Review by Annabel
I’ve now read five out of six of Canadian author deWitt’s novels, only missing his third, Undermajordomo Minor (which is on my shelves). The Sisters Brothers, a wonderful western, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2011, and is a personal favourite. It’s fair to say that his novels are all strikingly different – from his debut The Ablutions which is written in vignettes from the PoV of a barman, to his fifth, French Exit, which follows the antics of a broke Manhattan socialite who flees to Paris with her son and cat, which she believes contains the spirit of her dead husband. The settings may be varied, but his dead-pan humour is always in place, making them a pleasure to read.
His latest novel is no exception, and this time he takes on the great American trope of the road trip. Dodge City is set in 1967 as Lee Clarke drives from California across the USA to deliver an E-type Jag to New Jersey, and then plans to cross the border into Canada to escape the draft, visiting and reconnecting with his family along the way. It begins:
Lee Clarke would later think of the morning he received his draft notice as perceptibly freighted, as though he’d woken up knowing it was on its way to meet his hand; but really it was just another neutral, blinding day in Southern California, his second-floor apartment resting on stilts and leaning toward the greenish, brownish ocean.
Instantly, I was taken by deWitt’s turn of phrase–perceptibly freighted–slightly strange but perfect in its intent. It’s the time of the Vietnam war, and students were deferred from the draft. Twenty-three-year-old Lee had been a student at UCLA, but had just been kicked out after he injured another student in a fight. If he’d been lucky, the draft should then have taken a while to catch up with him, but no, here it was in his hand. He rang and made an appointment to see the draft officer. His girlfriend, Cal, was unlikely to react positively.
She was the daughter of East Coast intellectuals, exotic to Lee in terms of her arcane intellect, just as he was to her in his unspoiled antiurbanity. One morning she informed him he was a partrician redneck; when he asked what that meant she said, “You iron your T-shirts.” When he asked if that was good or bad she shrugged and answered, “Who’s to say, honey? It’s working for me, is all I know.” […] He was game to take in all manner of culture, but he had an unshakable sense for order, and more often than not he saw in the obscure a hidden lack in the artist, charlatanry disguised as oracular wisdom.
Although Lee loves Cal, he recognises that she is more of a free spirit than him. He’s not totally convinced that she feels the same way about him, but he’s determined to make their last days together before he has to report for his physical and training count. The draft officer is no help. He can’t support the war in ‘Nam though, and with his friend Robin, they hatch a plan for Lee to deliver a car to the other side of the country, getting close to the Canadian border. Persuading the motor broker that he will be able to complete the task in the agreed timescale, Lee sets off in the green E-tyoe Jag. He plans to visit his folks along the way. Armed with a bag of amphetamine pills from Robin, he sets off on his way.
The first stop is his brother. They’ve been estranged for some time, but after speaking to his sister Grace in New York, Lee is persuaded to visit Harry. How will it go? Onwards to his home town of Concrete, Washington, where his parents still live separate lives. First, his Dad – and Lee is dismayed to find his dire situation. He’s working for the dog pound, catching strays, getting paid for each one he collects, and he’s working a scam, abducting returned dogs to get a second fee, which he spends on booze. Lee, somewhat reluctantly, says goodbye and heads for the old family home, where his mother still lives, sharing the house with his uncle, Wallace. Their reactions to his plans to dodge the draft aren’t supportive at first, but love will win out, as Wallace says:
“I find yours a romantic crime. Freedom at all costs and hang the consequences! Your mother is less enamored, but that’s to be expected when you consider her unrelenting nature. Well, we’ve made the decision to play neutral hosts so much as is possible. Which isn’t to say we’re not going to talk about it, because we are. But not for very long, and hopefully without any unsightly passion.”
Time to head out east to see Grace and deliver the car. By the time he arrives in NYC, he is so wired on the comedown from all the pills that he just wants to sleep, not have a good time with his sister before heading for the border. Will he make it into Canada? Did he deliver the Jag? These are questions I shan’t answer.
Although the family visits provide the structure of Lee’s road trip, deWitt gives us some great interludes of life on the road.
He turned on the radio, landing on a rock-and-roll station, and the music perfectly re-created his emotional reality: fearless belligerence with deep psychic panic operating at the perimeter.
Lee really enjoys the driving in that fine automobile, pill-aided to stay awake, but he loves the diners and motels he stays in along the way too. What he’s not so sure about is Cal, who seems never to be in when he rings. Is she still his gal?
Through Lee’s four visits to his family, plus LA at the start, Dodge City is very much a 1967 state of the nation novel. From hippie Cal, broken brother Harry, his alcoholic father, his small-town mother and Uncle Wallace, and feisty trainee psychiatric nurse Grace, with settings from California to the small-town northwest over to New York, deWitt covers all the bases. However, he does it with wit and heart and a certain gentleness. That latter quality was present in his last novel The Librarian, too, and makes it very easy to be totally on Lee’s side and hope for the best for him. While for me, deWitt has yet to write anything to surpass The Sisters Brothers, Dodge City comes mighty close.
Annabel is a co-founder and editor of Shiny. She also blogs at AnnaBookBel.
Patrick deWitt, Dodge City (4th Estate, 2026) ISBN: 9780008781347, hardback, 248pp..
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