Rating: 
Summary: Magical - Samuel Clemens lives!
Review: The phenomenal ability of Mr. Portis to juxtapose pathos and slapstick in a volume dense with unexpected but not unfamilar turns and twists is startling. The emotional range he invokes and evokes without ever approaching heavy handidness keeps the pages turning, but leaves one desperate for more. The characters are wonderful - comical, pitiful, sympathetic and so well voiced there is never moment when you do not accept their existence as real. I have not had a more enjoyable reading experience in a good many years. There is just not enough of him.
Rating:
Summary: Never thought I was capable of awarding 5 stars!
Review: This book is absolutely hilarious. Why haven't I heard of this author? My goodness, it took an exerpt in the Atlantic Monthly to hook me but I was literally in tears of laughter after reading a few pages. Imagine Garrison Keillor on LSD and you have Portis.
Rating:
Summary: Thank god this is back in print!
Review: This is simply one of the great comic novels of our age, and its reappearance redresses the great wrong of its having gone out of print in the first place. Read the first ten pages. If you are not hooked by that point, you may need funny bone replacement surgery. Charles Portis is one of the great and neglected comic writers of the last half of the twentieth century and deserves a much, much wider readership.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone must read this book
Review: This is the funniest American novel since Twain. My wife and I have hoarded three hardcover copies since 1978, lending them only to people willing to sign sworn affidavits promising to return them. I've reread it at least once a year for the last twenty years. Absolutely required.
Rating:
Summary: A Rollicking Good Ride
Review: Trying to describe Charles Portis' classic novel The Dog of the South is not easy, since this book doesn't fit nicely into any category I've encountered before. The book is sort of a cross between Confederacy of Dunces, and maybe a more accessible (and enjoyable) Pynchon. The narrator, Ray Midge, is a 28 year old fussbudget from Arkansas who has trouble settling down to a real job, and whose wife Norma has recently left him for her first husband, Guy Dupree, a hapless radical arrested for threatening the President. Midge wouldn't be THAT mad except the lovers on the lam took Ray's Ford Torino, and left him Guy's [run down] Buick filled with Heath wrappers, and reeking of dog.This relatively sparse outline of a plot sets a wonderful story in motion, as Midge follows the trail of his wife's credit card receipts to follow them to Central America, ostensibly to get his car back. Along the way Midge meets a zany ex-doctor, named Symes, a loony Louisiana character who seems to me right off the pages of John Kennedy Toole's masterpiece Confederacy of Dunces. It is difficult to explain the plot and the characters, it is simply a parade of oddball characters and circumstances. Ray looks out the window at some pelicans, and one gets hit by lightning. He makes polite conversation to a kid, asking him "How many states have you seen?" and the kid inexplicably snarls back "More than you!" Every meeting and social interaction takes a somewhat unexpected, but strangely believable turn so there was something to enjoy and chuckle about on every page. The novel is also full of wry observations and bits of wisdom, like when the narrator warns readers to turn glasses or mugs with handles to the left, as if you were left-handed, since the side of the cup you are sipping has come into contact with fewer human mouths. Portis' outlook is offbeat to be sure, but there's a zany truth to much of it. This was my first encounter with Portis' work, much of which is in the process of being re-released (the book was written in the mid 70's), and if Dog of the South is any example Portis is a writer who begs to be rediscovered by modern readers looking for a comedic road trip story.
Rating: 
Summary: Memorable
Review: Wickedly funny and wildly entertaining, "The Dog of the South" is a book to be read, enjoyed, and forever cherished.
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