I’ve just finished Suttree and I’m trying to digest it. I had read all of Cormac MaCarthy’s books before this and had previously struggled with it, and had given it up twice before. The language and particularly the descriptions were so dense and the characters were so numerous that it was hard to follow at times.
But now that it’s done I am happy that I finally finished it. I’ve never read Huckleberry Finn so I can’t compare but I know this has been compared to a dirty version of that. To me it seems very much to encompass the attributes of “the great American novel”. A character roams the Tennessee River and comes into contact with all sorts of characters.
SPOILERS
Something I love about McCarthy is that he never feels the need to explain. I can imagine this can be frustrating for some but I’m kind of used to it by now. In Suttree the main character seems to come from a good family, with an education and some wealth behind him but he gives it all up for some unknown reason. Then we find out he had a wife and child who he abandoned with no explanation whatsoever. I found the funeral scene to be particularly moving. If this was any other writer this would be the key to unlocking the main character’s motivation, but McCarthy flies through it quite quickly and leaves it up to the reader to decide what happened.
In general I was struck by the pace of the novel, it was relentless. Suttree passes through life as if he is wading through mud and is horrified at the people around him yet his life is ever changing and he never really gets an opportunity to take it easy.
Overall I would say this is McCarthy’s most difficult book. I enjoyed it, and would recommend with the asterisk that it is not an easy, straightforward read.
So, people who have read it, what did you think?
by JoyousDiversion
6 Comments
I love it. I’m a huge fan of McCarthy and would rank Suttree as my second favorite of his behind Blood Meridian.
It’s also his funniest book. Not a high bar to meet considering
Suttree is the one I come back to again and again. But I don’t think I’ve ever actually finished it. And I don’t come back to it thinking, maybe this time I’ll finish it… I come back because I want the feel of the start again. And I always get it. It’s always good.
I don’t think McCarthy really has anything to say. Robert Frost once said, a poem is a ground or a tune of images, across which we may choose to strike a meaning. And to me great poems are poems you come back to again and again because, for whatever reason, you haven’t really learned whatever lessons they may hold. Something about them intrigues you and you feel that there’s something there that you feel deep inside that you haven’t quite got yet. That’s Suttree, to me. The ending isn’t important, to me.
Huckleberry Finn does have something to say. It is that our consciences don’t work. We cannot tell right from wrong. I don’t think anyone else, except Twain, has ever seen this so clearly or said it so clearly. So in my mind there’s a deep and essential difference between the two books. Apart from the fact that Suttree is much better written. They’re both kind of nightmarish, but the Suttree nightmare is much warmer and much more enjoyable, at least to me. But Huckleberry Finn is much more important.
Pumpkin fucking scene was weird though
Is that the one where the guy rapes watermelons? I nearly died laughing at that.
Early Times!!
I just finished this last week. I thought it was great. I didn’t realize he was so funny until I read Suttree. I recommended it to someone else as a comedy.