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Cormac McCarthy has the dubious distinction in my library of producing the most beautiful English I've ever read in service of such unrelentingly dismal stories
by Baeocystin 4y ago
Cormac McCarthy has the dubious distinction in my library of producing the most beautiful English I've ever read in service of such unrelentingly dismal stories that I don't feel that I have the stomach to read them again. I admit this is a me problem, but still.
I've only read The Road and Blood Meridian, though. Does Suttree follow the same pattern?
[edit] Thank you for the answers!
- ycombinete 4y agoAll the Pretty Horses isn’t all that bleak. More of a western Bildungsroman.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y agoNot really. Suttree is not exactly a happy story, but it has beautiful prose descriptions of filth and the Tennessee river, great rendering of vernacular language and culture, and some hilarious laugh out loud segments (the watermelon incident, for instance). It's probably the least dismal of his books, tone-wise.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoThey're all sort of heavy and with grim parts but I think the two you already read are the most disturbing by far. There are some parts of his other books as intense as those two but they aren't pervasive.
- brudgers 4y agoSuttree is semi-autobiographical. There is less violence and more drinking than his other novels. It doesn’t really investigate morality in the ways most of his novels do. It is the last of his early novels set in Appalachia.