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Suttree By Cormac Mccarthy ( Vintage )
Release Date: 1992-05-05
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List Price: $14.95
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Product Description
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 rises above the physical and human squalor with detachment, humor, and dignity.
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 Suttree: An artistic Look at the Underbelly ( bbrodt )
This beautifully written book has no real plot at all; rather it is a series of incidents and vignettes, painting a depressing but amusing picture of life among the dregs of society. Sutree is an educated alcoholic who has abandoned his wife and family and is living in a dilapidated houseboat on the Tennessee River near Knoxville. He has dozens of close, destitute friends, all of whom are drunks, deadbeats, jailbirds, prostitutes, catamites, semi-madmen, or terminally ill. His infinite patience and affection for these people is both his strength and his downfall, as his friends often lead him into some hazardous and sometimes illegal situations. Through it all, his unfailing kindness shines out of the muck and mire of his existence.
That muck and mire is pictured almost too vividly. Essentially every descriptive sentence, every adjective and adverb, focuses on the filth and squalor of his world. Only in a brief, anomalous trip to the snow-covered mountains does he ever see beauty. Yet the reader is left with an indelible impression of kindness and mutual regard among all these misfit characters.
My only other negative observation is that here McCarthy is almost too artistic. Every sentence is so carefully crafted that in this long book it becomes a little overwhelming. One wishes for a cliché here and there, just to catch one's breath. But otherwise this is a magnificent piece of work. How McCarthy could have fashioned such a book in only one lifetime is beyond my understanding.
Four Little Old Men: A (Mostly) True Tale from a Small Cajun Town
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A Brilliant Work of Art ( 600asa )
It's hard to imagine how someone could write such a superb book as "Suttree", but Cormac McCarthy is a whole order of magnitude above most writers. This fascinating book tells the tale of Cornelius Suttree as he lives his hardscrabble life along the Tennessee River near Knoxville in the '50s. The book is filled with some of the most memorable characters in modern literature, not the least of them Suttree himself. This picaresque book hurls humor and sadness at the reader and dialog that is so real, your head will spin. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what's going on -- if you're a McCarthy reader you know what I'm talking about -- but the story sorts itself out and the reader moves along. By the end of the book you will have become quite attached to Suttree, Harrogate and the denizens of the flats along the river and you know you will miss them.
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Why can't I write like this?
I wish I had the ability to describe just how stunningly good this book is. The prose approaches perfection. I rarely ascribe true and unrelenting genius to writers, but I will make an exception for Mr. McCarthy. My favorite opening sentence of all time...
"Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these soothblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you."
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 suttree ( flodarling )
Incomprehensible..Boring, A waste of money..
I you want to spend time trying to unravel what the heck this man is trying to say, then do so..I gave it my best shot and in disgust tossed it into the waste basket.
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 McCarthy, Simplified. ( theophilusofgethsemane )
Suttree is much more simplistic than The Border Trilogy, and No Country for Old Men. Consequently, the language is not as beautiful. McCarthy, in writing Suttree, was only honing his skill towards greatness.
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