The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
"The Dog of the South" is Charles Portis's third novel, known for its whimsical take on the quest motif that has become a hallmark of his work. The story is narrated in the first person by Ray Midge, a 26-year-old from Little Rock, Arkansas, who is faced with the sudden departure of his wife, Norma, alongside her ex-husband, Guy Dupree. They abscond in Midge's new Ford Torino, leaving him with a dilapidated 1963 Buick Special in return. Midge's journey to recover his car takes him through Texas, Mexico, and Honduras, where he encounters a cast of eccentric characters, including Dr. Reo Symes, a defrocked physician with grand dreams of wealth.
As Midge travels southward, the novel draws comparisons to classic American literature, evoking the adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Despite the lighthearted tone, Midge's quest reveals deeper themes of acceptance and the nature of fulfillment. Ultimately, the novel illustrates that the journey itself holds more significance than the destination, as Midge learns to navigate both absurdity and disappointment. The narrative captures Portis's unique ability to blend humor with poignant reflections on life, relationships, and the human experience.
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The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1979
Type of work: Novel
The Work
By the time Portis’s third novel, The Dog of the South, was published, his central fictional motif, the quest, was well established. The Dog of the South is slightly longer than his first two novels and is more whimsical even than Norwood. This novel, like True Grit, is a first-person narrative told by the protagonist. As the story begins, Ray Midge, a twenty-six-year-old resident of Little Rock, Arkansas, has just made a startling discovery. His wife, Norma, has run away with her loathsome first husband, Guy Dupree, a would-be radical. Even more distressing is the discovery that the pair has fled in Midge’s new Ford Torino. In its place, they have left Dupree’s compact, a 1963 Buick Special with 74,000 miles on the odometer and slack in the steering wheel.
Like Norwood, Ray Midge is innocent, placid, long-suffering, and optimistic. He holds no grudges and wishes no one ill, but he does want that Ford Torino back. Norma and Dupree have also taken Midge’s American Express and Texaco cards. As the bills start coming in, Midge is able to follow their paper trail. Norwood’s quest for his seventy dollars led him north and east; Midge’s leads south and west. He follows the lovers to Texas, from there into Mexico, and finally to a remote plantation in Honduras. The trip is the best part of the novel, as it allows Midge to meet the sorts of misfits and oddballs about which Portis writes so well.
Dr. Reo Symes travels with Midge. He is a “defrocked” old M.D. from Texas who is constantly pursuing the American Dream in his own fashion, through a series of harebrained get-rich-quick schemes. He drives a broken-down bus, the Dog of the South. Dr. Symes emulates the super salesmanship of John Selmer Dix, M.A., whom he knows through the latter’s self-help books. The Doc considers Dix the world’s greatest author. His most enduring dream, or delusion, of a great financial coup centers upon Jean’s Island. The “island” is a Mississippi sandbar the Doc hopes to inherit from his mother. While he waits for it to come into his possession, he lays innumerable absurd and grandiose plans for its development. With the publication of True Grit, much critical commentary placed Portis in the tradition of Mark Twain, and as Ray Midge travels southward with the scheming Doc, the reader is reminded of Huckleberry Finn’s journey in the company of the two confidence men, the King and the Duke. Some critics consider Dr. Symes to be Portis’s finest comic creation.
Midge encounters a number of other slightly loony characters as well: Norma, who wishes to be known as Staci or Pam; Symes’s mother and another perky old lady who operate an ineffectual nondenominational mission in Central America; Dupree’s chow, who wears plastic bags on his paws; a pugnacious artist whose specialty is overpriced rabbits. Midge faces a number of obstacles—the first husband, jail, a hurricane—but none of them is truly threatening in Portis’s comic world. It is a formless and haphazard world, which the structure of the novel mimics.
Midge wants to recover his Ford because he feels that his cuckolding will thus be lessened somehow. When he finally catches up with Dupree, he learns that the car has been ruined and sold for junk. Instead, he gets Norma back and takes her home. At the end of the novel, she runs off again. In an objective sense, the quest has been fruitless; now the car and the wife are gone for good. Yet Midge accepts these vicissitudes with relative equanimity. After all, in the Portis novels (even True Grit) it is the quest rather than the outcome that is important.
Bibliography
Blackburn, Sara. Review of True Grit. The Nation 207 (August 5, 1968): 92.
Blount, Roy. “745 Boylston Street.” The Atlantic Monthly 270 (December, 1992): 6.
Clemons, Walter. Review of The Dog of the South. Newsweek 94 (July 9, 1979): 12.
Disch, Thomas M. “Cultcrazy.” The Nation 241 (November 30, 1985): 593-594.
Garfield, Brian. Review of True Grit. Saturday Review 51 (June 29, 1968): 25.
Houston, Robert. Review of Gringos. The New York Times Book Review, January 20, 1991, 7.
Jones, Malcolm. Review of Gringos. Newsweek 107 (February 11, 1991): 60.
King, L. L. Review of The Dog of the South. The New York Times Book Review, July 29, 1979, p. 12.
Marcus, James. Review of Gringos. Voice Literary Supplement 93 (March, 1991): 7.
The New Yorker. Review of Masters of Atlantis. 61 (November 25, 1985): 163.
Shuman, R. Baird. “Portis’ True Grit: Adventure or Entwicklungsroman?” English Journal 59 (March, 1970): 367-370.