The Dog of the South

I am not familiar with the rest of Charles Portis’s oeuvre, but I must assume he has better offerings than 1979’s The Dog of the South. A recent Atlantic magazine article highlighted the supposedly most important novels of the last century, with the seventies portion of the book list suggesting this one. Knowing nothing other than having been chosen by this publication for supposed merit, I liked the 1985 mass-market paperback art for The Dog of the South (shown above) so I bought a copy.

I don’t want to shit on this book; Charles Portis is a more prolific writer than I ever hope to be. He wrote True Grit, the source material for an iconic sixties John Wayne western, in addition to a cult favorite called Masters of Atlantis. Street cred was definitely established, but I would have to say this stands as a misfit in his catalogue.

The plot is interesting enough to get started; a cuckolded Arkansas man named Raymond Midge chases after his wife Norma and her boyfriend as they drive to Central America, using nothing as a reference to track them but transactions made with his own credit card.

The dialogue is humorous in instances, but mostly in the beginning. There is a supporting character named Reo Symes, who is Raymond’s accomplice most of the way to Belize, where it’s been determined Norma has been hiding out. Symes a hack doctor who lost his medical license and makes references to a score of “experts” in various fields no one has ever heard of. The roadtrip conversations between these two grow repetitive with question-and-answer dialogue incorporating Symes’s unorthodox references to experts. I don’t know if these conversations were meant to be funny but they’re generally cumbersome and weigh down the plot.

Raymond finds himself roped into a culty church group when he’s finally in Belize, which distracts him from his actual goal (salvaging his marriage) and confused this reader. Eventually Norma and her boyfriend are found but this takes way too long. Sadly, the plotting in the Belize portion of the book becomes murky and nothing particularly interesting happens.

All things considered I don’t feel Portis knew what he wanted from this novel. There is no solid grasp on tone; when it wants to be serious, dramatic, or violent, it comes off as over-the-top and cartoonish. The same can be said for its characterization. Dr. Symes is an insufferable bore, Raymond isn’t as bright as we’d like him to be, and Norma has hardly any dialogue.

So, overall I’d say C-plus? 

Portis feeds enough breadcrumbs to generate interest through 246 pages but he ultimately just frustrates and leaves you wanting something else (or something better). The editors over at Atlantic magazine definitely saw something in this that I failed to see. It is not a classic, nor recommended. Like I said at the beginning of this review—the 1985 paperback art is Dog of the South’s best feature.