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I decided to read Suttree, an excellent novel, after reading an essay by Roger Ebert [0]. The essay is about his losing his ability to eat, taste, and speak due
by tehnub 4y ago
I decided to read Suttree, an excellent novel, after reading an essay by Roger Ebert [0]. The essay is about his losing his ability to eat, taste, and speak due to cancer, and how it has expanded his writing experience, and how he's ultimately content. He writes:
At first when I could not speak, I could not read easily, because sedation had undermined my attention span. I was depressed. I could turn on the TV, but why? My wife brought a wonderful DVD player to my hospital room, but I could not make myself watch movies. My life was stale and profitless. I would spend hours in a murky stupor. Knowing I had always been reading a book, my concerned wife began reading to me: Jane Austen, Charles Dickens.
Curiously, my love of reading finally returned after I picked up Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, a book I had already read not long before my first surgery. Now I read it two more times. I was not "reading the same book." I was reentering the same experience, the same occult and visionary prose, the life of Suttree so urgently evoked. As rarely before, a book became tactile to me. When Suttree on his houseboat pulled a cord and brought up a bottle of orange soda pop from the cool river, I savored it. I could no longer taste. I tasted it more sharply than any soda I've ever really had. When Suttree stopped at the bus station for a grilled cheese, I ate it, and the pickle, and drank the black coffee. I began to live through this desperate man's sad life.
[0]: https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/i-think-im-musing-my-mind https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/i-think-im-musing-my-...
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y agoBlood Meridian obviously and rightly gets the most attention, but Suttree is a sleeper favourite for a lot of people. There's something about the way McCarthy's descriptions of filth and muck and water and garbage blend into some of the funniest scenes many will read, the incredible rendering of the vernacular language from the Tennessee River, that is utterly arresting. Reading it feels like finding oneself in that space between wakefulness and dreaming, like you are occupying the main character's life entirely.
- briga 4y agoIt’s definitely his most personal book, he spent many years writing it and it feels like everything he had written before that point was just a prelude to Suttree. It also helps that it’s less unrelentingly bleak than his other work, for instance in the episode of the ‘moonlight melonmounter’. He’s always had an impressive way with words The Passenger is similar in tone but very different in style. Less of the stylized biblical poetic language and more focus on dialogue and character. Haven’t read the followup yet but I have a feeling things won’t be wrapped up neatly. They never are in McCarthy books
- tehnub 4y agoYes exactly, and I love the understated dignity the characters exhibit amidst the squalor. Throughout the story’s various episodes, described in some of the most lyrical writing I’ve ever read, you will be moved to cry, laugh, sigh, hope, wince, and smile, right alongside Suttree.
- prawn 4y agoI read Suttree a few years ago while on a long roadtrip around the American south and loved it. Thanks for that link - I can identify with his perspective. It is more about experiencing a world and a time than anything else. Just started his recent release, The Passenger. Years ago, I remember reading The Crossing to my young children, at least up until it starts to get a bit violent. I'd act out the bits where he'd wrangle the wolf, etc so they'd understand the action. They found it quite gripping and kept asking when we would continue.