Excerpts
a paragraph i’d kill to have written
He woke with the undersides of his eyelids inflamed by the high sun’s hammering, looked up to a bland and chinablue sky traversed by lightwires. A big lemoncolored cat watched him from the top of a woodstove. He turned his head to see it better and it elongated itself like hot taffy down the side of the stove and vanished headfirst in the earth without a sound. Suttree lay with his hands palm up at his sides in an attitude of frailty beheld and the stink that fouled the air was he himself. He closed his eyes and moaned. A hot breeze was coming across the barren waste of burnt weeds and rubble like a whiff of battlesmoke. Some starlings had alighted on a wire overhead in perfect progression like a piece of knotted string fallen slantwise. Crooning, hooked wings. Foul yellow mutes came squeezing from under their faned tails. He sat up slowly, putting a hand over his eyes. The birds flew. His clothes cracked with a thin dry sound and shreds of baked vomit fell from him.
Suttree, Cormac McCarthy
Tags: cormac mccarthy, suttree
suttree has the best train in literature
and also the best watermelon fucking
suttree has the best train in literature
and also the best watermelon fucking
yeah, excellent.
i remember so many small things from this book, like how he eats ground beef mixed with beans. made me want to live on a houseboat.
yeah, excellent.
i remember so many small things from this book, like how he eats ground beef mixed with beans. made me want to live on a houseboat.
i’d kill to write most any graph in Suttree
i’d kill to write most any graph in Suttree
this book is so awesome.
this book is so awesome.
Fuck I need to read this book don’t I?
1) “A big lemoncolored cat watched him from the top of a woodstove. He turned his head to see it better and it elongated itself like hot taffy down the side of the stove and vanished headfirst in the earth without a sound.”
2) “His clothes cracked with a thin dry sound and shreds of baked vomit fell from him.”
I like the vicinity of the contrast here between the “elongated hot taffy” and the “cracked shreds of baked vomit” Really cool.
1) “A big lemoncolored cat watched him from the top of a woodstove. He turned his head to see it better and it elongated itself like hot taffy down the side of the stove and vanished headfirst in the earth without a sound.”
2) “His clothes cracked with a thin dry sound and shreds of baked vomit fell from him.”
I like the vicinity of the contrast here between the “elongated hot taffy” and the “cracked shreds of baked vomit” Really cool.
yes, you really do
yes, you really do
the whole part that soon follows this paragraph is insane. suttree kind of reminds me of INTRUDERS IN THE DUST. only more pigeon eating and watermelon fucking. way more.
the whole part that soon follows this paragraph is insane. suttree kind of reminds me of INTRUDERS IN THE DUST. only more pigeon eating and watermelon fucking. way more.
Suttree is my favorite book by McCarthy and Suttree (the character) is my hero. I love how comic Suttree is, without sacrificing any of what makes the “darker” novels so great. And I agree with Mike about the train. The image of that train is almost as terrifying as the Judge in Blood Meridian.
This is what it would be like to live in a houseboat: “Through the thin and riven wall sounds of fish surging in the sinking skiff.”
And: “The shantyboat trembled slightly in the river and one of the steel drums beneath the floor expanded in the heat with a melancholy bong.”
You don’t even have to work to find amazing sentences in McCarthy. Every other one.
Suttree is my favorite book by McCarthy and Suttree (the character) is my hero. I love how comic Suttree is, without sacrificing any of what makes the “darker” novels so great. And I agree with Mike about the train. The image of that train is almost as terrifying as the Judge in Blood Meridian.
This is what it would be like to live in a houseboat: “Through the thin and riven wall sounds of fish surging in the sinking skiff.”
And: “The shantyboat trembled slightly in the river and one of the steel drums beneath the floor expanded in the heat with a melancholy bong.”
You don’t even have to work to find amazing sentences in McCarthy. Every other one.
This book is sitting next to my bed, and you’ve convinced me that I need to start it this very weekend.
This book is sitting next to my bed, and you’ve convinced me that I need to start it this very weekend.
mystery solved: “The sun’s a hammer.” (Infinite Jest)
mystery solved: “The sun’s a hammer.” (Infinite Jest)
I feel that. Most every sentence is worth killing or dying for
I feel that. Most every sentence is worth killing or dying for
there are moments in suttree where a sentence actually produces a vision in my head that is clearer than real life.
there are moments in suttree where a sentence actually produces a vision in my head that is clearer than real life.
One thing that is underrated about Suttree is how readable it is. The prose carries you along same as the river carries Suttree along. Other than Blood Meridian, McCarthy is really one of the most readable modernists, and I’m not complaining about Blood Meridian, which is probably his best book, it or Suttree.
One thing that is underrated about Suttree is how readable it is. The prose carries you along same as the river carries Suttree along. Other than Blood Meridian, McCarthy is really one of the most readable modernists, and I’m not complaining about Blood Meridian, which is probably his best book, it or Suttree.
i love when that happens
i love when that happens
Great point, Kyle. McCarthy, even in those early, supposedly more challenging, novels always seemed pretty readable, but Suttree seemed to kick that door completely open. I think he had the door most of the way open in Child of God, but the subject matter may not have allowed it to bang all the way open to the wall behind it.
A big thanks personally to Madison Smartt Bell for responding to a question in an old Michigan Quarterly Review about what contemporary authors should be being read more – if I recall, he also mentioned Vollman, but he suggested Child of God was the best American novel about necrophilia ever written. That (perhaps sadly), and the fact that Bell had been blurbing books that I was loving at that time, was enough to get me to search that book out, and then the other four he’d written at that time (late 1988) in their Ecco paperback versions and Suttree in the Vintage Contemporary series that was pretty hot at that time. While the other four certainly have their humor, Suttree allows its funny to be worn on the outside – you might actually catch yourself laughing out loud and not simply smiling to yourself as you might while reading his other early work.
It’s also the book that got McCarthy’s writing out of complete backwoods, possibly unfindable, Tennessee, which may allow for readers to feel it to be more accessible.
Great point, Kyle. McCarthy, even in those early, supposedly more challenging, novels always seemed pretty readable, but Suttree seemed to kick that door completely open. I think he had the door most of the way open in Child of God, but the subject matter may not have allowed it to bang all the way open to the wall behind it.
A big thanks personally to Madison Smartt Bell for responding to a question in an old Michigan Quarterly Review about what contemporary authors should be being read more – if I recall, he also mentioned Vollman, but he suggested Child of God was the best American novel about necrophilia ever written. That (perhaps sadly), and the fact that Bell had been blurbing books that I was loving at that time, was enough to get me to search that book out, and then the other four he’d written at that time (late 1988) in their Ecco paperback versions and Suttree in the Vintage Contemporary series that was pretty hot at that time. While the other four certainly have their humor, Suttree allows its funny to be worn on the outside – you might actually catch yourself laughing out loud and not simply smiling to yourself as you might while reading his other early work.
It’s also the book that got McCarthy’s writing out of complete backwoods, possibly unfindable, Tennessee, which may allow for readers to feel it to be more accessible.