Suttree
OCLC 26322333 | |
Suttree is a semi-autobiographical novel by Cormac McCarthy, published in 1979. Set in Knoxville, Tennessee, over a four-year period starting in 1950, the novel follows Cornelius Suttree, who has repudiated his former life of privilege to become a fisherman on the Tennessee River.
The novel has a fragmented structure with many flashbacks and shifts in grammatical person. Suttree has been compared[1] to James Joyce's Ulysses and John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, and called "a doomed Huckleberry Finn"[2] by Jerome Charyn. Suttree was written over a 20-year span[3] and is a departure from McCarthy's previous novels, being much longer, more sprawling in structure, and perhaps his most humorous.
Plot summary
The novel begins with Suttree observing police as they pull a suicide victim from the river. Suttree is living alone in a houseboat, on the fringes of society on the Tennessee River, earning money by fishing for the occasional catfish. He has left a life of luxury, rejecting his parents' influence, and abandoning his wife and young son.
A large cast of characters, largely composed of
His relationships with women all come to bad ends. One prostitute-girlfriend terminates the relationship in a moment of madness, smashing up the inside of their new car. He becomes involved with a teenage girl from a destitute family, but awakens in the night to find her crushed to death by a landslide that falls on their homeless encampment. Prior to the beginning of the book, Suttree was also married to a woman he apparently met at university. He left his wife with a young son, who dies of an illness early on in the book. He watches the funeral from afar, and proceeds to bury the boy alone once the other mourners leave.
Towards the novel's end, Suttree falls ill with typhoid fever and suffers a lengthy hallucination. This occurs after a black friend of Suttree is killed in a fight with the police and Harrogate is arrested in a failed robbery attempt. In the end, he feels his identity as an individual is affirmed by his time living in destitution, and he leaves Knoxville, seeking a new life.
Reception
Novelist
References
- ^ "The New York Times: Book Review Search Article". archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2021-05-11.
- ^ "Suttree". archive.nytimes.com.
- ^ "Cormac McCarthy Papers". www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu. July 7, 2020.
- ^ In Chicago Tribune Book World, January 28, 1979.
- ^ New York Times, January 20, 1979
- ^ New York Times, February 18, 1979
- ^ National Review, March 16, 1979
- ^ Memphis Press-Scimitar, February 17, 1979
- ^ Hislop, Andrew, TLS, no. 4490 (21–27 April 1989), p. 436.
- ^ Backcover blurb of 1979 USA first edition.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (24 October 2008). "I think I'm musing my mind".
External links
- Charyn, J., Suttree, New York Times Book Review, Feb 1979
- "Searching for Suttree", by Wes Morgan (2004); photographs of some of the Knoxville locations featured in Suttree