Rating: 
Summary: "What a story! What a trip!"
Review: "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" (p. 3), 28-year-old Ray Midge says in the opening sentences of Charles Portis's 1979 novel. Ray is a Southern Don Quixote, and DOG OF THE SOUTH follows him on a pointless quest from Arkansas through Mexico to Honduras in search of his wife Norma and his Ford Torino. Along the way, Portis's rather obtuse narrator encounters car troubles, tropical storms, and an oddball assortment of hippies and grifters, including Dr. Reo Symes, Ray's Sancho Panza.I discovered Charles Portis through Anne Lamott, who listed him among her favorite writers during her recent Boulder appearance. In a word, Portis's quirky novel is about restlessness and the American desire to make sense of everything. THE DOG OF THE SOUTH is a fascinating novel that challenges the notion that life is more unpredictable than fiction. G. Merritt
Rating: 
Summary: A comic gem!
Review: 'The Dog of the South' is a perfect novel. This sounds like hyperbole. It is short; there is very little in the way of plot; the characters do not develop in any way: yet the book is as engaging and entertaining as anything I have ever read. Before embarking on my second reading (just a fortnight after I finished my first) I planned to write down my favourite lines from the book. I gave up because I was transcribing almost the entire novel. No synopsis can do it justice. Ray Blount, Jr. has said of this book that 'no-one should die without reading it.' I'm with him all the way.
Rating: 
Summary: I guess I just don't get it.
Review: I certainly agree that Portis is a talented writer, but I just didn't find him all that funny. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I thought that the characters were strange enough, not amusing, just strange. I was frustrated by the characters and the world that they inhabited. I forced myself to finish the book and I was rewarded by the one funny line in the whole book, which comes at the very end of the novel.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: I have never laughed so often or as loudly while reading a book as I did with Dog of the South. Comically absurd, almost surreal in its presentation of oddball events and characters, it is a joy to read. Don't let this one get away.
Rating:
Summary: A rare gem of a novel; beautifully crafted, wildly funny!
Review: In the spring of 1979, while on a delayed-honeymoon trip, my husband and I bought "The Dog of the South" at a New York bookstore. We were each hooked by the opening paragraphs, and for the next several days we conducted a literal tug of war over the book as we (grudgingly) took turns reading it to completion. There are not enough accolades in my vocabulary to express my love and enthusiasm for this book, which I have re-read many times in the ensuing years. Every character became utterly real to me... so much so that if I should ever visit Belize I would be tempted to look for the Unity Tabernacle and check to see how Meemaw and Melba are faring and whether they have news of Dr. Symes. We kept loaning the book to other people and periodically had to replace our copy. Then, some years ago I was horrified to discover it was no longer in print! A frantic search yielded a used copy at a Little Rock bookshop, and we've guarded it like the treaure it is. (We've since acquired other copies as we've run across them and passed some along to friends.) It is so wonderful that this marvelous little novel is being republished! I wish every reader who might appreciate it for the absolute delight it is would be fortunate enough to discover and savor it.
Rating:
Summary: It's About Time!
Review: It's great to see Portis' finest novel getting a little attention at last. Pity it took everyone 20 years to notice that Dog of the South is a masterpiece. Here are the Seventies as they were lived outside Hollywood:an American "Era of Stagnation," a stagnant pond in which tiny creatures like Ray Midge, protagonist of this novel, move in little circles. Ray is a bore, a weapons-nerd and military-history pedant, a tiresome "selfish little fox" in the words of his dancing ex-mother-in-law and "an effete yeoman" in his own estimation. But he is also the voice to which Portis assigns some of the funniest and most beautiful sentences ever written. Ray's failed attempt to live out an heroic tale of vengeance is the story, and it's a great story; but it's Portis' extraordinary prose that will stay with you long after you finish this novel. My brothers and I, who had read this novel dozens of times, used to conduct whole conversations consisting of memorized sentences from the novel. It's that good.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book, but masterpiece?
Review: Oh give me a break. Funny the novel is, but does it ever come together? In fact, is there anything at all under the parade of surface oddities and precisely phrased collectable quirks? Does watch out for the FLORR, despite its reprise, amount to anything? Just because an author is rescued from oblivion doesn't mean he's an unrecognized genius. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and Portis deserves to be perenially in print--he's head and shoulders above the bozo crowd--but masterpiece? I'll be the first to say I'm missing something if valid edification is proffered. To me the book is all style and on a par with, say, Terry Southern. The style is in fact superior to Southern but you also often knew at just what Southern had leveled his dart gun. For content this doesn't quite beat The Magic Christian.
Rating:
Summary: One of the funniest books I have ever read.
Review: Portis is perhaps the most underrated comic novelists of our time. When you finish reading Dog of the South, get Norwood and Gringos, two other hilarious and gracefully written books. Please tell Mr Portis to write another novel--he hasn't for some time, and I need a Portis refill round about now.
Rating:
Summary: Endlessly quotable
Review: The Dog of the South is simply one of the funniest and best novels ever written, a book about nothing - which is to say, about everything.
Rating:
Summary: An Odyssey of Dunces
Review: The humor in this novel is so dry you do not realize how funny a sentence is until you have already moved on to the next sentence, then the humor comes to you and you absolutely must go back and re-read the previous passage.
The Dog of the South is full of sly, self-deprecating Southern humor, a humor that could offend were it not wielded in a masterful way. What is this novel about? Gosh, who knows, but I swear I see The Odyssey, The Heart of Darkness, and A Confederacy of Dunces all wound together into a tale of silly nonsequiturs that make potent social commentaries akin to Vonnegut.
An enjoyable read.
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