Books: "Dodge City" By Patrick deWitt

 

Dodge City

By Patrick deWitt

Ecco; hardcover, 256 pages; $28.00

Patrick deWitt is the author The Librarianist and French Exit, which were both national bestsellers; The Sisters Brothers, a New York Times bestseller short-listed for the Booker Prize; and the critically acclaimed Undermajordomo Minor and Ablutions. He was born in British Columbia, Canada, and now resides in Portland, Oregon.

Dodge City is deWitt's sixth novel, a rollicking story about family, country, division, and war, as told by a humorist who delves into the stranger aspects of human behavior. It has been longlisted for the Giller Prize. It was named a Most Anticipated Title by People.com, Minnesota Star Tribune, Seattle Times, ALTA Journal, Orange County Register, AARP, LitHub, and The Spokesman Review.

Set in Vietnam-era 1967 in Los Angeles, Lee Clarke is a twenty-three-year-old from Concrete, Washington, who attended UCLA until he was expelled for engaging in a fistfight with another student.

This also meant he was removed from the deferment list, and is told by his draft officer that his draft notice would arrive in 12 weeks, but it comes in half that time. 

"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 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, brown-ish ocean," writes deWitt. "He as lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling, the minor scents of slow-baking dumpster trash and the rot of low-tide leaking in through the louvered windows. His thoughts were various, ungovernable: he was not in love with Cal, but he did not want to take her to the botanical gardens that afternoon. Cal had said she would come to him the night before, and he'd gone to sleep understanding she'd soon arrive and wake him up, but now the night passed and he was still alone.

"The mailman's key-jangling approach brought Lee to a sitting position. He enjoyed watching the delivery of the mail because the previous tenant had drawn a retching face on the door's interior, the mail slot a downturned mouth, so that when the mail came through it looked like the face was spewing onto the parquet flooring. There was the scrape and clack of the slot and now the mail slipped into the apartment. Lee crossed the room, collected the mail, and brought it back to bed with him. At the bottom of the stack was a letter sent by the Selective Service. Lee opened this and learned he'd been drafted to fight in the war in Vietnam, and that he was to report for his physical examination in two weeks' time."

Facing the prospect of being drafted forces Lee to make the first political decision of his life, as he leaves behind his girlfriend and California to head for the Canadian border.

Lee signs up at a drive-away car-delivery service, and as chance would have it, he got a showroom-new Jaguar that's bound for the East Coast. He only has a single suitcase and a bag of amphetamines to go the width of the country. As he pines for the life he's left behind, he wonders what the decision means for his future. 

As he says goodbye to the country of his birth, Lee stops at four different towns along the northern United States to visit each member of his immediate family. His father is a World War II veteran in a state of degradation; his mother is engaged in a manic and never-ending performance with her shut-in sibling; his heartbroken and misanthropic brother, Harry; and his twin sister, Grace, who's a brash, young nurse-in-training who is mired in romantic drama at a Manhattan psychiatric hospital.

This story is at once a portrait of the country in flux and a family in disarray, and will keep you riveted throughout.