The Dog of the South

I can read a Portis novel, come to the end, turn back to page one, and start right over. Two reasons: he often has ambiguous endings, and his writing is magnetic. Also, there are characters I want to revisit before bidding them farewell.

Ray Midge, a bean counter in Arkansas, is our leading man and narrator. One day, his wife leaves him for Guy Dupree, but what’s worse is that she takes his car. Seems that in this book, or this time period, or in Portis’s imagination, cars and other modes of transit are as important as the beings that operate them.

So Ray sets off to get his car and perhaps his wife. On his route, he happens upon J.L. Bickerstaff, the proud owner of a large trailer emblazoned with the name “The Dog of the South”, a vehicle kind of in its final resting place, but Bickerstaff is determined to get to his mother’s home, so he can have her sign over property rights to an island in the Mississippi estuary, where he has imaginings of great constructions. Ray trades him a ride in his hilariously broken ride (Guy’s jalopy) for some gas money, and they’re off down the road.

Portis didn’t write a lot, but of the books he’s written, True Grit and The Dog of the South are the stand-outs for me.