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Suttree

4.2 of 5 stars 4.20 · rating details · 6,742 ratings · 615 reviews

By the author of Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses, Suttree is the story of Cornelius Suttree, who has forsaken a life of privilege with his prominent family to live in a dilapidated houseboat on the Tennessee River near Knoxville.Remaining on the margins of the outcast community there--a brilliantly imagined collection of eccentrics, criminals, and squatters--he ri...more

Paperback, 471 pages

Published May 1992 by Vintage International (first published 1979)

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Oct 05, 2012 Jeffrey Keeten rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jeffrey by: On the Southern Literary Trail

Mr. Suttree it is our understanding that at curfew rightly decreed by law and in that hour wherein nigh draws to its proper close and the new day commences and contrary to conduct befitting a person of your station you betook yourself to various low places within the shire of McAnally and there did squander several ensuing years in the company of thieves, derelicts, miscreants, pariahs, poltroons, spalpeens, curmudgeons, clotpolls, murderers, gamblers, bawds, whores, trulls, brigands, topers, to...more

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Aug 05, 2010 Eddie Watkins rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Life as infinitely detailed turbid flow. Life’s flow so drenched with death there’s hardly need of another name for it; death as life’s incorporated twin. It’s all a river and it flows. Suttree is saturated with this outlook, this philosophy, though it remains unspoken, instead being simply shown, in a style itself all detail and turbid flow. In fact, the style itself is so integral to the book’s texture and meaning, and the structure of it all so structureless (being modeled on riverflow as it...more Life as infinitely detailed turbid flow. Life’s flow so drenched with death there’s hardly need of another name for it; death as life’s incorporated twin. It’s all a river and it flows. Suttree is saturated with this outlook, this philosophy, though it remains unspoken, instead being simply shown, in a style itself all detail and turbid flow. In fact, the style itself is so integral to the book’s texture and meaning, and the structure of it all so structureless (being modeled on riverflow as it is, words jostled by the very meaning they embody), that it reads almost as an experimental novel, by which I mean only that it is one extended exercise in verbal excessiveness that pushes the form’s limits, and that there’s something simply audacious about it, something almost Fuck off and let me write what the fuck I want about it. Suttree is one of the most engrossing and enriching novels I have ever read, a perfect melding of pure verbal texture and sensual detail culled from actual lived life. It reeks of authenticity. You almost have to scrape each page off your shoes as you flow and roam along with it. And yet the language is so weird at times! So language-centric and partially opaque that the reader’s attention is drawn to the incredible verbal surface only to then discover the incredible human depths contained within unreachable by language. It satisfies the Joycean and the Bukowskian in all of us all stewed together. And while not exactly a moral or ethical guidebook, in that it never speaks its meaning or tries to teach, the humanity embodied by its verbal intricacy is example enough of open-heartedness and compassion for the wayward and down-and-out and downright tragic, for the mass of human dregs always with us, however unnoticed or ignored. But wedded to this open-heartedness and compassion is a detachment – again shown by the very body of the book rather than spoken, heightened by the very language, by the arcane and technical terms so abstract-seeming and detached from the scum and slithering earthiness of the book's depictions – that is a profound lesson in itself, as compassion is often assumed to be measured by how far one is willing to dangerously embroil one’s self in another’s suffering, and not by a heart that radiates outward from relative safety. Not that Cornelius Suttree lives in fear and thus in circumscribed safety, but he lives by his own unspoken code of equality and openness and self-preservation, and so his “safety” is like the safety of a self-sufficient pioneer – anything can happen at any time and he will be prepared for it and the adaptations required, until that one time he’s not and he’s either dead or lost. He understands that we are all alone and so must look out for ourselves, but he also understands that we are all the same and so must look out for each other, though in the end not another soul can save us, or really be there as a substantial presence in our individual unfathomable depths, or at our deaths. An impersonal fluctuating pain and joy-filled compound of profound aloneness and profound community tossed and dunked and driven and sucked up and spewed back out and sucked back in by life’s recirculating turbid flow.

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Apr 06, 2008 Lane Wilkinson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Lane by: Andrew

Shelves: literature, 20th-century, southern-gothic

'Suttree' goes directly into my own, personal daydream of the idealized 20th century canon. The heavily stylized prose hearkens back to the works of Joyce, Steinbeck, Algren, Faulkner, and Celine. Indeed, I have yet to encounter another book that so perfectly synthesizes these five unique voices of 20th century literature

'Suttree', at heart, is a sort of urban pastoral, replete with the myriad voices of a depressed, post-war Knoxville. Cornelius Suttree's wanderings echo precisely the tourist-gu...more 'Suttree' goes directly into my own, personal daydream of the idealized 20th century canon. The heavily stylized prose hearkens back to the works of Joyce, Steinbeck, Algren, Faulkner, and Celine. Indeed, I have yet to encounter another book that so perfectly synthesizes these five unique voices of 20th century literature

'Suttree', at heart, is a sort of urban pastoral, replete with the myriad voices of a depressed, post-war Knoxville. Cornelius Suttree's wanderings echo precisely the tourist-guide to Dublin that is found in 'Ulysses'. From the bottle-broken industry fields of the riverfront to the Dickensian squalor of McAnally Flats, every inch of pavement in downtown Knoxville is meticulously cataloged and populated with all manner of tramps, lowlifes, and assorted miscreants.

This tour of the destitute is peppered with the strange vernacular of the streets, a sort of Southern-drawl meets drunken brusque. Dialogues rise and fall with a natural cadence that is absolutely mesmerizing.

In particular, I was struck by the amazing brevity with which some events unfolded. Though many pages might be spent on arguably mundane details of fishing, socializing, or even decorating basement rentals (albeit, in beautiful prose), life-changing events such as the deaths of lovers, the deterioration of relationships, and the dire consequences of drunken brawls sometimes appear within the space of one or two paragraphs. Characters are killed and forgotten in a single sentence, which only adds to the narrative, insofar as Suttree, at heart, is a man who has given up. Love, death, and squalor make no impression on Suttree, and he becomes a sort of infinitely malleable and sadly detached figure. Where a night if drinking and screwing occupies twenty pages, the death of a friend in a barfight later that night only warrants a single paragraph. This sort of terse approach makes 'Suttree' read as a psychological survey of despondency.

Yet, Suttree is admirable in his insouciance. His ineffable lack of concern for the crumbling world around him gives him a strength that is lacking in all of the other characters. It seems not so much that Suttree has given up on life, rather, he seems to have adopted the infinite resignation of some existential sage.

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Jun 17, 2011 Jeremy added it

Shelves: american-fiction, cormac-mccarthy

This is quite the slow burn. Most of Mccarthy's other works are very plot-driven, and you see that really reinforced in his western novels where you have this incredibly hypnotic language coalescing with (often horrific) events to create this sort of magisterial whirlwind of doom which just pulls you in with it's richness. That sort of building up takes a back burner here in favor of something which just sort of flows out in all directions, trying to encompass totally the world of the downtrodde...more

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Dec 09, 2010 Brent Godwin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-south, favorites

It almost seems insulting to call this a work of art, because that is so cliche and nothing about this book is cliche. But it IS a work of art. McCarthy is a genius, and it's a shame that he is not more highly regarded than he is. Not an easy book to read. I am a fast reader, but this one took me almost a month. Very dense at times, but take your time and appreciate the pictures McCarthy paints with his words. Just incredible. Suttree is a unique character and extremely likeable, in my opinion....more

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Aug 10, 2012 CandyStripedBlue rated it 5 of 5 stars

"One spring morning timing the lean near-liquid progress of a horse on a track, the dust exploding, the rapid hasping of his hocks, coming up the straight foreshortened and awobble and passing elongate and birdlike with harsh breath and slatted brisket heaving and the muscles sliding and bunching in clocklike flexion under the wet black hide and a gout of foam hung from the long jaw and then gone in a muted hoofclatter, the aging magistrate snapped his thumb from the keep of the stopwatch he hel...more

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Sep 06, 2012 Ginny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, romanzi, america

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Straordinario

"Eccoci arrivati in un mondo dentro il mondo. In queste lande straniere, queste foibe e sodaglie interstiziali che i giusti vedono dalle auto e dai treni, un'altra vita sogna. Deformi, o neri o folli, fuggiaschi di ogni risma, stranieri di ogni contrada."

Uno straordinario spaccato di vita nel degrado della periferia di Knoxville (Tennessee) ai primi anni Cinquanta; una umanità derelitta, stravagante o balorda, che si barcamena con ogni mezzo per sopravvivere, tra risse, delitti, sb...more Straordinario

"Eccoci arrivati in un mondo dentro il mondo. In queste lande straniere, queste foibe e sodaglie interstiziali che i giusti vedono dalle auto e dai treni, un'altra vita sogna. Deformi, o neri o folli, fuggiaschi di ogni risma, stranieri di ogni contrada."

Uno straordinario spaccato di vita nel degrado della periferia di Knoxville (Tennessee) ai primi anni Cinquanta; una umanità derelitta, stravagante o balorda, che si barcamena con ogni mezzo per sopravvivere, tra risse, delitti, sbornie, arresti... ; una natura impervia, implacabile nelle manifestazioni climatiche e deteriorata dalla contaminazione dei più sordidi, mefitici rifiuti.
Più che di un romanzo in senso canonico – con uno svolgimento di vicende concatenate ad un progetto e proiettate verso una logica conclusione risolutiva – si tratta piuttosto del monumentale affresco di una sorta di mondo parallelo alla città, alla civiltà e al progresso, dove “non si è mai al sicuro”; di una quotidianità torbida, misera e malsana, nella quale gli esseri umani sembrano costituire un tutt'uno con il paesaggio, ed il susseguirsi dei loro gesti assomiglia ad un disperato brulicare inutile, piuttosto che ubbidire ad un progetto lineare, finalizzato al raggiungimento di uno scopo qualsiasi.
Alcuni di questi individui devono subire una simile emarginazione per nascita, o per incapacità, o per sfortuna; altri, al contrario, l’hanno abbracciata per scelta, come nel caso di Suttree.
Il suo passato di “normalità” borghese – abitudini consolidate, programmi per il futuro e vincoli affettivi corrisposti – viene soltanto accennato per brevi squarci in flashback, come ricordi appartenenti ad un’esistenza ormai conclusa, rievocata teneramente e mai rimpianta, abbandonata come qualcosa di fittizio per immergersi senza rimorsi nei colori della vita vera; per scoprirne il significato più autentico, sempre che esista un significato. La vita vissuta alla giornata che scorre inarrestabile, rasserenante o crudele, grandiosa e putrida al pari del grande fiume sul quale Suttree vive e dal quale trae il proprio sostentamento come pescatore.
Quasi una sorta di Cristo moderno, fragile uomo tra gli uomini più vulnerabili in quanto provvisto della sola natura umana, egli sembra voler assaporare fino in fondo, nel bene e nel male, nella virtù come nella corruzione, la condizione dell’essere uomo, facendosi carico del sostegno, del conforto e dell’amore – inutile quanto necessario – , ma anche della solitudine, della sofferenza e della desolazione più cupa. Senza formulare alcun giudizio morale e senza alcuna pretesa salvifica di redenzione o riscatto, in quanto non c’è nulla da riscattare, essendo il bene e il male, il vizio e la virtù, la gioia e il dolore, componenti essenziali della vita umana.
Cosa vada cercando Suttree e quali siano le deduzioni a cui perviene al termine di questa esperienza oscillante tra la consapevolezza e il delirio non viene espressamente rivelato, salvo per una orgogliosa presa di coscienza della propria singolarità di individuo artefice del proprio destino – “di Suttree ce n’è uno e uno soltanto” – e, al contempo, del fatto che ”ogni uomo è tutti gli uomini”.
Unicità e universalità, allo stesso modo in cui Knoxville con i suoi fatiscenti sobborghi è ”una città qualunque” e insieme la città universale e il mondo intero.
Tuttavia anche nella desolazione più tragica e putrescente, in mezzo alla più lurida banda di cialtroni e falliti, può brillare la luce della delicatezza, della solidarietà e di un sorriso, in grado di restituire rispetto e dignità all’uomo: ed ecco l’apertura ad un bagliore di speranza, che illumina come un fulgido raggio di sole (o, ricordando la chiusa dell’indimenticabile “La strada”, sarebbe meglio dire come un fuoco) il sorprendente finale di questa magnifica opera.
È un libro che ci si deve guadagnare, questo; una manciata di pagine alla volta, anche per il lettore più collaudato e impaziente.
Visionario, potente, brutale, poetico, virtuosistico. A tratti ostico. Ma prodigioso per l'originalità, il vigore e la purezza di una scrittura in grado di trasmettere emozioni fortissime: visioni, suoni, odori... nessuna cosa è tralasciata ed ogni cosa viene descritta fin nei minimi dettagli con una precisione allucinata e allucinante. Tutto acquista così un significato che travalica i limiti della realtà e della contingenza per acquistare un valore simbolico, paradigmatico.
McCarthy è un mago della parola, la seleziona e la padroneggia con audacia e sapienza in tutte le sue accezioni più sottili, avvalendosi di un lessico incredibilmente ricco, spesso inusuale o tecnico-specialistico, della costruzione di dialoghi suggestivi, realistici e mai artificiosi, e di una varietà di immagini che non finisce di stupire e fa apparire scialba ogni altra lettura meno che eccezionale intrapresa di seguito ad uno qualunque dei suoi libri.(less)

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Aug 17, 2012 Snotchocheez rated it 3 of 5 stars

Given Suttree is, according to my fellow Goodreads users, (at 4.20) the highest rated of Cormac McCarthy's novels, I feel like the nay-saying, rock-slinging philistine giving it anything less than 5 stars. Despite my mixed feelings/reservations (and frustrations with) McCarthy's works I (at the suggestion from a friend) thought I'd give it a try. And, unfortunately, found it, despite its many strengths, being the perfect representation of everything I dislike about McCarthy's writing.

Published...more

Given Suttree is, according to my fellow Goodreads users, (at 4.20) the highest rated of Cormac McCarthy's novels, I feel like the nay-saying, rock-slinging philistine giving it anything less than 5 stars. Despite my mixed feelings/reservations (and frustrations with) McCarthy's works I (at the suggestion from a friend) thought I'd give it a try. And, unfortunately, found it, despite its many strengths, being the perfect representation of everything I dislike about McCarthy's writing.

Published in the early 1970s, Suttree is one one of McCarthy's earliest novels, and at 470 pages (of teeny tiny fonted print), one of his longest. It chronicles a few years in the life of Cornelius "Buddy" Suttree, a man who, we learn in bits and pieces, lives on a dilapidated houseboat on the Tennessee River within eyeshot of downtown Knoxville circa 1951-'52. Despite a fairly normal upbringing and family life, he eschews the ramifications of responsibility and a real job in favor of trawling for fish in the filthy river to earn spending money, and hanging out with his friends (an assemblage of layabouts and wannabe criminals) getting drunk. Unlike many of McCarthy's novels, there isn't much plot, just snapshots of lives in the midst of squalor and degradation. McCarthy tries his darnedest to paint a Hieronymous Bosch-like portrait of the hell-on-earth horrors there, and occasionally succeeds, but more often than not his lofty, Bukowski-meets-Joyce-and-Dante-in-a-bar flowery prose butts heads with the denizens' gutter patois and leaves a nearly indecipherable mess in its wake. (His typical renunciation of quotation marks and indifferent use of apostrophes is more annoying than ever when you're trying to figure out who said what to whom, or determine if it was even said at all or just another example of McCarthy waxing bombastic). Most annoying of all was never really getting a feel for why Suttree has chosen this life of squalor for himself, or what makes the guy "tick". Perhaps that is McCarthy's intention, to present his protagonist in such an oblique, arms-length distance manner: It provides an avenue for McCarthy to insert as many obscure (discordant, rarely poetic) words (of questionable etymological orgin) as possible, whip them into a frothy stew, juxtapose them with the argot of the disenfranchised...and even without a fully "realized" main character, or any coherent plot development, he's got himself a highly-stylized, somewhat effective mood-piece that will leave scholars salivating (and scratching their heads pondering its significance) for decades to come. For me, though, not exactly my idea of a good time.

(On a bright (but yecchy note), McCarthy provides one of the most bizarrely hilarious and memorable character introductions I've ever encountered in a novel: his friend/jail buddy Harrogate (who we meet in a watermelon patch). Without spoiling it, I'll just say that while I've never been a great fan of watermelon, I'm pretty confident I'll never eat a watermelon again without thinking of this novel and gagging a little.)

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rachel I bet I know what happened with the watermelon!

It's funny to me that you say most of Cormac McCarthy's novels have a plot; I have always thought the...more
Aug 17, 2012 03:39pm

Snotchocheez (re: Watermelons...yep, Rachel, you prolly do...think "McCarthy rewrites House of Holes")

And, yeah, you're right about most of his books having little...more
updated Aug 17, 2012 07:03pm

Kathrina Although I can't agree that McCarthy's writing is discordant -- it sings the blues to me -- and I believe it is the landscape that makes him "tick" (t...more
Oct 14, 2012 07:00am

Jul 23, 2007 chase Adams rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fives

"One among the younger was sent for a chicken from his mother's yard and they plucked it and roasted it on a wire and passed about a warm RC Cola and told lies."

"Her hot spiced tongue flat in his mouth and her hands all over him like the very witch of fuck."

9 likes · like · see review

Mar 02, 2010 Abailart rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

A goodreader's recommendation has come at the right moment.

Arrived a bit late from amazon, and I have only just finished James Kelman. But I have read the first sentence, and here goes....

It is marvellous. Somewhat as McCarthy, I'll refract and draw a few straight lines but first one way of seeing it whole. It's ethical, of course, and not moral, and the distinction between the two is immense in this book. An oddyssey of one man who is all souls in an underworld (literally most of the settings a...more A goodreader's recommendation has come at the right moment.

Arrived a bit late from amazon, and I have only just finished James Kelman. But I have read the first sentence, and here goes....

It is marvellous. Somewhat as McCarthy, I'll refract and draw a few straight lines but first one way of seeing it whole. It's ethical, of course, and not moral, and the distinction between the two is immense in this book. An oddyssey of one man who is all souls in an underworld (literally most of the settings are beneath the city, under bridges, in transit as the rivers and creeks carry grotesque reminders of the respectable world; the normal world is not present at all. Suttree's divorce from his father was never of Freudian dimension but simply a repudiation of, and the vital distaste for contemporary collective values that protect the safe in an equity by which their suffering is dreamlike only like their lives). It's ethical because it has the old testament sounding prophetic questions and voice, the root boundaries of living and death, and the eternal question as to whether a man down with thieves and murderers and scum (etc.) can be good. And Suttree, who is all that is left of all that is left of what we have to hold on to, is a lovely guy. It's ethical because it is about suffering and sin (as in mistakes made to escape suffering), and like its generic cousins because it shows that a life is important, an individual is godly (inasmuch as any individual is godly, all are).
Formally, it's very tight. A continuity of imagery and motif (not quantitavely but always in the background): most obvious is the reference to eyes, and from this to the cold lens of a camera and the complexities of represented histories (photographs) and the borderless space between the living and the dead; thence to representation generally, at one point a specific reference to a stage with pulleys and winches and wings, and here the city does get pictured - as a backdrop. Shifting representations, light used like a painter, for instance how the formless grey muggy quotidian city only becomes delineated at night by its contours of light. Roads, lines, patterns,shapes, described and commented upon as abstract concepts too. The 'mathematical certainty of death'. The brilliantly depicted, formed hallucinations of madness counterposed with helix and corridor, door and window, bricolage everywhere from some power to order.
The way he handles time is tight too. So that, and this is probably the nearest I've come across a subjective valorisation of the experience of being in time, rather than any mimesis or spatialisation, it is compressed, condensed, displaced, segues a few months from one sentence to the next, and yet like a dream with all its weird workings nevertheless does set a limit around things so that at the end you think that yes you have been through some of Suttree's life.
And it is very funny too! Hey, thanks Nelson!(less)

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Jan 13, 2009 John rated it 3 of 5 stars

I decided to read this book because I saw a comment by Roger Ebert about the language McCarthy uses and it's brilliance. It's his masterpiece.

Well I can definitely say the Ebert was right about the language. Unless you're a lit major, a crossword junkie, or scrabble master be sure to have your dictionary at hand. Be ready to check on average two words per page. At 470 pages that's a lot of checking! After awhile I just gave up on accuracy and let the mood take me along.

I really wanted to like th...more I decided to read this book because I saw a comment by Roger Ebert about the language McCarthy uses and it's brilliance. It's his masterpiece.

Well I can definitely say the Ebert was right about the language. Unless you're a lit major, a crossword junkie, or scrabble master be sure to have your dictionary at hand. Be ready to check on average two words per page. At 470 pages that's a lot of checking! After awhile I just gave up on accuracy and let the mood take me along.

I really wanted to like this book but it was such a struggle that I had to push myself to finish it. Basically the book is a close up look at life in the mid South in the 1950's for poor blacks and whites living on the edge of poverty. It is a dark, slow moving book that sets a flavor early and never varies far from that sad, drunken, aimless, dysfunctional world. By not using any quotation marks for conversation the book steadfastly maintains it's dreary wandering. I kept waiting for the main character to veer from his path. I'm still waiting.

Now I must say I admire the language and the tone McCarthy sets. It vaguely reminded me of Tennessee Williams without the spit or even Faukner. But in the end I was left being numbed by the world McCarthy showed me. Perhaps that is his goal. I don't know. I may do some Googling to see what's said about the book.

You may wonder about the characters, perhaps they redeemed the book for me. But they all seemed caught, often fatally, in this world as well they surely would have been. When they are not drinking they are drunk. When not drunk they are hungover. When not hungover they are looking for booze. After awhile I felt hungover from the book. It depressed my own mood. And with the sense of imprisonment these people lived, even as the main character exits the city for somewhere new you are absolutely sure he will not have any catharsis.

Is it the great book that Ebert and others see? Maybe. It certainly makes it's point (over and over) and the language is poetic and rich. But when I was done with this meal I was bloated and overweight.(less)

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Feb 19, 2008 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: black-comedy, horror-disguised-as-literature

Suttree is an unusual book by McCarthy, for it lacks the genre conventions he sometimes employs and subverts. Here there is no plot, and it is focused on the picaresque adventures of the eponymous hero and his gang of misfits and compatriots. Comic misadventures and schemes a lá Twain occur, passages of beat gutter poetry, stark imagery and characters out of medieval allegory or the Old Testament (Witches, fools, and madmen); makes for a strange but beautifully written book. The prose creates it...more

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Jan 05, 2008 Andrew rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature, personal-favorites

It was with this book that I really fell in love with McCarthy. Not so much a story as a massive, impressionistic account, that is rendered in the most beautiful English you could imagine, of one person's self-consuming heart. Funny, heartbreaking, and in the end, strangely triumphant.
If for no other reason, read it to meet the most endearing character who fucks watermelons this side of Gallagher Two.

5 likes · like · see review

Mar 04, 2010 Djrmel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: z2010-read, all-time-favorites, classic, fiction, southern-gothic, literature, gleichgesinnte, favorites

There is a line near the end of this book that will stick with me the rest of my life. It not only describes the entire journey of this masterpiece, but it's a bit a sound bit of advice on how to get through life.

"He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him."

Such is the story of Cornelius "Buddy" Suttree, a man who cuts himself off from his family...more

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Jan 28, 2009 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-favorites, southern-gothic-westerns, my-man-crush

Thank you, Mr. McCarthy. You've out done yourself once again. You've constructed a book about a social outcast that precedes and has much more resonance than what the best of Bret Easton Ellis, Palahniuk (and other like contemporary authors) can offer. Your urban squalor transcends time. Suttree, our hero, is the hero of the everyman and any given time. Forsaking a life of privilage, our hero continually finds himself on the receiving end of heartbreak, of terrible luck. He is surrounded the ber...more

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Jun 24, 2012 Robert Jacoby rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this book over a few days while on vacation last year. It blew my mind, in more ways than one. The writing is classic McCarthy, but to me it's misplaced in the world it's describing. While rich, melodic prose fits in Blood Meridan, it does not work for me here in this 1950s setting in Knoxville. In fact, it feels to me like it's counter-productive. I found myself reading the book and admiring the style over the substance. And that's not a place I like to be as a reader.

Don't get me wrong...more

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May 17, 2012 Charlie rated it 1 of 5 stars

I thought Blood Meridian was one of the best books I'd ever read - I still think so, I suppose, since I haven't re-read it in years, and have instead settled for recommending it with the kind of pretentious certainty (e.g., "Without a doubt one of the greatest novels written in the past century") I develop when I'm really enthusiastic.

But I'm wondering, now, whether I've been wrong all this time, and whether I might owe some people an apology, because Suttree is truly, astoundingly awful. So awf...more

6 likes · like · see review

view all 9 comments

Steve Granting, for the sake of argument, your premises - that McCarthy is a "pusillanimous adolescent boy," or at least writes like one, and is a racist, o...more
Mar 01, 2013 11:26pm

Charlie Steve wrote: "Granting, for the sake of argument, your premises - that McCarthy is a "pusillanimous adolescent boy," or at least writes like one, and...more Steve wrote: "Granting, for the sake of argument, your premises - that McCarthy is a "pusillanimous adolescent boy," or at least writes like one, and is a racist, or at least writes like one - I must say I find ..."

Thanks for writing such a thoughtful comment. I had no idea that Hamsen was a Nazi sympathizer - I didn't, and don't, know the first thing about him, or about McCarthy. But I don't think Hunger is necessarily reflective of a Nazi sympathizer's views. What impressed me about it was the way Hamsen used rapid transitions between the past and present tense to stylistically convey the main character's unraveling state of mind.

I think it's entirely possible that Knut Hamsen was a contemptible human being who wrote something impressively non-contemptible. I also think it's entirely possible for someone like McCarthy - who, as you say, is "well and firmly planted in the firmament of literary immortality" - to commit some seriously racist and sexist fuckups in an individual novel. It would hardly be without precedent, and it would definitely be worth pointing out.

You mention that it's "completely beside the point to 'review' a novel by guessing at its author's views on race." I can see why you said that. The introduction to my post, in which I vaguely cast aspersions on Blood Meridian, and the last sentence of the second paragraph, in which I suggest that McCarthy would respond in a racist way if confronted about his prose style, can easily and reasonably be taken as guesses about his views on race. I didn't intend them that way. I intended them as rhetorical shortcuts that would appeal to people who were already sympathetic to me and/or my reaction to the book. I wanted to be a little entertaining and to convey that, overall, I was disappointed in McCarthy, and that my opinion of his work had plummeted. That's not how you develop an argument. I should have written something less pandering and more considered.

My actual, non-rhetorically-clouded view is that the book DOES contain racist scenes and racist language, and that McCarthy, regardless of his personal feelings about race, failed to write those scenes or use that language in a critical or productive way. For instance, the book doesn't suggest - stylistically, structurally, or through its basic plot - that referring to black characters repeatedly as "the black" is anything for us, the readers, to think twice about. With that in mind, I don't think you're being entirely fair when you accuse me of "cherry-picking." I pulled out egregious quotes that were offensive in their own right and were also perfectly in keeping with the less egregious but still upsetting tenor of the rest of the book.

Moving on, I can see why you would take issue with my calling McCarthy a "pusillanimous adolescent boy." That's not what I meant to say. I meant to say that McCarthy had presented us with the fever dream of a pusillanimous adolescent boy in what was, presumably, an attempt to do something quite different.

There are definitely a lot of problems with my post. I was unclear in several key spots. For the record, I don't think Suttree or Hunger are manifestos on the authors' personal feelings about race. We can look at them as self-contained aesthetic objects, in a New Critical kind of way, or we can look at them as pieces of the authors' extant corpora, in a somewhat cloudier, more contemporary way, or we can choose approximately ten-thousand other critical orientations. No matter what, treating a novel as if it were a rigorous intellectual argument is almost always a bad idea. I'm fairly certain you'd agree with me here. (Perhaps we could say the same thing of treating a Goodreads post as if it were a rigorous academic analysis?)

So I agree with you in most of your critiques of ME. But I have to say that I think you're wrong about McCarthy having "never written anything even remotely racist." He has. It's in Suttree. Many of us who like to think of ourselves as staunch and somehow enlightened members of the Anti-Racist Good People Squad inadvertently write racist things from time to time. We just...fuck things up. That's what McCarthy did.(less)
updated Mar 02, 2013 08:00am

Jul 23, 2012 Jamie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: the-dirty-south

I feel like I could talk myself up to five stars or down to three, and it’s all emotional gut responses, which is what I least like to trust. Parts of it had my heart immediately. Parts of it were too heavy a burden to bear. The pall of oppression and wretchedness, at times, escalating to pure fantasy, not reality. Suttree self-inflicting his descent into the darkest depths.

The parts I loved most are the parts I always love most with McCarthy, the sweet, dumb clarity of youth, the luck and love...more

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Nov 24, 2008 Powells.com rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read Suttree twenty years ago and was floored by the writing and the story. It is a poignant tale of a man choosing to live his life as he wants, turning his back on his family and their considerable wealth. Jerome Charyn wrote a review of the book in the New York Times, Feb. 18, 1979. I figured I couldn't do any better than he did: "Suttree himself is a lost creature who can find no real hook into this world. He can touch another human being for a moment, drink beer with a friend, fish, make...more

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Oct 30, 2008 Capitu rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008

Well, I just finished reading Suttree and I feel exhausted. Maybe I should not use the word “finished” at all, as I feel that I should go back to it once again, slower this time. Actually I have to confess that I have hushed through the last third of this book, because the universe Cormac McCarthy creates has a suffocating atmosphere. The experience that comes to my mind is the memory of trying to learn to deep-sea dive and finding my otherwise mild claustrophobia flaring up underwater, until I...more Well, I just finished reading Suttree and I feel exhausted. Maybe I should not use the word “finished” at all, as I feel that I should go back to it once again, slower this time. Actually I have to confess that I have hushed through the last third of this book, because the universe Cormac McCarthy creates has a suffocating atmosphere. The experience that comes to my mind is the memory of trying to learn to deep-sea dive and finding my otherwise mild claustrophobia flaring up underwater, until I just had to come out for fresh air.

Suttree is considerate by many a lighter, more comic book by McCarthy, and I did laugh out loud at some passages (I may never again eat watermelon without thinking of Harrogate – the “convicted pervert of a botanic bent”). But I don’t believe that a few laughs make this book any lighter. The disconnect and marginality of the characters, their incapability to understand the broader world around them – of which Harrogate seems to be the bigger case in point – is all too depressing.

Suttree does remind me of The Road, which also left me with this emotional vacuum in the pit of my stomach. Like the characters in The Road, , I see the characters in Suttree trying to survive day to day while maintaining a glimpse of humanity. In comparison to The Road though, this is a more optimistic book, as a community surrounds the main character here, giving him colorful companionship and friendship. Even if his loneliness remains untouched to the end. An end that is also more optimistic than The Road as if McCarthy decided to give his readers a respite.

I do have to mention McCarthy’s prose. To say that is poetic is just an understatement. It is poetic, but it is also gothic and curlicue. I got tired of running to the dictionary because the richness of his vocabulary eludes me, and I probably missed many of the references that someone more erudite would find. That he does not use commas enervates me to no end. But not a single page goes by that I am not taken back by a sentence, an image.

I intend to keep this book by my bedside, and re-read passages at random for the next while, as I know that I have probably missed much of the subtlety of the language and even details of the many story-lines and characters. Having now come to the end of it, I may now avoid this holler-coaster feeling that prompt me to keep reading and reading it. Some chapters/segments can certainly be read in their own, although I would not call them short-stories, they seem to focus in one or another character or event.

I certainly will read more of McCarthy’s books. I may just need some more time until I digest this one.
(less)

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Oct 05, 2008 Judy Vasseur rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: brigands, tosspots, sots, smell-smocks, rakes, felonious debauchees

You can choose your friends...

The college educated and handsome Suttree has issues and torments of his own but is generally a kind hearted ascetic who, largely turning his back on his well-to-do family, acts as straight man to assorted looney eccentrics in Knoxville, Tennessee in the 1950s.

McCarthy wields sentences like visual tools (or projectors) as if pounding words, like hot metal, into exotic scrollwork or adding fine brushstrokes to an elaborate oil painting. There were times I felt that I...more

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Jun 26, 2008 Josh Cutting rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of McCarthy, or anyone who really craves thick, ornate description

Wow, what an intense book. Kind of a "ulysses" by way of Faulkner. This one dwarfed my intelligence a little bit, as I found it to be a not easy read. That's not to say that I didn't admire it or enjoy it. It's like a really super thick chocolate milkshake; really really tough to suck down, but so worth the effort.

This one I think falls in the category of being able to admire it rather than enjoy it. Cormac McCarthy is such a master of the English language, and all of its nuances and the differe...more

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Jun 07, 2008 Janette rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Suttree was the best book I've read in a long time. McCarthy has the most amazing gift for bringing subject matter to life -- in this case, it was the squalor and dark and dank and nastiness and struggle of the setting of this book, in the 50's in Knoxville, Tennessee, on the wrong side of town.
There were parts that were so hilarious that I could still laugh thinking about them (don't want to give it away).
The format of this book is so moch more rich than the bare-bones (but also fantastic) The...more

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Aug 28, 2012 Darwin8u rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, favorites

It is amazing how McCarthy can find the lyrical beauty in an absurd gout of hallelucinationatory crazy. Absolutely one of my favorite novels of all time (nearly stripped McCarthy's Blood Meridian of its bloody title). Reads like Steinbeck wrote a play based on a David Lynch film about a nightmare child of Fellini and Faulkner that is now worshiped as scripture by pimps, prostitutes, grifters, fishmongers and of course fishermen.

At times Suttree hits me like a complicated musical chorus, a surre...more

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Dec 30, 2012 Iceman rated it 5 of 5 stars

Nas páginas de Suttree abunda água fétida, esgotos coalhados, detritos, escória e porcaria.

Suttree move-se por entre lixo juntamente com alguns companheiros, a maioria alienados da sociedade, perdidos para a vida que exalam um cheiro corrupto a podridão moral, mas que tentam apenas sobreviver.

O olhar de Cormac é profundamente mordaz, frio, arguto, implacável nas descrições do quotidiano, dos gostos banais de uma sociedade à margem.

Sabe-se que Cormac conhece profundamente o meio. Não é por acaso...more
Nas páginas de Suttree abunda água fétida, esgotos coalhados, detritos, escória e porcaria.

Suttree move-se por entre lixo juntamente com alguns companheiros, a maioria alienados da sociedade, perdidos para a vida que exalam um cheiro corrupto a podridão moral, mas que tentam apenas sobreviver.

O olhar de Cormac é profundamente mordaz, frio, arguto, implacável nas descrições do quotidiano, dos gostos banais de uma sociedade à margem.

Sabe-se que Cormac conhece profundamente o meio. Não é por acaso que a acção temporal se passa aquando da sua infância. O próprio admite ser este o seu romance mais autobiográfico. Pelas descrições, sente-se que Cormac fala a viva voz, ele conheceu o lado que descreve, o lado das escarretas como era conhecido na gíria. Sítios e estabelecimentos reais são aqui mencionados por Cormac. Este romance é uma espécie de exorcismo de parte da sua infância, parte essa que teve uma grande influência no seu estilo literário, a meu ver, único.

Todo o romance de Cormac é assim uma espécie de caleidoscópio das suas memórias, de uma cidade real mas que Cormac tem a capacidade de recriar quase de raiz, ou seja, a Knoxville descrita por Cormac não é a Knoxville existente ao tempo. Ele cria um mundo arcaico, ocultamente na escuridão, cheio de demónios corruptos da moral, do vício.

É notório, uma vez mais, o anti-religiosismo de Cormac. De uma forma directa, por vezes nas entrelinhas, dá agulhadas na religião, sátira, expõe o ridículo.

No entanto no meio do lixo, da escória, há uma dignidade que persiste, uma humanidade que resiste, que se recusa a cair. Por muito lixo que exista, Cormac dá-nos alento, não nos deixa perder a esperança.

Suttree passa todo o romance numa busca que Cormac nunca quantifica. Sobressai de uma forma atroz, magoa, uma imensa solidão. Uma solidão angustiante como se o mundo estivesse personificado em Knoxville e na sua sociedade de indigentes.

Um romance pungente de um homem em busca de algo e em simultâneo de nada, numa constante fuga. Suttree é boa pessoa, amigos dos seus amigos e sempre pronto a ajudar, sempre tocado por uma nobreza que é afinal, uma das grandes mensagens deste excelente obra.

“Suttree entre iguais, tristes filhos do destino cujo lar é o mundo, todos aqui reunidos durante breves momentos para protelar a ida para o além”(less)

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Nov 25, 2012 James Kane rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Of Cormac McCarthy's ten novels, Suttree (1979) is the most difficult to read. It focuses on a particular period in the life of its eponymous protagonist, Cornelius Suttree, a fisherman on the Tennessee River at Knoxville who has become estranged from his privileged family and now spends his days "in the company of thieves, derelicts, miscreants, pariahs, poltroons, spalpeens, curmudgeons, clotpolls, murderers, gamblers, bawds, whores, trulls, brigands, topers, tosspots, sots and archsots, lobco...more Of Cormac McCarthy's ten novels, Suttree (1979) is the most difficult to read. It focuses on a particular period in the life of its eponymous protagonist, Cornelius Suttree, a fisherman on the Tennessee River at Knoxville who has become estranged from his privileged family and now spends his days "in the company of thieves, derelicts, miscreants, pariahs, poltroons, spalpeens, curmudgeons, clotpolls, murderers, gamblers, bawds, whores, trulls, brigands, topers, tosspots, sots and archsots, lobcocks, smellsmocks, runagates, rakes, and other assorted and felonious debauchees" (as Suttree's own tortured psyche notes accusingly in a fever-induced hallucination late in the novel). As this little excerpt demonstrates, McCarthy's typically rich and diverse grasp of language takes pride of place in the novel, and much of the joy of reading it comes from seeing Suttree himself engage with the very same "thieves ... and other assorted and felonious debauchees", whose colourful personalities light up the pages of what is at times a very grim book.

Suttree is a man in a permanent state of freefall, cut adrift from his previous life yet constantly haunted by the ghosts of it, a fractured consciousness whose attempt to reassemble the pieces of his identity while at the same time resisting this process of reunification dictates the fragmented, almost rambling narrative voice and deprives the "plot" of any real thrust. While this is completely logical given Suttree's circumstances and what McCarthy is trying to do, it doesn't make for easy reading. Suttree reads almost like a collection of excerpts wrested from the mental notebook of an academic fallen from grace (which, McCarthy implies, the protagonist actually is), a dethroned intellectual exiled from the ivory tower who has been compelled - or instead has chosen - to dwell among the basest inhabitants of the world outside. Drunkards, prostitutes, vagrants, murderers, paupers, and illiterate simpletons constellate his social orbit now, and Suttree's thoughts reel from one pole to another as his mind continues an ongoing dialogue with itself about the meaning of it all, about the strangeness of life and the imminence of death and the sweet sorrow triggered by the stars. The literary effect, though powerful, is deliberately disorienting, and it crafts a story which seems as piecemeal to the reader as existence does to the protagonist.

Suttree is a wryly beautiful tragicomedy that reflects the thematic concerns of McCarthy's other works while demonstrating an even greater interest in the malleability of language and voice. I'm looking forward to reading it again one day - though if I do, I'll make sure I have the full (twenty-volume) OED at hand.(less)

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Oct 08, 2012 Leonard rated it 5 of 5 stars

What can one say? If it's Cormac McCarthy it's bound to be not just good, but very good. Now I've read (or listened to) all ten of McCarthy's novels (The Orchard Keeper. Outer Dark, Child of Dark, Suttree, All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and The Road). I still think Blood Meridian is the best, and I might read it again, or maybe listen to it on a recording, and re-reading more of his books is not out of the question. McCarthy's ch...more

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Jun 28, 2012 Joseph McNally rated it 5 of 5 stars

I failed in my first attempt at reading Suttree, I'm not sure why. Perhaps it was my own state of mind at the time - I found it depressing. But I'd read all of McCarthy's other work and I picked up Suttree again after a two-year break.

In this novel, more than any of his others, McCarthy seems to work in the way a music composer does. McCarthy's hook, his chorus, is the Tennessee River. Again and again he describes it in all its seasons and moods to the extent I found it to be the main character...more

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Jun 20, 2012 Jonathan Loja rated it 4 of 5 stars

Having read 3 other McCarthy novels, I was very excited to pick this up when I saw that critics compare it to two favorites of mine, Cannery Row and Huckleberry Fin. There are valid likeness's between them but they are based entirely on the setting (the river, the slums), and on the dark themes of loneliness underlying Cannery Row.
Otherwise, this is an entirely unique novel filled with incredibly well executed dialogue, dark humor and poverty-based suffering. At times the style is way over done...more Having read 3 other McCarthy novels, I was very excited to pick this up when I saw that critics compare it to two favorites of mine, Cannery Row and Huckleberry Fin. There are valid likeness's between them but they are based entirely on the setting (the river, the slums), and on the dark themes of loneliness underlying Cannery Row.
Otherwise, this is an entirely unique novel filled with incredibly well executed dialogue, dark humor and poverty-based suffering. At times the style is way over done to a point that could drive away any determined reader. Thankfully this all too ambitious language is balanced by perfectly down to earth prose for the common man.

What perhaps makes Suttree most unique is that it is the ultimate example of Anti-Climax. At nearly 500 pages, the novel unfolds with story after story after story, some of which are related and occur chronologically, but the chapters are largely episodes all on their own. These sections range from 2 pages up to probably 35(?), from hilarious to morbid.

Critics also tend to say that this is the saddest of McCarthey's novels. Of the four I have read, that title most certainly goes to The Crossing, and then The Road is a close second. However, the only thing keeping this from being the most depressing is the fact that Suttree's past is never fully explained; because there is no detailed events given for the reader to connect the dots, all one has to go on is that Suttree is living meagerly in the slums rather than with his wife or family.

Wikipedia makes the novel sound more complicated and difficult than it really is. While there are some sudden shifts from third person to first, which sprawl into incoherence, they are few in number and are relatively short lived.

What really makes this novel stand out to me is the dialogues. McCarthy shows an expert ability to create a sense of black culture and river life through nothing more than conversation. Blind men, thieves, beggars, misfits, workers, whores, children, all young and old or even ageless, wonderfully depicted in their efforts to stay afloat.

With its sprawling episodes of humorous endeavors, survival tactics, ways of life, means of employment, Suttree is much closer to Cannery Row than it is to Huck Finn. (less)

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Nov 06, 2011 Erica Harmon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-by-men

Never before thought that I'd read McCarthy, much less a story about the lost, ex-convict, homeless men (and, like, three women named) of Knoxville, TN. Divya gave it to me for my flight back from Peru and I was fascinated. And moved. I laughed, I cried. Suttree, the title character, is the sort of guy who drives me crazy in real life (he's white, born into privilege, and is too damned easy and well-liked). His suffering moves the novel, not a plot as such, and touches of humor make it readable....more

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About Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels in the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres and has also written plays and screenplays. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

His earlier Blood M...more

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Books by Cormac McCarthy

All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

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Quotes from Suttree

“What do you believe?
I believe that the last and the first suffer equally. Pari passu.
Equally?
It is not alone in the dark of death that all souls are one soul.
Of what would you repent?
Nothing.
Nothing?
One thing. I spoke with bitterness about my life and I said that I would take my own part against the slander of oblivion and against the monstrous facelessness of it and that I would stand a stone in the very void where all would read my name. Of that vanity I recant all.” — 34 people liked it

“But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse” — 29 people liked it

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