Dodge City
A brisk, melancholic road trip novel set in 1967 ... Some of the best scenes in Dodge City depict baroquely self-destructive behavior, though here they’re presented in a gentler register ... I found myself thinking about why deWitt decided to write about 1967 now, why the story of a sensitive, not-terribly-political young man fleeing an unjust war felt urgent. It seems to me he’s saying, in a calm but firm voice, that sometimes doing the right thing isn’t actually complicated. Sometimes, when the call comes from a despotic government to commit violence against your conscience, the bravest thing you can do is refuse.
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Wry ... Deadpan ... Lee usually proceeds with such equanimity that you might glance at your phone for a moment and miss deWitt mentioning that 'every single thing that could be spoiled was spoiled.' Such is the stealthy nature of this novel’s quiet despair ... I feel irrationally protective of this sweet book. DeWitt is one of very few novelists whose words I would recognize in the dark.
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As befits a writer who is, in so many ways, a throwback, Dodge City returns the genre to its roots: the 1960s, and youth as opposed to middle age ... This is a deWitt novel, of course, and so the reader can expect – and is supplied with – vivid minor characters, hijinks, and a tone that lives confidently on the margin between silliness and misery ... Not exactly optimistic, but its emotional tendency is towards something few would have expected of the author of The Sisters Brothers: tenderness.
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