Suttree - Wikipedia Suttree From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Suttree First edition Author Cormac McCarthy Country United States Language English Genre Semi-autobiographical novel Publisher Random House Publication date May 1979 Media type Print (Hardcover) ISBN 0-679-73632-8 OCLC 26322333 Suttree is a semi-autobiographical novel by Cormac McCarthy, published in 1979. Set in Knoxville, Tennessee over a four-year period starting in 1950, the novel follows Cornelius Suttree, who has repudiated his former life of privilege to become a fisherman on the Tennessee River. The novel has a fragmented structure with many flashbacks and shifts in grammatical person. Suttree has been compared[1] to James Joyce's Ulysses, John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, and called "a doomed Huckleberry Finn"[2] by Jerome Charyn. Suttree was written over a 20-year span[3] and is a departure from McCarthy's previous novels, being much longer, more sprawling in structure, and perhaps his most humorous. Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Reception 3 References 4 External links Plot summary[edit] The novel begins with Suttree observing police as they pull a suicide victim from the river. Suttree is living alone in a houseboat, on the fringes of society on the Tennessee River, earning money by fishing for the occasional catfish. He has left a life of luxury, rejecting his parents' influence, and abandoning his wife and young son. Bridges over the Tennessee River that are featured in Suttree. A large cast of characters, largely composed of misfits and grotesques, is introduced, one of which is a dimwitted young man named Gene Harrogate, whom Suttree meets during a short stint in a work camp-style prison. Harrogate was sent to prison after being caught "violating" a farmer's watermelons. Suttree attempts to help Harrogate stay out of trouble after he is released, but this task proves to be in vain as Harrogate sets off on a series of misadventures, including using poisoned meat and a slingshot to kill bats ("flitter-mice" as Harrogate calls them) to earn a bounty on them, and using dynamite in an attempt to tunnel underneath the city and burgle the treasury. Other prominent characters are prostitutes, hermits, alcoholics, and an aged Geechee witch. His relationships with women all come to bad ends. One prostitute-girlfriend terminates the relationship in a moment of madness, smashing up the inside of their new car. He becomes involved with a teenage girl from a destitute family, but awakens in the night to find her crushed to death by a landslide that falls on their homeless encampment. Suttree was also married before the book begins with a woman he apparently met at university. He left his wife with a young son, who dies of an illness early on in the book. He watches the funeral from afar, and proceeds to bury the boy alone once the other mourners leave. Towards the novel's end, Suttree falls ill with typhoid fever and suffers a lengthy hallucination. This occurs after a black friend of Suttree is killed in a fight with the police and Harrogate is arrested in a failed robbery attempt. In the end, he feels his identity as an individual is affirmed by his time living in destitution, and he leaves Knoxville, seeking a new life. Reception[edit] Novelist Nelson Algren argued that the novel was "a memorable American comedy by an original storyteller."[4] Estimable reviews by such noted writers and literary critics as Anatole Broyard,[5] Jerome Charyn,[6] Guy Davenport,[7] and Shelby Foote[8] were followed by the Times Literary Supplement review which saw the novel as "Faulknerian in its gentle wryness, and a freakish imaginative flair reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor."[9] The influential profile writer and music journalist Stanley Booth observed that Suttree was "probably the funniest and most unbearably sad of McCarthy's books...which seem to me unsurpassed in American literature."[10] References[edit] ^ Richard B. Woodward, April 19, 1992, The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/mccarthy-venom.html ^ "Suttree". archive.nytimes.com. ^ "Cormac McCarthy Papers". www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu. July 7, 2020. ^ In Chicago Tribune Book World, January 28, 1979. ^ New York Times, January 20, 1979 ^ New York Times, February 18, 1979 ^ National Review, March 16, 1979 ^ Memphis Press-Scimitar, February 17, 1979 ^ Hislop, Andrew, TLS, no. 4490 (21–27 April 1989), p. 436. ^ Backcover blurb of 1979 USA first edition. External links[edit] Charyn, J., Suttree, New York Times Book Review, Feb 1979 "Searching for Suttree", by Wes Morgan (2004); photographs of some of the Knoxville locations featured in Suttree v t e Cormac McCarthy Bibliography Awards The Border Trilogy All the Pretty Horses (1992) The Crossing (1994) Cities of the Plain (1998) Other novels The Orchard Keeper (1965) Outer Dark (1968) Child of God (1973) Suttree (1979) Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West (1985) No Country for Old Men (2005) The Road (2006) Screenplays The Gardener's Son (1976) The Sunset Limited (2011) The Counselor (2013) Plays The Stonemason (1995) The Sunset Limited (2006) Nonfiction The Kekulé Problem (2017) Adaptations The Gardener's Son (1977) All the Pretty Horses (2000) No Country for Old Men (2007) The Road (2009) The Sunset Limited (2011) Child of God (2013) Related articles Anton Chigurh Judge Holden Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Suttree&oldid=1002767227" Categories: 1979 American novels American autobiographical novels Novels by Cormac McCarthy Culture of Knoxville, Tennessee Southern United States in fiction Tennessee River Novels set in Tennessee Fiction set in 1951 Novels set in Appalachia Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version Languages Español Français Italiano Edit links This page was last edited on 25 January 2021, at 23:40 (UTC). 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