'At Widths Up to EEEEEE'

Good news: in 2023, the Library of America will publish the collected works of the late Charles Portis, surely the funniest novelist we have ever given the world, Arkansas’ foremost gift to civilization (along with Johnny Cash). Consider his third novel, The Dog of the South (1979). Ray Midge, in search of his runaway wife Norma and her ex-husband Guy Dupree, hooks up with a cousin of Melville’s Confidence Man, the seedy, enigmatic Dr. Reo Symes: 

“I learned that he had been dwelling in the shadows for several years. He had sold hi-lo shag carpet remnants and velvet paintings from the back of a truck in California. He had sold wide shoes by mail, shoes that must have been almost round, at widths up to EEEEEE. He had sold gladiola bulbs and vitamins for men and fat-melting pills and all-purpose hooks and hail-damaged pears. He had picked up small fees counseling veterans on how to fake chest pains so as to gain immediate admission to V.A. hospitals and a free week in bed. He had sold ranchettes in Colorado and unregistered securities in Arkansas.”

 

Portis exercises pitch-perfect control of Midge’s voice – flat, deadpan, finicky. He understands that unyielding earnestness in the face of a juggernaut of absurdity is funny. There’s no underlining, no italics, just a methodical laundry list, as cool and dry as the prose in a phone book. Here’s Dr. Symes describing Ski, who may or may not be trailing them across Mexico:

 

“He’s a real-estate smarty. He makes money while he’s sleeping. He used to be a policeman. He says he made more unassisted arrests than any other officer in the colorful history of Harris County. I can’t vouch for that but I know he made plenty. I’ve known him for years. I used to play poker with him at the Rice Hotel. I gave distemper shots to his puppies. I removed a benign wart from his shoulder that was as big as a Stuart pecan. It looked like a little man’s head, or a baby’s head, like it might talk, or cry. I never charged him a dime. Ski has forgotten all that.”

 

Every sentence is plain as dirt: subject-verb-object, sparing with adjectives, no verbal pyrotechnics, just everyday American English. Prose like a police report, like Buster Keaton’s face. And like Keaton, hilarious. Portis is sui generis. He defies formula. Once in a while he reminds me of Thomas Berger or Stanley Elkin, but their prose is more cranked up. Sometimes, I hear an echo of Tom Waits – the love of cliché and demotic American idiom. If you asked me what Portis’ five novels are “about,” what their themes are, I would be flummoxed. Let’s hope the academics keep their hands off of them.

 

As usual with the Library of America, the news is mixed  Along with Portis they continue their bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping, in this case publishing more Ursula K. Le Guin. I would suggest they take on the best fiction of Peter De Vries, J.F. Powers and Richard Yates, as well as the poetry of Richard Wilbur (they have, rightly and rather unexpectedly, brought out two volumes of his superb Molière translations). Most urgently needed is a volume dedicated to a prudent selection from the poets known as the “Stanford School” – Yvor Winters, J.V. Cunningham, Edgar Bowers, Thom Gunn, Janet Lewis, Turner Cassity, Helen Pinkerton and others.