“Will the World Let Me Go Again?”: Talking “Dodge City” with Patrick deWitt

Novelist Patrick deWitt feels like an anomaly. At a time when writers are expected to maintain a constant public presence, to explain their work, promote themselves, and remain perpetually available, the relative lack of access to one of our most celebrated writers feels almost refreshing. I felt this even while arranging the interview, which came with a likelihood, but not an absolute promise, that deWitt would appear at the appointed time.

DeWitt is a throwback. Self-taught through reading the works of Charles Portis, Richard Brautigan, Hubert Selby Jr., and others, he has avoided academia in both his education and his career. He also lives and works without an internet connection. Where many writers lose hours to social media, deWitt procrastinates by leafing through a centuries-old dictionary.

Like many readers, I came to deWitt’s work through the success of The Sisters Brothers, which transformed his career. Its acclaim surprised even deWitt, who had suspected the book might mark the end of his life as a novelist. Instead, it established him as one of the most distinctive writers of his generation. He followed it with a succession of critically acclaimed and bestselling novels, including Undermajordomo Minor, French Exit, and The Librarianist, each animated by eccentric characters and a characteristic deadpan comedy.

Dodge City, published September 2026 by Ecco Press and recently longlisted for Canada’s esteemed Giller Prize, continues deWitt’s shift towards realism, a mode he has openly resisted. The novel follows Lee, a university student who loses his draft exemption after a physical altercation leads to expulsion from college. Lee, without much thought, flees for Canada in a borrowed Jaguar with a bag of amphetamines. His journey unfolds across four distinct stops, each bringing him into contact with a different member of his family.

I spoke with deWitt over Zoom for almost two hours, talking about Dodge City, his approach to fiction, and the creative habits that continue to propel one of contemporary fiction’s most singular careers.

This interview is also forthcoming in the upcoming Fall 2026 issue of Pleiades.

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Michael Costaris: Dodge City takes place on the periphery of the Vietnam War but deals quite explicitly with the draft. How much research did you do into that period of American history?

Patrick deWitt: I set out to write a thoroughly researched, grown-up type of book, but it quickly devolved to the personal narrative, and so the research plan was jettisoned. My father was a draft dodger, and there were similarities between his response and my protagonist’s, including the way they left the country: quickly and in a car. I had him to lean on for details, which is a type of research, I suppose.

MC: Was that—your father’s experience—what drew you to this?

PD: Well, it was part of it. I didn’t want to try to recreate what my father went through, and the protagonist is not meant to represent him at all, but it’s a significant family story. If my father hadn’t left Los Angeles for Canada to avoid the draft, he wouldn’t have met my mother in Vancouver. I’d been turning that over for years, wondering if there was something in it I could use. I also wanted to write about something ‘larger’ than I typically do—an external question for the protagonist, which was, What are the boundaries of your relationship with your country of birth?

MC: It’s hard not to think about the current political moment, especially in America, while reading this.

PD: Of course it occurred to me that the book would be seen as contemporary commentary, which is fine, and fair. But in terms of what was actually driving the story, the current moment was in the back of my mind, if it was there at all. The book doesn’t take a strong political position.

MC: I noticed that. No one in Lee’s family fully embraces his decision to dodge the draft. There’s actually a thread of criticism running through their responses, which I found surprising, considering the enduring unpopularity of the war, but also effective from a narrative viewpoint.

PD: Yes, if everyone was rooting for him as he zipped by, it wouldn’t have made for very fascinating reading. But I didn’t want to overstate the friction, either. I wrote several scenes featuring in-depth arguments about why he was duty bound to go, etc., and I cut almost all of them because they made for dull, obvious conversations. There was never any point where I felt I had to come out overtly against the war in Vietnam, because it was unpopular enough that I believed I could trust the reader to understand Lee’s position, regardless of their politics.

MC: The Librarianist and now Dodge City feel like a turn toward realism for you. There’s not really much in either book that couldn’t happen in real life.

PD: I love tricks—bells, whistles, diversion. But the process has perhaps become more austere for me—making do with less and finding that the work can still stand and offer as much as the earlier books, which were more manic, freer and wilder. I don’t mean to say I’ll write in this comparatively plain style for the rest of my career. There was a phase of anything goes and now there’s this other phase, more stark and rooted in earthly things. But I’ll surely swing back again; and actually, I believe that I have, with the book I’m working on now, a noir.

Variation is healthy, a needed thing for me to stay engaged.

MC: But the hallmarks of your work remain. Even in the more realist mode of the last two novels, there’s still the episodic structure and absurdist humor. Are those conscious choices, or simply where the work—your style—takes you?

PD: Let’s call it an unconscious pattern I’m now conscious of. I’m drawn to encounters with deranged, semi-insane characters, for example, and with this book there was definitely a sense at times of, Okay, I’m doing the thing I do. If you’re in it for the long haul, at some point you’re going to find out what type of artist you really are, and that’s as it should be, but there’s a difference between tilling the soil you’ve been given and propping up an idea, or character, or point of view you’ve already shared with your readers. Sometimes I’ll catch myself rewriting something I’ve previously published, and I’m wary of that. Perhaps it’s inevitable that I’ll repeat myself, but it’s something I try to steer clear of, so much as I can. In the end, all you have is your instinct. The good stays and the bad goes. But the mechanism that makes these judgments is imperfect, so you have to be careful.

MC: Does that extend to plotting, or is it more about the day-to-day writing?

PD: It’s everything. I don’t do much in the way of plotting or outlining. This can lead to days or months lost fleshing out sections that don’t make it into the book, but that’s just a part of the process. Really, it’s nice not to know where a novel is going, because every day is a surprise, or a shock, usually in a pleasant way.

In the end, all you have is your instinct. The good stays and the bad goes. But the mechanism that makes these judgments is imperfect, so you have to be careful.

MC: I’ve heard that you take a sort of analogue approach to writing.

PD: Yes.

MC: No phone?

PD: A flip phone.

MC: And do you write on a laptop?

PD: I write on a laptop, and carry a pen and notebook around. When I’m working on a novel, I’ll type up random notes and thoughts onto three-by-five cards, then put these into a three-ring binder, which becomes the physical record of the book becoming itself. I’m 51, and when I started writing, I used an electric typewriter. Laptops came much later. I don’t have a consistent connection to the internet.

MC: On the laptop only, or in general?

PD: In general.

MC: Really?

PD: It’s much nicer to check my email three or four times a week at coffee shops, or at my parents’ house, rather than fifty times a day at home.

MC: I can imagine. But, also, I can’t. It’s so ingrained into our lives. And for writers especially. I’m working on my debut and already feel pressure to, like, start a Substack and tweet out what I’m reading. Do your publishers ever push you to be more visible online?

PD: No, no.

MC: You’re beyond that.

PD: They take pity on me. And, honestly, I don’t think people want that from me. I have no hot takes. I’m pretty well mired in the old world, for better or worse.

MC: And what do you turn to when—I don’t love the term ‘writer’s block’—you hit a wall and need a temporary distraction?

PD: Getting slightly stoned can be helpful. Reading. I work with a very old, monstrous dictionary from 1911 beside me. If I hit a wall, sometimes I’ll flip through the pages and randomly pick out a word to ruminate on, which can knock something loose. It has happened that this exercise will influence the text, or even play a critical role in the completion of the text.

MC: What is an example of that with Dodge City?

PD: I looked up the word “destiny,” and the definition bled into the narrative—I drew on that for the ending.

MC: I did want to mention the ending. Without spoiling it, it’s fantastic and contains the greatest—and possibly only—bowling metaphor I’ve ever read. It does something you typically see more often in short fiction: it subtly transforms everything that came before, while also summing up exactly what it is you’ve just read.

PD: The last line is meant to celebrate, or anyway acknowledge, everything that has come before it—to support Lee’s position. I like the idea of the book ending with Lee doing something as low-stakes, something as American as bowling. In general, I feel that my endings are unpopular.

MC: Why do you think that is?

PD: I’ve been accused of writing happy endings, and I suppose it’s true that they skew that way. By the time a book is finished, I feel a real sense of love for the character at the center of the story, and I can’t help but want to send them out on an up note. Some people like happy endings, of course, but for others, a happy ending is perceived as a cop-out.

MC: Is that something you tend to think about while writing—the reception, your reader?

PD: Not very much at all while I’m doing the work. But after, yes, I do wonder how a book will be received. There are real consequences to a book’s failure because this is my job. If I write a book that nobody likes, it could undermine my ability to earn a living and carry on. I think it’s best to try to keep that concern separate from the decision-making process, as much as you can. But the concern is there, because it has to be.

MC: Was separating those artistic and commercial impulses especially difficult after the transformative success of The Sisters Brothers?

PD: The book’s success was disruptive to what had previously been a very quiet life. I was away from home for long periods of time, and there was a sense of being unmoored. It was ultimately very positive in that it connected me with a readership, but it was complicated, and I did feel stunted in my work for a while afterwards.

All you can do is try to get to a place of quiet in your mind so that you can approach your work in a way that feels natural and true. More than commercial success, I think about craftsmanship. I want to make something that will last.

My interest in the form isn’t diminishing at all, and I still have so much I want to accomplish. What I care about most, I think, is what comes next, and whether or not I’ll be allowed to carry on: Will the world let me go again?

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