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.
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.
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.
Playful, charming and warm ... Dodge City is powered by the highfalutin energy of the characters’ dialogue. DeWitt doesn’t practise the monosyllabic, pared-back realism of Sally Rooney; his characters talk as if they’ve escaped from the set of The Big Lebowski ... Not only is Dodge City a likeable novel, it makes humanity, just for a couple of afternoons of reading time, that bit more likeable too.
Feels like a lived experience ... Immaculately crafted ... Dodge City gives full voice to deWitt’s mastery as a writer, the mystery of his language, its inherent vision ... His prose glides on water as a way of plumbing the depths. It’s like wading at the shoreline only to emerge feeling as if you’ve touched the seabed.
Admirably captures a conflicted young man from a dysfunctional family living in an era of unsettling change. It’s particularly impressive given that he was less than a year old when South Vietnam’s government collapsed. Dodge City is a potent reminder that the Summer of Love yielded many trips that were anything but psychedelic.
A keenly observed and wryly humorous road novel of a draft dodger during the Vietnam War ... The narrative is appropriately zippy ... This elegiac tale is good company for dark days.
