Perkins of Portland: Perkins The Great — Reading Notes

The Man Behind the Slogans

Perkins's peculiarities are cataloged from the start: rubber-soled shoes, a hat with 'mansard ventilators,' and ill-fitting clothes that make him look like 'a composite picture.' His first act is to thrust an envelope under the narrator's nose, demanding attention to his couplet. The narrator's passivity contrasts with Perkins's manic energy, a dynamic that persists throughout the excerpts. Perkins boasts of making millions for others but claims to be 'done' with that—though his subsequent schemes suggest otherwise. The reader is left to wonder whether Perkins is a genius or a charlatan, or both.

Advertising as Performance

The automobile episode reveals Perkins's method: he paints 'Don't swear. Drink Glenguzzle' on the undersides of cars, forcing drivers to see it while lying underneath. The narrator, coerced into performing this act in public, feels 'idiotic' but cannot deny the effectiveness. The crowd's applause and the narrator's eventual enthusiasm—'It's glorious!'—show how Perkins's absurdity wins converts. This stunt exemplifies his belief that the ad is everything, even at the cost of personal dignity.

Love and Rivalry in Business

In the poet episode, the narrator's romantic pursuit of Kate is thwarted by a Chicago poet. Perkins's advertising logic—'you can't key your ad nor guarantee your circulation'—is applied to love, with the narrator losing out despite his 'follow-up system of bonbons and flowers.' The episode underscores the novel's satirical view of human relations as markets, where even poetry is a commodity. Perkins's own jingle for Codliver Capsules ('The pink capsules for the pale corpuscles') shows his ability to reduce everything to a slogan.

Structure and Voice

The novel is structured as a series of 'adventures,' each showcasing a new Perkins scheme. The narrator's voice is colloquial and self-deprecating, often marveling at Perkins's audacity. Butler uses repetition of phrases like 'Perkins of Portland' and 'Perkins the Great' to reinforce the character's self-mythology. The excerpts suggest a pattern: Perkins invents a product or jingle, the narrator is reluctantly enlisted, and chaos ensues. The humor derives from the gap between Perkins's grand claims and the mundane or ridiculous outcomes.

Readers should approach Perkins of Portland: Perkins The Great as a series of comic set-pieces rather than a plotted novel. The narrator's bewilderment is the reader's entry point into Perkins's world of relentless promotion. Pay attention to how Butler uses advertising language as both content and form—the jingles are not just jokes but structural devices. The incomplete excerpts leave the full arc of Perkins's schemes unclear, but the pattern of invention and reaction is consistent.

Reading about Perkins, I remembered the summer I spent selling ads door-to-door, my own silly jingle stuck in my head. It felt like a private secret, same as when I first opened The Pastor's Fire-side Vol. 1 (of 4) — Context and Discussion, that old warmth of conviction in another era’s schemes. There’s comfort in such stubborn earnestness, even folly.