- with a bit of Saul Bellow thrown in for flavor.
Let's get out of the way: the truth. This is the same dude from Arkansas that wrote True Grit. Great book. Fantastic novel and both movies were fantastic. Great. Good. Hallelujah! Now let's put that away. There is so much more to Charles Portis than just one amazing book. This isn't some one-hit wonder novelist. This guy is the real deal. Serious, put him next to Flannery O'Connor. Yes, he is that fantastic. OK, perhaps, we can't get ahead of ourselves. So, put him close to Flannery, looking up at her, but not with a craned neck. Roy Blount, Jr. has posited that "No one should die without having read [The Dog of the South]". Ron Rosenbaum thinks Charles Portis is America's Gogol. I shit you not.
Basically, the story is about a man's search for his runaway wife. She has run off with her ex-husband to Mexico and Belize and the narrator, Ray Midge, is going to track them down. This is a world where cars don't run well, the pelicans get struck by lightening, and people and fabricators, are either running to something or away from something. This is a book that is as much about figuring out where one is and where one belongs. It reminds me of that space which exists for a brief second between sleep and wake, after a crazy dream, where one is unsure about which side of the fog is real; and question gets begged which side of the fog one really belongs.
May 6, 2015
What a weird and twisty experience, being inside the head of Raymond Earl Midge. His thoughts are both deep and shallow, and tend to roam all over the place, but for now, he is a man on a mission. His wife Norma has just run off with her ex-husband, Dupree. They've taken Ray's credit cards AND his beloved Ford Torino. Now, he's headed off to find them, packing a .38 Colt Cobra, AND his wife's pain medication.
Norma never went anywhere without her lower-back medicine, and yet she had forgotten it this time, such was her haste in dusting out of town, away from my weekly embraces. I got it from the bathroom and packed it too. She would thank me for that. Those capsules cost four dollars apiece.
(Who would leave a thoughtful man like that? Especially one who promises "weekly" embraces?)
Poor Ray has no choice but to take Dupree's old piece-of-crap compact car. It's not only littered with dozens of candy bar wrappers, but... There was a hole in the floor on the driver's side and when I drove over something white the flash between my feet made me jump. So, he's off, following the trail of charges on his stolen credit card.
He crosses into Mexico, and there, it seems as if there's an organized conspiracy to keep him from getting where he's going.
Hippies interfered with my work by stopping me and asking me the time. Why did they care? And if so, why didn't they have watches?
Damned hippies!
Then he meets Dr. Reo Symes, a man with a mission of his own - to bilk his elderly mother out of some prime Louisiana real estate. Together, the two head for Belize and their individual appointments with destiny. Here, the book sort of ran off the rails for me. (Symes' constant whining drove me nuts. I'd have stolen his wallet and pushed him out of the car right after we left Mexico.)
My interest picked up again after Ray manages to locate the house where his missing wife (and car) may be hidden.
It had been in my mind all along that I would find them in a trailer park. I suppose I thought it would be a suitable place for their meretricious relationship. I had a plan for that trailer. I would jerk open the flimsy door with such force that the stop-chain would snap. Dupree would be sitting down eating a bowl of cereal, holding a big spoon in his monkey hand. I would throw an armlock on his neck from behind. While he sputtered and milk drops flew from his mouth, I would remove my car keys and my credit cards from his pockets. Norma would say, "Let him have some air!" and I would shove him away and leave them there in their sty without a word.
I'm pretty sure I'm not spoiling anything by saying that's NOT the way it goes down, but I LOVE Ray's little fantasy. I pretty much love EVERYTHING about Ray, though I would have to insist on at least "bi-weekly" embraces. He is one of the most unique characters I've ever encountered. He reminds me a bit of Hazel Motes from Wise Blood, only without the religious hangups, AND a bit of H.I. McDunnough from Raising Arizona, only without the "itch" to rob convenience stores.
Raymond may be walking the line that leads to Crazyville, but he LOVES to read, and I find it impossible to dislike a character who adores books. (No fiction, though - that gets tossed across the room.) "I have more than four hundred volumes of military history in my apartment. All told, I have sixty-six lineal feet of books." he tells Symes. Owning a lot of books can make up for any number of faults.
For a man whose wife claims just wants to stay in the house all the time, Ray manages to have quite a big adventure, and I'm awfully glad I was along for the ride.
Norma never went anywhere without her lower-back medicine, and yet she had forgotten it this time, such was her haste in dusting out of town, away from my weekly embraces. I got it from the bathroom and packed it too. She would thank me for that. Those capsules cost four dollars apiece.
(Who would leave a thoughtful man like that? Especially one who promises "weekly" embraces?)
Poor Ray has no choice but to take Dupree's old piece-of-crap compact car. It's not only littered with dozens of candy bar wrappers, but... There was a hole in the floor on the driver's side and when I drove over something white the flash between my feet made me jump. So, he's off, following the trail of charges on his stolen credit card.
He crosses into Mexico, and there, it seems as if there's an organized conspiracy to keep him from getting where he's going.
Hippies interfered with my work by stopping me and asking me the time. Why did they care? And if so, why didn't they have watches?
Damned hippies!
Then he meets Dr. Reo Symes, a man with a mission of his own - to bilk his elderly mother out of some prime Louisiana real estate. Together, the two head for Belize and their individual appointments with destiny. Here, the book sort of ran off the rails for me. (Symes' constant whining drove me nuts. I'd have stolen his wallet and pushed him out of the car right after we left Mexico.)
My interest picked up again after Ray manages to locate the house where his missing wife (and car) may be hidden.
It had been in my mind all along that I would find them in a trailer park. I suppose I thought it would be a suitable place for their meretricious relationship. I had a plan for that trailer. I would jerk open the flimsy door with such force that the stop-chain would snap. Dupree would be sitting down eating a bowl of cereal, holding a big spoon in his monkey hand. I would throw an armlock on his neck from behind. While he sputtered and milk drops flew from his mouth, I would remove my car keys and my credit cards from his pockets. Norma would say, "Let him have some air!" and I would shove him away and leave them there in their sty without a word.
I'm pretty sure I'm not spoiling anything by saying that's NOT the way it goes down, but I LOVE Ray's little fantasy. I pretty much love EVERYTHING about Ray, though I would have to insist on at least "bi-weekly" embraces. He is one of the most unique characters I've ever encountered. He reminds me a bit of Hazel Motes from Wise Blood, only without the religious hangups, AND a bit of H.I. McDunnough from Raising Arizona, only without the "itch" to rob convenience stores.
Raymond may be walking the line that leads to Crazyville, but he LOVES to read, and I find it impossible to dislike a character who adores books. (No fiction, though - that gets tossed across the room.) "I have more than four hundred volumes of military history in my apartment. All told, I have sixty-six lineal feet of books." he tells Symes. Owning a lot of books can make up for any number of faults.
For a man whose wife claims just wants to stay in the house all the time, Ray manages to have quite a big adventure, and I'm awfully glad I was along for the ride.
September 1, 2022
Ray Midge embarks on a road trip to recover his car and his wife, meeting along the way a wacky assortment of characters who appear to have escaped from a Coen Brothers movie. As with any Portis novel, the real treat is the humorous dialogue, both internal and external, while the plot is largely ancillary. This 1979 book marked Portis' return to publishing novels after an 11 year hiatus following his indelible True Grit.
August 10, 2018
The Dog of the South: You Can't Always Get What You Want
Jack became solemn and he began to pose rhetorical questions, 'What is everybody looking for?' he said. Norma didn't hesitate; she said everybody was looking for love. I gave the question some thought and then declared that everybody was looking for a good job of work to do. Jack said no, that many people were looking for those things, but that everybody was looking for a good job of work to do. Jack said no,
that many people were looking for those things, but that everybody was looking for a place where he could get food cheap - on a regular
basis."
Strange what people find funny. Take The Dog of the South by Charles Portis. There are those readers that find it a laugh a minute. Roy Blount Jr., a great humorist in his own right, and editor of Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor wrote The Dog of the South is the one book everyone should read before they die.
Well, I've done what Blount recommended. I read it. Having read it, I won't rest in peace when I spin off this mortal coil. Actually, I wonder if Blount wasn't pulling some sky joke in his pie in the sky praise of this book. Personally, I wanted to throw this book across the room. But I would have shattered my Kindle.
Ray Midge is twenty-six, an on and off again perennial student still in search of a career. Ray is married to Norma, the ex-wife of former friend Guy Dupree. Dupree has gone more than a half bubble off plumb and been sending threatening letters to the President of the United States. The Feds must not consider Dupree a serious threat. Dupree is released on bond. Dupree absconded with Midge's wife, American Express Card, Texaco Card, his .410 shotgun and his Ford Torino.
Ray waits for the credit card bills to come in to use the charges to track Dupree and Norma down. This could have been one Helluva road trip novel. The potential for humor was unquestionable. However, as Ray's quest leads him from Arkansas to Honduras, Port has introduced us to a string of dissolute characters, chief among them Reo Symes, a con stripped of his medical license now intent on bilking his mother out of some potentially pricey real estate in Louisiana.
Portis was silent eleven long years after the appearance of True Grit before the publication of The Dog of the South. He must have had some tough years. Bookshelf reviewer Joseph McClellan titled his critique "A Middle American Journey to Hell." He further wrote the novel would have been a tragedy if it hadn't been so funny.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe the humor in Portis' novel is like that bear dance. It was so simple it plumb eluded me.
Jack became solemn and he began to pose rhetorical questions, 'What is everybody looking for?' he said. Norma didn't hesitate; she said everybody was looking for love. I gave the question some thought and then declared that everybody was looking for a good job of work to do. Jack said no, that many people were looking for those things, but that everybody was looking for a good job of work to do. Jack said no,
that many people were looking for those things, but that everybody was looking for a place where he could get food cheap - on a regular
basis."
Strange what people find funny. Take The Dog of the South by Charles Portis. There are those readers that find it a laugh a minute. Roy Blount Jr., a great humorist in his own right, and editor of Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor wrote The Dog of the South is the one book everyone should read before they die.
Well, I've done what Blount recommended. I read it. Having read it, I won't rest in peace when I spin off this mortal coil. Actually, I wonder if Blount wasn't pulling some sky joke in his pie in the sky praise of this book. Personally, I wanted to throw this book across the room. But I would have shattered my Kindle.
Ray Midge is twenty-six, an on and off again perennial student still in search of a career. Ray is married to Norma, the ex-wife of former friend Guy Dupree. Dupree has gone more than a half bubble off plumb and been sending threatening letters to the President of the United States. The Feds must not consider Dupree a serious threat. Dupree is released on bond. Dupree absconded with Midge's wife, American Express Card, Texaco Card, his .410 shotgun and his Ford Torino.
Ray waits for the credit card bills to come in to use the charges to track Dupree and Norma down. This could have been one Helluva road trip novel. The potential for humor was unquestionable. However, as Ray's quest leads him from Arkansas to Honduras, Port has introduced us to a string of dissolute characters, chief among them Reo Symes, a con stripped of his medical license now intent on bilking his mother out of some potentially pricey real estate in Louisiana.
Portis was silent eleven long years after the appearance of True Grit before the publication of The Dog of the South. He must have had some tough years. Bookshelf reviewer Joseph McClellan titled his critique "A Middle American Journey to Hell." He further wrote the novel would have been a tragedy if it hadn't been so funny.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe the humor in Portis' novel is like that bear dance. It was so simple it plumb eluded me.
July 6, 2023
A few years ago, I read True Grit, after belatedly realizing the movie(s) were based on Portis' novel. At the time, I thought, wow, how is it that have I never heard of Charles Portis? Portis has a knack for producing realistic characters from the rural south (or west, in True Grit) that ring true to me, and a sense of humor that is sometimes subtle, sometimes over the top, but always present.
The Dog of the South is an unusual story based on a common theme. Midge's wife Norma has run off with his co-worker and would-be radical (this is about 1970), Dupree. But Midge's pursuit of his errant wife (and, more importantly, his Ford Torino) extends from Arkansas through Texas to Mexico and Belize, which was then still British Honduras. Portis' deadpan rendition of the dialogue of his characters, mostly from Arkansas or Louisiana, provide the considerable humor which seems to come so naturally to him. I learned via Google that Portis was the London editor of the New York (later International) Herald Tribune, of sainted memory, so the man had real journalistic chops. Despite this, as he notes in the book, people from Arkansas tend to return there, somehow failing to achieve escape velocity, and so did Portis, who then receded into relative obscurity, a position from which he has somewhat recovered, posthumously. Via his rootedness in Arkansas, he mines a deep vein of understanding of small town southern America, and gives us wonderful characters by focusing on that which he knows so well. His eye for detail in descriptions of con men like Dr. Symes and oddball characters like Dupree or Melba is unerring, and the unobserved life revealed by Midge's internal dialogue makes one do a double take. None of us want to be as oblivious as Midge, and yet, do we sometimes have such tendencies? I sure hope not....;-)
I look forward to reading more of Charles Portis' work; he was a master of his craft.
The Dog of the South is an unusual story based on a common theme. Midge's wife Norma has run off with his co-worker and would-be radical (this is about 1970), Dupree. But Midge's pursuit of his errant wife (and, more importantly, his Ford Torino) extends from Arkansas through Texas to Mexico and Belize, which was then still British Honduras. Portis' deadpan rendition of the dialogue of his characters, mostly from Arkansas or Louisiana, provide the considerable humor which seems to come so naturally to him. I learned via Google that Portis was the London editor of the New York (later International) Herald Tribune, of sainted memory, so the man had real journalistic chops. Despite this, as he notes in the book, people from Arkansas tend to return there, somehow failing to achieve escape velocity, and so did Portis, who then receded into relative obscurity, a position from which he has somewhat recovered, posthumously. Via his rootedness in Arkansas, he mines a deep vein of understanding of small town southern America, and gives us wonderful characters by focusing on that which he knows so well. His eye for detail in descriptions of con men like Dr. Symes and oddball characters like Dupree or Melba is unerring, and the unobserved life revealed by Midge's internal dialogue makes one do a double take. None of us want to be as oblivious as Midge, and yet, do we sometimes have such tendencies? I sure hope not....;-)
I look forward to reading more of Charles Portis' work; he was a master of his craft.
September 22, 2022
Not the book I was expecting. From the writer of True Grit I was expecting a more masculine book, full of tough cowboy types, but this was funny and has a protagonist who is nervy, pernickety and, in all honesty, adorably dull.
We meet Midge as he sets off to locate his errant wife who has run off with his ex co-worker Dupree. To add insult to injury the cuckolding pair take Midge’s car and leave Dupree’s beaten up rust bucket behind. In the days before APNR and mobile phones the only way to locate them is to check the credit card bill which shows they have been running up bills in Mexico at his expense.
Unable to get access to funds from his father, Midge takes to the road with an eccentric doctor who is living in a converted school bus and wants to travel to Belize to see his mother who came as a missionary and stayed to set up her own church.
If you like a lot of action and events in your books, this is probably not for you. It is completely character driven and full of wonderfully wry observations. The writing is funny and wise to the ways of human nature and frailties. The characters are eccentric and exaggerated but never descend into unbelievability, they are portrayed with a warmth that keeps them the right side of annoying.
One highlight was the irritation with the difference between US and English English – which I always enjoy though this time it was the American finding fault (cheeky I know),
“The young British officer, none too sure of himself before, pulled Jack bodily from the cab and told him to stay away from his vehicles ‘in future’ – rather than ‘in the future’.”
And this from our Midge to Webster, a young Belize boy who works in the hotel he is staying in,
“I don’t know, Webster. I tell you I can’t answer questions like that. You see me as a can-do guy from the States, but I don’t have all the answers. I’m white and I don’t dance but that doesn’t mean I have all the answers.”
We’re with you on that Midge.
We meet Midge as he sets off to locate his errant wife who has run off with his ex co-worker Dupree. To add insult to injury the cuckolding pair take Midge’s car and leave Dupree’s beaten up rust bucket behind. In the days before APNR and mobile phones the only way to locate them is to check the credit card bill which shows they have been running up bills in Mexico at his expense.
Unable to get access to funds from his father, Midge takes to the road with an eccentric doctor who is living in a converted school bus and wants to travel to Belize to see his mother who came as a missionary and stayed to set up her own church.
If you like a lot of action and events in your books, this is probably not for you. It is completely character driven and full of wonderfully wry observations. The writing is funny and wise to the ways of human nature and frailties. The characters are eccentric and exaggerated but never descend into unbelievability, they are portrayed with a warmth that keeps them the right side of annoying.
One highlight was the irritation with the difference between US and English English – which I always enjoy though this time it was the American finding fault (cheeky I know),
“The young British officer, none too sure of himself before, pulled Jack bodily from the cab and told him to stay away from his vehicles ‘in future’ – rather than ‘in the future’.”
And this from our Midge to Webster, a young Belize boy who works in the hotel he is staying in,
“I don’t know, Webster. I tell you I can’t answer questions like that. You see me as a can-do guy from the States, but I don’t have all the answers. I’m white and I don’t dance but that doesn’t mean I have all the answers.”
We’re with you on that Midge.
June 28, 2007
The Arkansas Traveller reimagined as a cosmic fool. One of the most underrated American novels, but that's those New York Smarties for you. This will put Shakespeare in the sh*thouse.
October 26, 2022
Read Oct 2022. 90th book of the year.
..........................................
Says the back cover: “Portis spins an extraordinary novel of deep longing and comic eloquence.”
Extraordinary?
Well, keep in mind it’s the same marketing dept. person who claims “The trail leads from Arkansas down to Mexico and into Honduras.” Wrong country. It’s British Honduras (now Belize, since 1973), 857.3 klicks down the road from Honduras. Picky maybe. But me? I’d want a copy writer who took more than just a glance at the book he/she was describing.
Anyways … this sure was a disappointment. 2 point five measly stars.
Sure, I’d love to check that middle box, three stars, to escape controversy, evade “WOT?!” responses from those who top-rated this book. But honestly, for me, it’s a 2.5 at best. In my defense a few of my friends gave it a 2.
I did quite like, though, his other novel, Norwood. 4 stars. I didn’t have much to say about it back in 2017, but some of my spare remarks are revealing:
“One of those books where the protagonist wanders the country, engages in misadventures, and plot is secondary to the cast of colorful characters.”
Much the same could be said for The Dog of the South. A very similar kind of book. Trouble is, I thought the narrator, Ray Midge, was kinda dull. The character’s voice is not distinctive, and he has little flair for description. It’s first person narration (Norwood was third person, as I recall), and I suppose Portis chose a relatively bland narrator to contrast with the rest of the cast of exuberantly colorful, eccentric characters. Fine, but he maybe overdid it. This guy is not interesting. The story is set in the late 60s or early 70s (before 1973 anyway) when the narrator would be termed a bit of "a square, man.” No judgment, just an observation. He’s 26 but he hates hippies, rock n roll, and even guitars. In an amusing moment, he passes on going to a party because he fears there will be guitars. He travels from Arkansas to British Honduras (now Belize) and very rarely describes the people or environment with any kind of specificity at all. Okay, I like, but I don’t need, on every page, Cormac McCarthy-like descriptions, mountains like reefs in the distance and what have you. But one or two mild attempts in the book to give me a tiny bit of a feel for the environment and the people would’ve been nice.
Speaking of which, Roy Blount Jr.’s blurb says, “Charles Portis could be Cormac McCarthy if he wanted to, but he’d rather be funny.” That could be, I suppose. Though a difficult premise to prove, I submit. Maybe he could be, but I found no evidence of it in this book. And I didn’t find this book particularly funny either. (Norwood was quite different. For one thing, it has a third person narrator who didn’t bore me. And it was funny. )
I wish I’d saved some quotes in my 2017 review of Norwood, but I did write, “Its special strength is the dialogue, which at times is hilarious.”
Some reviewers found Dog of the South hilarious as well. I didn’t. When I’ve finished a book, it’s usually full of pencil marks: notable passages marked. Notes about the themes or characters. But this book came out clean. I remembered chuckling lightly here and there, so I skimmed the reviews, read all the saved quotes for Portis, trying to find them and maybe others I might’ve somehow missed. Here’s the best of the best.
“A lot of people leave Arkansas and most of them come back sooner or later. They can’t quite achieve escape velocity.”
“When you run up against a policeman at a typewriter, you might as well get a Coke and relax.”
Decent lines, sure.
On a personal note, I also liked when someone said, there are no characters named Ray in the bible. Of course, that’s true also of Bob. Carl. Skip. Jason …
And I liked the relationship that develops between the narrator and a Belizean boy. The stand off against the narrator’s nemesis was sort of amusing. Piles of rocks gathered, tossed at the guy’s shack. Never mind that the narrator knows the other guy is quite disturbed (arrested for threatening the president) and has a shotgun. But he brings two boys along to fight with him anyway. Still a somewhat amusing scene. A couple of positives elevating it from 2 to 2.5.
Again, I really liked Norwood. I remain interested in True Grit. I would be surprised if that one disappoints.
..........................................
Says the back cover: “Portis spins an extraordinary novel of deep longing and comic eloquence.”
Extraordinary?
Well, keep in mind it’s the same marketing dept. person who claims “The trail leads from Arkansas down to Mexico and into Honduras.” Wrong country. It’s British Honduras (now Belize, since 1973), 857.3 klicks down the road from Honduras. Picky maybe. But me? I’d want a copy writer who took more than just a glance at the book he/she was describing.
Anyways … this sure was a disappointment. 2 point five measly stars.
Sure, I’d love to check that middle box, three stars, to escape controversy, evade “WOT?!” responses from those who top-rated this book. But honestly, for me, it’s a 2.5 at best. In my defense a few of my friends gave it a 2.
I did quite like, though, his other novel, Norwood. 4 stars. I didn’t have much to say about it back in 2017, but some of my spare remarks are revealing:
“One of those books where the protagonist wanders the country, engages in misadventures, and plot is secondary to the cast of colorful characters.”
Much the same could be said for The Dog of the South. A very similar kind of book. Trouble is, I thought the narrator, Ray Midge, was kinda dull. The character’s voice is not distinctive, and he has little flair for description. It’s first person narration (Norwood was third person, as I recall), and I suppose Portis chose a relatively bland narrator to contrast with the rest of the cast of exuberantly colorful, eccentric characters. Fine, but he maybe overdid it. This guy is not interesting. The story is set in the late 60s or early 70s (before 1973 anyway) when the narrator would be termed a bit of "a square, man.” No judgment, just an observation. He’s 26 but he hates hippies, rock n roll, and even guitars. In an amusing moment, he passes on going to a party because he fears there will be guitars. He travels from Arkansas to British Honduras (now Belize) and very rarely describes the people or environment with any kind of specificity at all. Okay, I like, but I don’t need, on every page, Cormac McCarthy-like descriptions, mountains like reefs in the distance and what have you. But one or two mild attempts in the book to give me a tiny bit of a feel for the environment and the people would’ve been nice.
Speaking of which, Roy Blount Jr.’s blurb says, “Charles Portis could be Cormac McCarthy if he wanted to, but he’d rather be funny.” That could be, I suppose. Though a difficult premise to prove, I submit. Maybe he could be, but I found no evidence of it in this book. And I didn’t find this book particularly funny either. (Norwood was quite different. For one thing, it has a third person narrator who didn’t bore me. And it was funny. )
I wish I’d saved some quotes in my 2017 review of Norwood, but I did write, “Its special strength is the dialogue, which at times is hilarious.”
Some reviewers found Dog of the South hilarious as well. I didn’t. When I’ve finished a book, it’s usually full of pencil marks: notable passages marked. Notes about the themes or characters. But this book came out clean. I remembered chuckling lightly here and there, so I skimmed the reviews, read all the saved quotes for Portis, trying to find them and maybe others I might’ve somehow missed. Here’s the best of the best.
“A lot of people leave Arkansas and most of them come back sooner or later. They can’t quite achieve escape velocity.”
“When you run up against a policeman at a typewriter, you might as well get a Coke and relax.”
Decent lines, sure.
On a personal note, I also liked when someone said, there are no characters named Ray in the bible. Of course, that’s true also of Bob. Carl. Skip. Jason …
And I liked the relationship that develops between the narrator and a Belizean boy. The stand off against the narrator’s nemesis was sort of amusing. Piles of rocks gathered, tossed at the guy’s shack. Never mind that the narrator knows the other guy is quite disturbed (arrested for threatening the president) and has a shotgun. But he brings two boys along to fight with him anyway. Still a somewhat amusing scene. A couple of positives elevating it from 2 to 2.5.
Again, I really liked Norwood. I remain interested in True Grit. I would be surprised if that one disappoints.
May 24, 2011
Deadpan comic picaresque that seems to take from Cervantes, Twain, Jane Bowles and Beckett in equal measures and foreshadows Joy Williams and Sam Lipsyte. The bizarre dialogue and characters seem to overrun the plot, the comedy turns ominous at certain points, and nothing ends in any predictable way. This is a rare novel without a bad sentence. (Good thing since it takes Portis about ten years to write a novel.)
August 9, 2018
I really enjoyed True Grit and had high hopes for this book about a road trip through places that I personally took road trips through back in my misspent youth.
Unfortunately, The book is mostly about unpleasant people having tedious conversations. There is little story progression and even less plot. If this isn't bad enough, Portis, or at least his publishers, are guilty of an egregious case of false advertising. The title and the books cover suggest, and on some covers state outright, that the story is about a road trip through Mexico in a retired school bus named "The Dog of the South". Nothing could be further from the truth. In Mexico, they would refer to such claims as mentiras or basura. Up where I come from we aren't quite so refined so I just call it bullshit. The truth is that, although said school bus does make an appearance but it is broken down when we encounter it and it never gets repaired. It occupies maybe one page out of the entire book.
Charles Portis does deserve come credit. He manages, without coming out directly and saying it, to show the reader what a clueless dufus Ray Midge is and exactly why Norma left him, even though she herself, was unable to explain her reasons. In the course of all of these wacky conversations, the reader does get a sense of what the characters, Ray in particular, are really like. An author who can let his readers know that it is a dark and stormy night without mentioning the weather deserves some credit.
Bottom line: I had high hopes for this book but in the end was very disappointed. Nevertheless, my thanks to the folks at the On the Southern Literary Trail group for giving me the opportunity to read and discuss this and many other better books.
Unfortunately, The book is mostly about unpleasant people having tedious conversations. There is little story progression and even less plot. If this isn't bad enough, Portis, or at least his publishers, are guilty of an egregious case of false advertising. The title and the books cover suggest, and on some covers state outright, that the story is about a road trip through Mexico in a retired school bus named "The Dog of the South". Nothing could be further from the truth. In Mexico, they would refer to such claims as mentiras or basura. Up where I come from we aren't quite so refined so I just call it bullshit. The truth is that, although said school bus does make an appearance but it is broken down when we encounter it and it never gets repaired. It occupies maybe one page out of the entire book.
Charles Portis does deserve come credit. He manages, without coming out directly and saying it, to show the reader what a clueless dufus Ray Midge is and exactly why Norma left him, even though she herself, was unable to explain her reasons. In the course of all of these wacky conversations, the reader does get a sense of what the characters, Ray in particular, are really like. An author who can let his readers know that it is a dark and stormy night without mentioning the weather deserves some credit.
Bottom line: I had high hopes for this book but in the end was very disappointed. Nevertheless, my thanks to the folks at the On the Southern Literary Trail group for giving me the opportunity to read and discuss this and many other better books.
July 24, 2016
3.5 stars. Thanks again to my thoughtful friend Jeff who sent me this book because he knew I enjoyed Portis’ True Grit. This one also involves a quest, but wrapped in a contemporary story about a road trip from Arkansas to Belize. In The Dog of the South, as in True Grit, the narrator has experienced a loss and is seeking retribution. Ray Midge takes off after his wife Norma, who’s run off with another man, her previous husband, Guy Dupree. But all Ray admits to wanting back is his Ford Torino, in which the couple has fled.
Along the way he acquires a travelling companion, Dr. Reo Symes, who is also on his way to Belize, planning to visit his mother who runs a church there and owns an island Symes is scheming to get control of. In the book’s Afterword, Portis scholar Ron Rosenbaum describes Symes as the greatest of Portis’ “talkers” who are “brilliant and garrulous con artists, deliriously gifted fabricators, delusional mountebanks, disbarred lawyers, defrocked doctors, disgruntled inventors, dispossessed cranks, and disgraced dreamers who crawl out of the cracks and crevices of Trailways America with confident claims that they have the Philosopher’s Stone, the key to all mysteries. Or, more often, that they had it and lost it, or had it stolen from them but are close to getting it back.”
With the exception of the children, everyone in this book is very strange, including the narrator, and both the first person narration and the dialogue among all the characters is very funny stuff. But the funny, the strange, the wacky, is almost too much. Instead of the strategically placed humor sprinkled throughout True Grit, here it is so consistent and relentless, it affected me a little like odor fatigue does, where you stop perceiving a scent once you get used to it. The density of bizarre situations and the dryness of the humor in the telling of them by narrator Ray served to cause a bit of numbness after a while and I felt I might have appreciated the quirkiness more as a condiment than a main dish. That’s not to say I didn’t appreciate what Portis can do with this type of writing. It is very amusing and a good entertainment if you’re willing to go along for this sort of ride with Ray and Dr. Symes.
Along the way he acquires a travelling companion, Dr. Reo Symes, who is also on his way to Belize, planning to visit his mother who runs a church there and owns an island Symes is scheming to get control of. In the book’s Afterword, Portis scholar Ron Rosenbaum describes Symes as the greatest of Portis’ “talkers” who are “brilliant and garrulous con artists, deliriously gifted fabricators, delusional mountebanks, disbarred lawyers, defrocked doctors, disgruntled inventors, dispossessed cranks, and disgraced dreamers who crawl out of the cracks and crevices of Trailways America with confident claims that they have the Philosopher’s Stone, the key to all mysteries. Or, more often, that they had it and lost it, or had it stolen from them but are close to getting it back.”
With the exception of the children, everyone in this book is very strange, including the narrator, and both the first person narration and the dialogue among all the characters is very funny stuff. But the funny, the strange, the wacky, is almost too much. Instead of the strategically placed humor sprinkled throughout True Grit, here it is so consistent and relentless, it affected me a little like odor fatigue does, where you stop perceiving a scent once you get used to it. The density of bizarre situations and the dryness of the humor in the telling of them by narrator Ray served to cause a bit of numbness after a while and I felt I might have appreciated the quirkiness more as a condiment than a main dish. That’s not to say I didn’t appreciate what Portis can do with this type of writing. It is very amusing and a good entertainment if you’re willing to go along for this sort of ride with Ray and Dr. Symes.
August 12, 2016
This is one of those books that will make you shake your head in wonder at how much contemporary fiction is dull, lifeless trash, just because it's so subtle and hilarious that to admire its virtues is to bring the flaws of others into sharp contrast by implication. Portis is really clever about a lot of the things he does in this book, from the dialogue to the characters to the plot, but one thing that I didn't get until about halfway through the book was how much attention he paid to its structure: it's not just a simple litany of failure, it's a fractal of failure! Not only is the protagonist Ray Midge's main quest ultimately unsuccessful, but literally every single smaller aspect of it is too; absolutely nothing that anyone does in the entire course of the book succeeds at all. Midge's wife has run off to Central America with his car and one of his journalist coworkers; the car he drives down down after them tries to fall apart about once a chapter; when he talks to other people nobody listens to him; he never knows the answer to any questions he's asked; no one, not even his wife, remembers his name; he never has any money or cigarettes or a camera or anything useful; he has no friends; and even children don't really respect him. He's a total loser and everything about him is a drag, but it's impossible not to laugh whenever he ends up trapped in deadly unproductive non-conversations with someone like his passenger Doc Symes, a huckster failure on an even grander scale than he is. We've all met people who aggressively don't care about the routinized niceties of conversations, but Midge is such a chump that people talk over him and interrogate him for basically the entire book without him being able to do anything about it.
It's interesting to speculate on how much of the Midge character's personality is Portis himself - Portis was trained as a journalist (filling Karl Marx's old shoes at the New York Herald-Tribune, no less!) and from the few personal accounts of him that exist he seems to share a number of the more positive character traits with the quiet, nerdy, car- and Civil War-obsessed "star" of the book. There are some sly jokes about his own profession of writing, as Doc Symes keeps raving about an obscure Southern author who writes all of his books from the interior of a bus. But only a first-rate author with a rare gift for comic timing could tell the tale of this mope on a mission with such amazing dry humor. It's hard to quote good examples of the type of comedy Portis uses since it's so understated and subtle, but the cumulative effect on those who can visualize just how ridiculous these scenes would be in real life is tremendous; by the end of the book I was practically laughing out loud each time Midge couldn't catch a break.
I would compare its sense of humor somewhat to A Confederacy of Dunces, but with a little less slapstick and with a little more outright cruelty than is shown to the invincibly obese New Orleaner. If you've read True Grit (or seen it, since it's basically the same thing), then you should expect a somewhat different novel: a larger cast of characters, more sly about its action, but funnier and more relatable. There are plenty of great satires on religion and and relationships and all sorts of aspects of the human condition buried in this book, down to the most minute detail; you just have to keep a sharp eye for them. His ear for dialogue is absolutely flawless, and especially if you've grown up in the South you won't be able to avoid hearing the characters speak to you as if they were right in front of you. It's a real trick to tell a smart story with a dumb narrator, and Portis absolutely aces it here.
It's interesting to speculate on how much of the Midge character's personality is Portis himself - Portis was trained as a journalist (filling Karl Marx's old shoes at the New York Herald-Tribune, no less!) and from the few personal accounts of him that exist he seems to share a number of the more positive character traits with the quiet, nerdy, car- and Civil War-obsessed "star" of the book. There are some sly jokes about his own profession of writing, as Doc Symes keeps raving about an obscure Southern author who writes all of his books from the interior of a bus. But only a first-rate author with a rare gift for comic timing could tell the tale of this mope on a mission with such amazing dry humor. It's hard to quote good examples of the type of comedy Portis uses since it's so understated and subtle, but the cumulative effect on those who can visualize just how ridiculous these scenes would be in real life is tremendous; by the end of the book I was practically laughing out loud each time Midge couldn't catch a break.
I would compare its sense of humor somewhat to A Confederacy of Dunces, but with a little less slapstick and with a little more outright cruelty than is shown to the invincibly obese New Orleaner. If you've read True Grit (or seen it, since it's basically the same thing), then you should expect a somewhat different novel: a larger cast of characters, more sly about its action, but funnier and more relatable. There are plenty of great satires on religion and and relationships and all sorts of aspects of the human condition buried in this book, down to the most minute detail; you just have to keep a sharp eye for them. His ear for dialogue is absolutely flawless, and especially if you've grown up in the South you won't be able to avoid hearing the characters speak to you as if they were right in front of you. It's a real trick to tell a smart story with a dumb narrator, and Portis absolutely aces it here.
December 3, 2014
I can only describe The Dog of the South as a comic masterpiece, and Portis is without any shadow of a doubt in my mind a greatly underrated American novelist. I’ve heard him compared to Cormac McCarthy, and I can see the line of thought taken here: the characters both writers create often inhabit a similar kind of universe, down at heel and desperate; both authors’ prose has a poetic elegance about it. However, (it seems to me) the difference is that Portis really likes his characters, he’s like a watchful father who wants to see his children do well, whereas McCarthy, great writer though he unquestionably is, can be a bit like the God of the Old Testament when it comes to his literary offspring; you know - vengeance, punishment, destruction.
I laughed out loud (unusual for me) so many times as I lay in bed reading this book. As with all the funniest writing, the people of the story are never in on the joke and remain completely dumbfounded throughout. Everyone in this story is a little bit lost and down on their luck, but you somehow find yourself rooting for all of them, hoping they’ll somehow just find a way to get through. Portis delights the reader by offering us a deadpan narration through the slightly Quixotic, good-natured voice of the book’s central character Ray Midge. Ray, a bit goofy by his own observation, is on something of a heroic quest to right a wrong - well, rather a lot of wrongs, perpetrated against him by the unconscionable, yet pretty hapless, Guy Dupree. I’m not really giving very much away here - this is the novel’s opening sentence: 'My wife Norma had run off with Guy Dupree and I was waiting around for the credit card billings to come in so I could see where they had gone.'
A joy to read! Highly recommended!
I laughed out loud (unusual for me) so many times as I lay in bed reading this book. As with all the funniest writing, the people of the story are never in on the joke and remain completely dumbfounded throughout. Everyone in this story is a little bit lost and down on their luck, but you somehow find yourself rooting for all of them, hoping they’ll somehow just find a way to get through. Portis delights the reader by offering us a deadpan narration through the slightly Quixotic, good-natured voice of the book’s central character Ray Midge. Ray, a bit goofy by his own observation, is on something of a heroic quest to right a wrong - well, rather a lot of wrongs, perpetrated against him by the unconscionable, yet pretty hapless, Guy Dupree. I’m not really giving very much away here - this is the novel’s opening sentence: 'My wife Norma had run off with Guy Dupree and I was waiting around for the credit card billings to come in so I could see where they had gone.'
A joy to read! Highly recommended!
September 3, 2012
Ray Midge has constructed a sheltered existence for himself, structured and predictable, and though his attempts at getting a college degree have been stymied by his incapacity to follow a single field of study through, he’s not worried and regales himself with reading and drinking with his friend Guy Dupree. His world is punctured, though, when the same Dupree, fleeing from the law after proffering death threats on the president, heads down to Mexico with Ray’s credit card, car, and wife Norma. The book is an account of Midge’s attempt to get it all back by following Dupree into Belize and tracking him down.
On the outset, Ray’s motivations are fuzzy. After all, he’s going after Dupree for three different reasons, and one wonders which he cares the most for: the credit card, the car, or the wife? It becomes clearer, as the story unfolds, that Midge is keen on redeeming his honour, to somehow show himself worthy of some kind of respect in this great big world. In the process, he meets a slew of colourful characters who, each in their own way, are striving to cut out a piece of world for themselves as well, and his perspective gradually shifts as being outside his initial comfort zone loses its’ sting and he allows himself to be invaded by the commonality he shares with Dr. Symes, a junkie ex-doctor, and Webster, a young boy who works as a go-fer in the hotel where Ray is staying.
The story is told in a charming kind of rigid stubbornness, and Ray never loses an occasion to point out how people make a mockery of him. A common running gag in the book is how people continually call him by other people’s names, even toward the end when his own wife call’s him Guy, the name of the man who took her away from him.
I really enjoyed the earnest tone, the laugh-out-loud self-deprecating, wry humour, and the occasional twinges of real emotion that occur in times when Ray is just too tired or battered to protect himself from the events unfolding around him. Also, when he does finally find his wife, the meeting is told in a way that is touchingly sincere and believable, and reading it I couldn’t help but admire the way a man will go after a woman who left him, and then try to get her back, and swallow his pride in the process and not look to punish her but merely try to reconstruct the fragile edifice of the relationship they once shared together.
Passages I much liked:
...
...
...
...
...
...
On the outset, Ray’s motivations are fuzzy. After all, he’s going after Dupree for three different reasons, and one wonders which he cares the most for: the credit card, the car, or the wife? It becomes clearer, as the story unfolds, that Midge is keen on redeeming his honour, to somehow show himself worthy of some kind of respect in this great big world. In the process, he meets a slew of colourful characters who, each in their own way, are striving to cut out a piece of world for themselves as well, and his perspective gradually shifts as being outside his initial comfort zone loses its’ sting and he allows himself to be invaded by the commonality he shares with Dr. Symes, a junkie ex-doctor, and Webster, a young boy who works as a go-fer in the hotel where Ray is staying.
The story is told in a charming kind of rigid stubbornness, and Ray never loses an occasion to point out how people make a mockery of him. A common running gag in the book is how people continually call him by other people’s names, even toward the end when his own wife call’s him Guy, the name of the man who took her away from him.
I really enjoyed the earnest tone, the laugh-out-loud self-deprecating, wry humour, and the occasional twinges of real emotion that occur in times when Ray is just too tired or battered to protect himself from the events unfolding around him. Also, when he does finally find his wife, the meeting is told in a way that is touchingly sincere and believable, and reading it I couldn’t help but admire the way a man will go after a woman who left him, and then try to get her back, and swallow his pride in the process and not look to punish her but merely try to reconstruct the fragile edifice of the relationship they once shared together.
Passages I much liked:
‘Whenever that kind of thing came up, he would always say – boast, the way those people do – that he had no head for figures and couldn’t do things with his hands, slyly suggesting the presence of finer qualities.’
...
‘I ordered roast beef and I told the waitress I wanted plenty of gristle and would like for the meat to be gray with an iridescent rainbow sheen.’
...
‘The desert road was straight and the guidebook said it was boring but I didn’t find it so. I was interested in everything, the gray-green bushes, the cactus, a low brown hill, a spider crossing the road.’
...
‘The doctor had deposited bits of gray snot on every page and these boogers were dried and crystallized.’
...
‘Ruth didn’t like the Americans but he, Webster, rather liked them, even if they did keep him hopping with their endless demands for ice and light bulbs and towels and flyswatters. Even the wretched hippies expected service. It was in their blood.’
...
‘Webster Spooner was in front of the hotel dancing around the tomato plant and jabbing the air with his tiny fists. He too had attended the matinee showing of the Muhammed Ali fight.
“I’m one bad-ass nigger,” he said to me.
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m one bad-ass nigger.”
“No, you’re not.”’
...
‘She made a cheery progress from bed to bed, in the confident manner of a draftdodger athlete signing autographs for mutilated soldiers.’
May 20, 2011
I am completely shocked at not only how stupid this book is but how many people on Goodreads give it 4 or 5 stars. Even if some people rated it “middle of the road,” I could find that understandable – but how is there this much discrepancy? I was excited to read other Portis books after absolutely loving True Grit – it had a great plot, a great narrator, explored history, brought in religion and philosophies with life: I feel like there is NONE of that in Dog of the South. The narrator seems to be intended as a unique, quirky character like in True Grit; but he is not young, not charming, not funny, and is random just for the sake of being random. The plot: he’s off to Mexico to find his wife and his car, but nothing ever really happens. He drives, he stops, he meets a guy, they drive, they talk, they stop, Mexico, he’s sick, can’t cross the border, takes a boat, they get there, he’s weird, his mom’s there, he needs money, should he look for his wife, no, meets someone else, decides to drive to the guy’s farm who his wife ran off with, here he is, nope he’s going home… my God. I couldn’t read 3 pages without feeling exhausted, without feeling distracted by chores as stupid as doing the dishes and laundry – how bad does a book have to be to think of rather doing laundry than reading 3 pages? There is no empathy for any of these characters, no one is real, no one is entertaining or funny, the pacing with the plot is all out of whack, there are no touching scenes, no exciting scenes, nothing that symbolizes a larger picture of life, no philosophical narrations… and then it just FUCKING ENDS! He gets his wife, they go home, and within a single page months pass and she leaves to Memphis – THE END. Are you kidding me? There are people that rated this piece of shit, second-rate story 5 stars?!?!? Well, all the more power to you, but I don’t know if I have ever been more surprised and disappointed. Even my biggest disappointments (American Pastoral?) I feel like I can at least understand why some people hold the work in high esteem, for reasons I just don’t agree with; but I can’t even understand ANY REASONS why someone would rate this 5 stars. Unreal. I was going to read all four of Portis works (being that they are all sort, 250-page breezes) but now I really don’t feel like reading another. So it goes…
December 20, 2010
Do you revel in self-loathing and megalomania? Do you have utter confidence in your superior code of behavior, even as your decisions and actions heap calamity upon misery and are assailed by all who come in contact with you? Do you take pride in your unassailable morals and ethics, despite ample, mounting evidence of corrupt motives and murky intentions?
You too can be the hero of one of the greatest road-trip novels in American literature!
Charles Portis is a treasure. True Grit is the fantastic Portis book everyone already knows. The Dog of the South is the fantastic Portis book that propels everyone (maybe not everyone, just anyone who is worth talking to) lucky enough to read it to want to devour every other book Charles Portis has ever written.
You too can be the hero of one of the greatest road-trip novels in American literature!
Charles Portis is a treasure. True Grit is the fantastic Portis book everyone already knows. The Dog of the South is the fantastic Portis book that propels everyone (maybe not everyone, just anyone who is worth talking to) lucky enough to read it to want to devour every other book Charles Portis has ever written.
July 23, 2016
I didn't know what to expect from Portis, knowing only two things about him before I started The Dog of the South:
1) He wrote the book that became True Grit, which I must admit I've never seen because I hate John Wayne, knowing only his ridiculously jingoistic war movies.
2) An avid reader friend of mine, the same one who gave me this book, begins frothing at the mouth at the very mention of Portis, proclaiming his genius in much the same fashion that The Dog of the South's Dr. Reo Symes canonizes the fictional J.S. Dix, an enigmatic writer of advice manuals for salesmen.
I certainly wasn't expecting this picaresque road novel brimming with satire worthy of Twain and Cervantes, blindingly brilliant without ever taking itself too seriously.
Portis' characters flail around and bump off of one another, all with their heads so far up their own asses that any kind of genuine connection with one another is impossible. It's a lucid dream of the world that seems especially prescient now, in a 21st century America filled with conspiracy theorists and political and religious extremists screaming at one another across unswimmable gulfs of perception, all wrapped up in their own comfortable little myopic world views and making a great clamor of sound and fury. It's a quest novel about longing and finding a way in the world, a trip down the continent of North America akin to Huck Finn's trip down the Mississippi. It's the funniest novel you're probably ever going to read, and damn near the best.
1) He wrote the book that became True Grit, which I must admit I've never seen because I hate John Wayne, knowing only his ridiculously jingoistic war movies.
2) An avid reader friend of mine, the same one who gave me this book, begins frothing at the mouth at the very mention of Portis, proclaiming his genius in much the same fashion that The Dog of the South's Dr. Reo Symes canonizes the fictional J.S. Dix, an enigmatic writer of advice manuals for salesmen.
I certainly wasn't expecting this picaresque road novel brimming with satire worthy of Twain and Cervantes, blindingly brilliant without ever taking itself too seriously.
Portis' characters flail around and bump off of one another, all with their heads so far up their own asses that any kind of genuine connection with one another is impossible. It's a lucid dream of the world that seems especially prescient now, in a 21st century America filled with conspiracy theorists and political and religious extremists screaming at one another across unswimmable gulfs of perception, all wrapped up in their own comfortable little myopic world views and making a great clamor of sound and fury. It's a quest novel about longing and finding a way in the world, a trip down the continent of North America akin to Huck Finn's trip down the Mississippi. It's the funniest novel you're probably ever going to read, and damn near the best.
October 1, 2022
I wanted more story and less storytelling. The story was straightforward: Ray drives down to Central America to retrieve his stolen Torino and runaway wife. But the storytelling veers off on many sidetracks and detours. These amusing digressions were too much for me.
Although I've had a bellyful of Ray and his cuckery, I would gladly read an entire book about Dr. Symes and his swindles.
Although I've had a bellyful of Ray and his cuckery, I would gladly read an entire book about Dr. Symes and his swindles.
Read
June 23, 2024The dry, deadpan southern humor was very on point & made me laugh more than once.
However, this book was first published in 1979 & it's showing its age, racism, & xenophobia too.
However, this book was first published in 1979 & it's showing its age, racism, & xenophobia too.
August 24, 2018
My fault. I failed to spot the word “hilarious” (Baltimore Sun) on the back cover – a word reviewers seem to think is synonymous with “humourless” – and therefore bought a book that I might have avoided had my eyesight been better.
Trying to analyze why The Dog of the South is wildly unfunny is not so easy. The book appears to be picaresque, with an anti-hero, a large cast of odd characters, a road trip from Little Rock to Belize, and a huge number of curious incidents, accidents, and encounters. It should have been ok – and in some writers’ hands it would have been. But in Portis’s novel everyone, including the narrator, is lifeless – more irritating than amusing – with dialogue that is flat and often repetitive. Since the humour is largely in the form of crosstalk, this is a big disadvantage. The rest is slapstick, which does not translate well into fiction. There is not much else to be gleaned.
Despite this, some people clearly like it. Humour retains its mystery...
Trying to analyze why The Dog of the South is wildly unfunny is not so easy. The book appears to be picaresque, with an anti-hero, a large cast of odd characters, a road trip from Little Rock to Belize, and a huge number of curious incidents, accidents, and encounters. It should have been ok – and in some writers’ hands it would have been. But in Portis’s novel everyone, including the narrator, is lifeless – more irritating than amusing – with dialogue that is flat and often repetitive. Since the humour is largely in the form of crosstalk, this is a big disadvantage. The rest is slapstick, which does not translate well into fiction. There is not much else to be gleaned.
Despite this, some people clearly like it. Humour retains its mystery...
November 27, 2017
At 26, Ray Midge has accomplished little and is drifting into an unpromising future. His wife Norma has run off with her ex-husband Gary Dupree. Gary is even more directionless than Ray. He has jumped bail and made off with Norma, Ray's Torino., and his Amex card. (Why would someone like Ray have an Amex? It's a concession to plot. Amex has no preset limit). Dupree left a 1963 Buick Special, a rust bucket with a hole in the floor. Ray is barely perturbed by these losses. Rather than report any of this to the police, he patiently waits for his bill in order to trace the couples' flight path. It can hardly be called a flight. Rather, Dupree and Norma have embarked on a half-hearted improvised trek: ”The line started in Little Rock and showed purpose as it plunged straight down into Texas. Then it became wobbly and disorderly. There was one grand loop that went as far west as Moffit's Texaco station in San Angelo, where sheep graze, and there were tiny epicycles along the way that made no sense at all.” (p.4)
The aimlessness mirrors the lives of Ray and Norma. Ray seems more annoyed by the loss of his Torino than anything else — Norma's infidelity, the mounting bills, the fact that he had provided the bail money to secure Dupree's release.
An awkward, half-baked chain of events govern the action of the story. Ray conceals his Colt in a pizza box. It's hardly a perfect fit since the flimsy box is considerably smaller than the gun. Along the way, Ray encounters Doc Reo Symes camped out in a broken down school bus with the enigmatic banner “Dog of the South” painted on its side. Doc Symes is headed for the British Honduras where his mother is running a shoestring missionary outpost with the grandiose name of the Unity Tabernacle. Coincidentally, Dupree has apparently also headed for the Honduras where his family owns a depleted farm plot.
Symes is literally the kind of guy who would scam his own mother. His goal is to effect the transfer of a small island she owns and has dedicated as a bird sanctuary to him for a half-baked development scheme. He expounds (for him, briefly!) on one of these many “ideas”: ” I say leave the trees and make a private hunting preserve out of the place. I'm not talking about squirrels and ducks either. I mean stock the place with some real brutes. Wart hogs and Cape buffalo. I don't say it would be cheap but these hunters have plenty of money and they don't mind spending it.” (p.60) Now on a roll, Doc pours out other schemes. A Christian boys' ranch; a theme park called Jefferson Davis Land, an industrial park, a monkey island.... Doc Symes is not only a petty scammer. He's a crackpot of monumental proportion. He is dismissive of the the circumstances that led to his medical license being revoked (one wonders how he ever got a license in the first place). He is the lone and unabashed disciple of a self-help guru named John Dix and presses Dix's book on Ray.
The fact that Symes' mother does not answer any of his letters leads the reader to believe she might have some sanity in her. Ray meets her as well as her friend Melba. Mrs. Symes, or Meemaw as she is called, subjects him to a spirited round of inquisition as well as some background on Doc's misspent life.
Portis keeps this curious menage of personalities afloat with his inventive dialog. Ray's understated commentary is punctuated by riffs of fantacized swagger and confrontation. Doc Symes's faux erudition and pugnacious rants burst forth in a rapid fire of rhetorical questions, which he then answers himself. Against this expansive display, Meemaw's monomaniacal interests are refreshing in their brevity of expression and blunt disregard of propriety.
Unlike most road trip stories, this one is an anti-odyssey. It's the stuff of crazed vagrants, cheap rest stops that hardly warrant the status of motels, and locales stripped of even their historic dignity. Ray encounters three Mayans living in the rubble of a minor temple ruin fitted out with bedrolls and a radio. They divide their time between listlessly hacking at the bush with their machetes, and playing tour guide to the occasional lost tourist. Despite the succession of settings beyond the U.S. border, there is a kind of stagnant homogeneity drained of local color but impervious to further change. Even Meemaw's converts are children and old people lured in by sandwiches and old Tarzan movies. They may know the answers to her catechisms by rote, but its hardly something central to their lives. DOG OF THE SOUTH is a celebration of the small and the ordinary. Skills of the coat hanger and duct tape variety suffice for getting on with life.
Often the quality of the writing will carry me through a book and compensate for the absence of a story arc, empathetic characters, or a resonant theme about life. The writing is an ambitious exploitation of vernacular idiosyncrasy. The story luxuriates in the marginal patchwork of Americana composed of junkyards, drifters, self-serving schemers, rootless hippies, and re-purposed goals. Unfortunately, I never really connected with this book, and it was a chore to even finish it.
NOTES:
Charles Portis is perhaps most well known for his book TRUE GRIT.
The aimlessness mirrors the lives of Ray and Norma. Ray seems more annoyed by the loss of his Torino than anything else — Norma's infidelity, the mounting bills, the fact that he had provided the bail money to secure Dupree's release.
An awkward, half-baked chain of events govern the action of the story. Ray conceals his Colt in a pizza box. It's hardly a perfect fit since the flimsy box is considerably smaller than the gun. Along the way, Ray encounters Doc Reo Symes camped out in a broken down school bus with the enigmatic banner “Dog of the South” painted on its side. Doc Symes is headed for the British Honduras where his mother is running a shoestring missionary outpost with the grandiose name of the Unity Tabernacle. Coincidentally, Dupree has apparently also headed for the Honduras where his family owns a depleted farm plot.
Symes is literally the kind of guy who would scam his own mother. His goal is to effect the transfer of a small island she owns and has dedicated as a bird sanctuary to him for a half-baked development scheme. He expounds (for him, briefly!) on one of these many “ideas”: ” I say leave the trees and make a private hunting preserve out of the place. I'm not talking about squirrels and ducks either. I mean stock the place with some real brutes. Wart hogs and Cape buffalo. I don't say it would be cheap but these hunters have plenty of money and they don't mind spending it.” (p.60) Now on a roll, Doc pours out other schemes. A Christian boys' ranch; a theme park called Jefferson Davis Land, an industrial park, a monkey island.... Doc Symes is not only a petty scammer. He's a crackpot of monumental proportion. He is dismissive of the the circumstances that led to his medical license being revoked (one wonders how he ever got a license in the first place). He is the lone and unabashed disciple of a self-help guru named John Dix and presses Dix's book on Ray.
The fact that Symes' mother does not answer any of his letters leads the reader to believe she might have some sanity in her. Ray meets her as well as her friend Melba. Mrs. Symes, or Meemaw as she is called, subjects him to a spirited round of inquisition as well as some background on Doc's misspent life.
Portis keeps this curious menage of personalities afloat with his inventive dialog. Ray's understated commentary is punctuated by riffs of fantacized swagger and confrontation. Doc Symes's faux erudition and pugnacious rants burst forth in a rapid fire of rhetorical questions, which he then answers himself. Against this expansive display, Meemaw's monomaniacal interests are refreshing in their brevity of expression and blunt disregard of propriety.
Unlike most road trip stories, this one is an anti-odyssey. It's the stuff of crazed vagrants, cheap rest stops that hardly warrant the status of motels, and locales stripped of even their historic dignity. Ray encounters three Mayans living in the rubble of a minor temple ruin fitted out with bedrolls and a radio. They divide their time between listlessly hacking at the bush with their machetes, and playing tour guide to the occasional lost tourist. Despite the succession of settings beyond the U.S. border, there is a kind of stagnant homogeneity drained of local color but impervious to further change. Even Meemaw's converts are children and old people lured in by sandwiches and old Tarzan movies. They may know the answers to her catechisms by rote, but its hardly something central to their lives. DOG OF THE SOUTH is a celebration of the small and the ordinary. Skills of the coat hanger and duct tape variety suffice for getting on with life.
Often the quality of the writing will carry me through a book and compensate for the absence of a story arc, empathetic characters, or a resonant theme about life. The writing is an ambitious exploitation of vernacular idiosyncrasy. The story luxuriates in the marginal patchwork of Americana composed of junkyards, drifters, self-serving schemers, rootless hippies, and re-purposed goals. Unfortunately, I never really connected with this book, and it was a chore to even finish it.
NOTES:
Charles Portis is perhaps most well known for his book TRUE GRIT.
January 22, 2011
‘True Grit,’ 1968; ‘The Dog of the South,’ 1979. Why the eleven year gap? I think Charles Portis doesn’t like being famous.
And maybe he also feared getting out from under the weight of the astounding accomplishment of ‘True Grit.’ As it is, he can’t quite drop one of Mattie Ross’s singular mannerisms, the exclamatory sentence. It makes the voice of the first person narrator (another ‘True Grit’ trademark), the hapless Raymond Midge, echo the feisty and schoolmarmish Matty a bit.
‘What a sweet job!’
‘What a statement!’
‘What a story!’
The writing teachers who tell their students to avoid the exclamation point should be forced to read ‘True Grit.’ It works! And it sort of does in ‘The Dog of the South,’ just not quite as well. Portis more or less dropped it in his next two novels—another decade plus for those.
Portis returned to his modus operandi in ‘Dog.’ A rambling mission, in this case Midge’s retrieving his Little Rock wife who’s run off to Honduras—Central America is important to Portis—with a flimflam artist. Flimflam artists who’ve bamboozled themselves selling self-improvement schemes, UFO chasers, trailer park trash, whacky fraternal organizations with secret doctrines and handshakes, loopy men and women full of earnest chatter. Lots of unbelievably natural dialogue. The lore of an unusual corner of America spreading out from Arkansas into the neighboring states.
Portis ties these elements up in shaggy-dog narratives that are a treat to read, even if it is a shtick. In ‘True Grit,’ he managed to keep the best parts of that shtick, and then transcend it by shifting into history and transforming himself into Mattie Ross. The writing teachers who tell their students to write from their own experience about what they know should be forced to read ‘True Grit.’
Actually, everyone should read ‘True Grit.’
None of Portis’s other books measure up to that benchmark.
But they’re pretty darn good.
‘The Dog of the South’ may be the least successful representative of the Portis brand, but it, too, is pretty darn good. Distinctively eccentric literature for discerning oddballs.
And maybe he also feared getting out from under the weight of the astounding accomplishment of ‘True Grit.’ As it is, he can’t quite drop one of Mattie Ross’s singular mannerisms, the exclamatory sentence. It makes the voice of the first person narrator (another ‘True Grit’ trademark), the hapless Raymond Midge, echo the feisty and schoolmarmish Matty a bit.
‘What a sweet job!’
‘What a statement!’
‘What a story!’
The writing teachers who tell their students to avoid the exclamation point should be forced to read ‘True Grit.’ It works! And it sort of does in ‘The Dog of the South,’ just not quite as well. Portis more or less dropped it in his next two novels—another decade plus for those.
Portis returned to his modus operandi in ‘Dog.’ A rambling mission, in this case Midge’s retrieving his Little Rock wife who’s run off to Honduras—Central America is important to Portis—with a flimflam artist. Flimflam artists who’ve bamboozled themselves selling self-improvement schemes, UFO chasers, trailer park trash, whacky fraternal organizations with secret doctrines and handshakes, loopy men and women full of earnest chatter. Lots of unbelievably natural dialogue. The lore of an unusual corner of America spreading out from Arkansas into the neighboring states.
Portis ties these elements up in shaggy-dog narratives that are a treat to read, even if it is a shtick. In ‘True Grit,’ he managed to keep the best parts of that shtick, and then transcend it by shifting into history and transforming himself into Mattie Ross. The writing teachers who tell their students to write from their own experience about what they know should be forced to read ‘True Grit.’
Actually, everyone should read ‘True Grit.’
None of Portis’s other books measure up to that benchmark.
But they’re pretty darn good.
‘The Dog of the South’ may be the least successful representative of the Portis brand, but it, too, is pretty darn good. Distinctively eccentric literature for discerning oddballs.
May 10, 2018
Charles Portis's The Dog of the South has for its hero a cuckold by the unlovely name of Raymond Midge. We learn at the beginning that his wife Norma has run off with her ex-husband Guy Dupree with Raymond's Gran Torino and American Express Card. Raymond tracks their progress south by looking to see where they used the Amex card.
Eventually, the chase ends up in British Honduras (now known as Belize), where Dupree's father owns some property. Along the way, we run into two odd characters, a bail bondsman and lawyer known as Jack Wilkie and Doc Symes, who is looking to go to Belize to look up his mother and possibly talk her into transferring some property to her.
Midge eventually finds Dupree, who runs off again, but without Norma; and he finds Norma in the local hospital, where she went for dehydration and an appendectomy.
Although there are some dogs in the story, I think The Dog of the South is Midge himself, who is surprisingly loyal to a wife who runs out on him.
Eventually, the chase ends up in British Honduras (now known as Belize), where Dupree's father owns some property. Along the way, we run into two odd characters, a bail bondsman and lawyer known as Jack Wilkie and Doc Symes, who is looking to go to Belize to look up his mother and possibly talk her into transferring some property to her.
Midge eventually finds Dupree, who runs off again, but without Norma; and he finds Norma in the local hospital, where she went for dehydration and an appendectomy.
Although there are some dogs in the story, I think The Dog of the South is Midge himself, who is surprisingly loyal to a wife who runs out on him.
December 7, 2010
When young slacker and military history aficionado Ray Midge has his wife and Ford Torino stolen by his best friend, he heads south of the border determined, whatever the cost, to get that car back.
The Dog of the South is a near masterpiece of the redneck quest novel written by a top practitioner of the genre. The personalities, the dialogue, the episodic adventures, the unflagging dry wit--whether you want it to or not, all of this is likely to come alive as a bizarre alternate universe in which you stumble around, giddily disoriented, for the few days it takes you to read the book. As much as any other cast of characters in literature, Ray Midge and his acquaintances are likely to shake whatever confidence you place in the reliable, blandly-secure, blandly-sane life of our modern workaday world.
The Dog of the South is a near masterpiece of the redneck quest novel written by a top practitioner of the genre. The personalities, the dialogue, the episodic adventures, the unflagging dry wit--whether you want it to or not, all of this is likely to come alive as a bizarre alternate universe in which you stumble around, giddily disoriented, for the few days it takes you to read the book. As much as any other cast of characters in literature, Ray Midge and his acquaintances are likely to shake whatever confidence you place in the reliable, blandly-secure, blandly-sane life of our modern workaday world.
February 1, 2021
If it is true that casting is 65% of directing, the choice of narrator for a book must be somewhere north of that. Edward Lewis reads this rambling, adventurous, broadly comic Portis novel and does a fine job with it. The book is the most consistently funny since Crocker's The Old Limey and well worth a listen.
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