The Dog of the South (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Charles Portis
- First Published: 1979
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Picaresque fiction
- Subjects: Husbands, Wives, Traveling or travelers, South or Southerners, Dreams, Adultery, Central America or Central Americans, Automobiles, Quest, Buses, Arkansas
- Locales: Mexico, Texas, Honduras, Little Rock, AR
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...
[The entire page is 814 words long]
