false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179631584m/938212.jpg 938212 7 Charles Portis may be the sneakiest comedian in American letters, not to mention one of the funniest. And there's no better specimen of his double-edged art than <I>The Dog of the South</I>, which Overlook Press has recently rescued from a long, cruel, out-of-print limbo. As usual, the narrator is a down-at-the-heels Southerner with an eye for the homely detail and a mission to accomplish. What Ray Midge means to do is track down his significant other: "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." In another author's hands, this opening sentence might lead straight to a bloody, <I>noir</I>-ish denouement. Here it's merely the excuse for a meandering, semi-pointless quest, during which the fussbudget protagonist is assailed by tropical storms, grifters, hippies, car trouble, and even an assortment of airborne trash: "I had to keep the Buick speed below what I took to be about sixty because at that point the 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."<p> Hapless, rhetorically challenged Ray Midge would more than fulfill any novel's quota for comic creation. But Portis pairs him with another indelible nutter, Dr. Reo Symes. A font of dubious financial schemes, Symes attaches himself to Ray like a peevish, passive-aggressive Pancho Sanza, and his non-sequitur-studded riffs must be heard to be believed: <blockquote> I always tried to help Leon and you see the thanks I got. I hired him to drive for me right after his rat died. He was with the Murrell Brothers Shows at that time, exhibiting a 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. Anyway, the thing died and I hired Leon to drive for me. I was selling birthstone rings and vibrating jowl straps from door to door and he would let me out at one end of the block and wait on me at the other end. </blockquote> The vibrating jowl straps are the kicker here, of course. But it's the overall futility of the enterprise that gives Symes his comic potency, and makes him Ray's natural companion in arms. Neither of these guys is going to accomplish <I>anything</I>: they're Beckett clowns in Sansabelt trousers, too enervated by the heat even to agonize. Still, you won't find a more delicious (or less reliable) narrator in contemporary fiction, and Charles Portis's genius for inventing all-American eccentrics is anything but futile. <I>--James Marcus</I> 47235 1979 The Dog of the South total:294|5:115|4:104|3:60|2:13|1:2| 294 1199 422 58 3 1 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Wed Dec 03 05:42:48 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 03 05:43:59 -0800 2008
This tale is quite different from True Grit, th...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Sep 11 08:35:22 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 11 08:35:56 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 3 false false Thu Jun 28 12:40:09 -0700 2007 Thu Jun 28 12:41:39 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Fri May 29 12:17:39 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 12:50:36 -0700 2009 Fri May 29 12:17:39 -0700 2009
I love the author's frequent usage of exclamations with exclamation points although I see how it might wear on other readers.

Example: "The th...more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Nov 24 16:05:28 -0800 2008 Mon Nov 24 16:05:44 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Nov 10 10:29:57 -0800 2008 Tue Nov 11 01:59:29 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Oct 27 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Nov 07 16:39:07 -0800 2008 Sat Oct 31 12:13:59 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1979 Wed Jan 23 08:05:46 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 23 08:35:15 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed Dec 12 06:25:12 -0800 2007 Fri Dec 28 18:24:37 -0800 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Wed Sep 05 08:23:58 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 05 09:06:24 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 14 18:49:56 -0700 2008 Wed Apr 30 22:43:37 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Mon Sep 21 23:45:40 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 25 08:46:52 -0700 2009
A) The statement implies that Cormac isn't funny, but he is very funny. Portis is funny, just not a funny as McCarthy.

2) Other than the title of this book, Charles doesn't sniff t...more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Nov 20 15:22:13 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 20 15:25:16 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 05 19:43:01 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 05 19:53:31 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Thu Apr 23 15:26:29 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 23 15:35:33 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Mar 04 20:54:46 -0800 2009 Wed Mar 04 20:57:27 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 02 19:15:29 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 02 19:27:17 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Wed Aug 20 19:38:10 -0700 2008 Wed Sep 09 21:01:16 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Aug 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 17 15:43:39 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 17 15:45:29 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 02 10:34:50 -0700 2008 Mon Sep 15 16:50:47 -0700 2008 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=938212