On a good recommendation, I decided to read Suttree by Cormac McCarthy.
My copy of the book compares Suttree to works by Southern writers William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Mark Twain. Being a southerner, I take that kind of thing pretty seriously. And BGB’s Dr J says that at one time he considered handing out copies of Suttree on the street corner to strangers. If ever there was a book in danger of having my expectations set too high, then this was definitely it. Did it measure up? After the jump…
The book is set in Knoxville, Tennessee during the 1950’s. Cornelius Suttree is living in a ramshackle houseboat on the Tennessee River making his living as a fisherman. Really, we would consider him homeless. Over the course of the book the reader learns that Suttree has a family of priviledge that he has turned his back on, that he has gone to college, and that he has found himself living as a homeless person by choice.
The book portrays the seamy underbelly of Knoxville with grim but often amusing tales of poverty and degradation. For example, early in the book there is a scene that mirrors a recent news story - only it was watermelons. And then things get worse. Then they get even worse. Then briefly better. Then worse. Can things get any worse? Yes, they can. Then they get less amusing. Finally, there is hope, if not redemption. Whew. The book is supposedly semi-autobiobraphical. I sure hope that it isn’t.
Suttree is firmly in the Southern Gothic school of literature, which is not a bad place to be. Its debt or homage to Faulkner is evident throughout. The book begins with a dour but baffling “Dear Friend…” intro that sets the gothic stage. The first two or three paragraphs also confuse the reader - we’re not sure who’s talking, what they’re doing, where they are, how, or why. Very Faulkner.
In perusing the web site for the Cormac McCarthy Society (with a scholarly journal and annual convention), I came across the phrase “the violence of change”. That’s a great way to summarize the themes of the McCarthy books that I’ve read (this one and the Border Trilogy). Where the Border Trilogy might be said to be about the violence inherent in changing the nature of the west, Suttree seems to be about the violence of personal change. In both works, there is no undoing the past or going back to a “before”.
The WikiPedia page for Cormac McCarthy includes a quote from a critic who says that McCarthy is part of an elite pantheon of living American novelists, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Phillip Roth. Sure they’re all white men, but whatever. I’m not sure that I am willing to back that call entirely. I did feel smart reading this book, however.
I was in Knoxville today for work, and I had hoped to use this handy Suttree map to pick out some of the scene locations, but it was rainy and cold. Also, I had things to do.
December 9th, 2005 at 2:43 pm
It’s possible I oversold this book. But I can still crack myself up trying to imagine what Harrogate’s boat looked like. There… I did it again. See? It’s a fun book.
December 14th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
[...] I think it’s probably fair to call McCarthy’s novels misanthropic, though that’s not quite the word I’m looking for. But strangely, I guess, the other hallmark of his writing (at least for me) is the genuine warmth and humanness between characters that McCarthy portrays via their speech. The cowboys’ repartee in all three of the Border Trilogy novels, but especially in The Crossing is, I think, some of the best and most memorable in American fiction; I would put it in Twain’s class. My fondness for the back and forth between the title character and Harrogate in Suttree is boundless. In The Road these kinds of conversations are completely stripped down and raw, but packed with emotional intensity. [...]