A review by 2littlet1me
The Dog of the South by Charles Portis

I had not laughed out loud reading a book since reading The Sellout by Paul Beatty a few years ago. The Dog of the South, a weird formless book broke my dry streak. It was hilarious. This book is filled with funny events: Ray Midge’s wife, Norma, runs off him with a lover, Guy Dupree. They steal Ray’s car, a Ford Torino, Ray’s gun, and credit cards and go to British Honduras. Ray follows them determined to get his car back. His car is stolen, a massive storm happens, he finds his wife, his wife leaves him again. I did not read this book for the events though. They almost immediately stop mattering after the first few pages. I read this book for the gloriously insufferable characters. Each of the oddballs introduced in the book offer a mosaic of low Southern Americana.

The two best characters are Ray Midge and Reo Symes. Midge’s journey to get his car back and Symes’ quest to swindle land out of his mother intertwine in the middle of the book. Both men are wackjobs with embittered fixations and complaints. While Ray is a befuddled seeker who finds pleasure in expounding on the Civil War and guns, Reo is an archetypal con man who has the combination of a venal eye for quick buck and a sincere and hilarious devotion to salesman mysticism. The glimmers and failures at self-awareness from Ray and Reo are acted out in front of people who are less well off than them. The folks in British Honduras are either nonplussed, amused, or mildly annoyed by Ray and Reo’s schemes. Ray and Reo’s social backgrounds are afforded by parental wealth. They are insufferable autodidactic blowhards that spend much of their time in useless pedantic debates. You cannot help but pity them while laughing at them.

The book is made up of dialogue, but it is not a two-way street. There is a manic quality to what should more accurately be called dueling monologues. Ray and Reo are present for each other’s obsessions. They love the sounds of their own voices and have a habit of going on tangents. The book is not written in dialect, but the book is hard to read without an accent and without cracking up. These are two men that I savored and found pleasure in listening to in fiction, but I would absolutely run from in person. A passage on page 54 encapsulates this dynamic:

I forgot about the bank business, and I sat there and drank gin and tonic until the quinine in the tonic water made my ears hum. Someone that night told me about having seen Dupree with a fellow wearing a neck brace, but I was too drunk to pursue it. I began to babble. I told everyone about my father’s Midgestone business, how the stone veneer was cut with special band saws, and how it shaped and sanded. I told them about my great-grandfather building the first greenhouse in Arkansas and how he had developed a hard little peach called Lydia that was bird-resistant and well suited for shipping, although tasteless. I couldn’t stop talking. I was a raving bore, and I knew it too, but I couldn’t stop. Iy was important to me that they know these things and who would tell them if I didn’t?
They fled my presence, the hippies and the vets and cuties alike, and left me sitting alone in the corner. I kept drinking and refused to leave. They had all turned on me, but I wasn’t going to let them run off on me.

I have finished the book, but Ray, Reo, and the whole cast of characters painted by Charles Portis will not be running off from my mind any time soon.