The River of Sewers, Stars, Life, and Death

In another time and place Cornelius "Buddy" Suttree might have been a fisher of men, but in 1951 Knoxville he's a fisher of carp and catfish caught in the cloacal Tennessee River, into which the city dwellers dump sewage, condoms, corpses, and garbage. Suttree, living alone on a ramshackle houseboat, has attended university and is intelligent, generous, and loyal, and yet he wants nothing to do with his mainstream family and especially with his elite father and prefers to live among social outcasts--alcoholic derelicts, homeless old timers, blind beggars, colorful catamites, profane prostitutes, smiling brawlers, crazed prophets, and even a moonlight melonmounter--all without any regard to skin color, being on good terms with everyone from "white trash" to African and Native Americans, all of whom possess an appeal, integrity, and savor missing from "normal" white society. Apart from his family, the only people who repulse him are policemen. Suttree often passively accompanies his rowdy friends on drunken binges that end with vomit and blackout if not with violence and robbery. More than once he thinks something like, "My life is ghastly," but he seems unable to do anything constructive with it.

Despite that character sketch, Cormac McCarthy's novel Suttree (1979) is not only bleak and unpleasant; it is also beautiful, vibrant, and meaningful. It is also very funny, unlike The Road. Suttree's friends say and do hilarious (off-color) things, and McCarthy's writing is often wickedly playful. More, his writing pulses with a terse, knotty, sensual, and biblical poetry. His diction ranges from the scientific to the scatological and from the slangy to the apocalyptic, his similes and metaphors are striking and original, his ear for dialogue is acute and comical, and his grotesque characters are compelling. The story, three years of Suttree's life on or near the river, mostly in Knoxville, is episodic, unlike No Country for Old Men. While the majority of the narrative is told from Suttree's point of view, an amusing minority is told from that of his foil, the 18-year-old Gene Harrogate, the "pervert of a botanical bent," "the moonlight melonfancier," the Country Mouse who becomes the City Rat, the amoral and innocent creator of cracked get-rich-quick schemes whom Suttree meets in the prison workhouse.

Suttree resembles Huckleberry Finn, in its southern river setting and outsider protagonist. It also resembles Faulkner, in its American gothic, decayed south and fallen family themes and rich language. And it resembles Ulysses, in celebrating and lamenting a city in all its sordid and vibrant qualities in a style intoxicated with language. But Suttree is very McCarthy in its vernacular poetry, its range in focus from insect to universe, and its themes about identity, place, love, life, and death. I chuckled in appreciation at his "unaccountable" phrases and scenes and reveled in the foul and sublime pleasure of it all. Blood Meridian affected me similarly, but the tone in that novel is bleaker and darker, the violence more graphic and ubiquitous, the similes more unrelievedly apocalyptic and portentous.

Richard Poe's gravelly and compassionate voice is perfectly suited to reading McCarthy's prose, especially during those intense moments when he sounds nearly stunned by the uncanny scenes or extreme similes or biblical-epic-poetic prose he's reading. And without straining for women's voices or white or black southern voices of the various characters, Poe highlights their different personalities.

The novel is long. By the end I had begun to experience difficulty in digesting such rich prose, and to suspect that not all of Suttree's near-death hallucinatory episodes are necessary. But I enjoyed most of the novel, and fans of McCarthy or of sordid, epic, and male Americana that shoves the soul into the gutter one moment and sends it out beyond the stars the next should read Suttree.

Great scenes in Suttree: Harrogate violating shapely watermelons, going drunk to dinner in the workhouse, and diabolically plotting to dig into the banks of Knoxville from the caves underlying the city; Suttree attending a sad funeral, visiting the Catholic church of his youth, looking at his aunt's family photos, winnowing himself in green mountains, getting an earful from the "viperous evangelist," and saying "Gene, you're crazy" to Harrogate; the goat man arriving in town in just spring; the Red Reverend preaching in the gutter.

And here is a collage of choice lines:

Suttree went out through the kitchen, and through the ruined garden to the old road.
Reprobate scion of doomed Saxon clans, out of a rainy day, dream surmised.

A thousand hours or more he's spent in this sad chapel he. Spurious acolyte, dreamer impenitent. Before this tabernacle where the wise high God himself lies sleeping in his golden cup.

He fell to studying the variety of moths pressed to the glass…. Supplicants of light. Here one tinted easter pink along the edges of his white fur belly and wings. Eyes black, triangular, a robber's mask. Furred and wizened face not unlike a monkey's and wearing a windswept ermine shako. Suttree bent to see him better. What do you want?

And what could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream?

He found pale newts with enormous eyes and held them cold and quailing in his palm and watched their tiny hearts hammer under the blue and visible bones of their thimblesized briskets. They gripped his finger childlike with their tiny spatulate palps.

On these nights he'd see stars come adrift and rifle hot and dying across the face of the firmament. The enormity of the universe filled him with a strange sweet woe.

The sun don't shine on the same dog's ass everyday.
I hope not.

But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse...

The color of this life is water.

139 people found this helpful

Absurd Gout of Hallelucinationatory Crazy

It is amazing how McCarthy can find the lyrical beauty in an absurd gout of hallelucinationatory crazy. Absolutely one of my favorite novels of all time (nearly stripped McCarthy's Blood Meridian of its bloody title). Reads like Steinbeck wrote a play based on a David Lynch film about a nightmare child of Fellini and Faulkner that is now worshiped as scripture by pimps, prostitutes, grifters, fishmongers and of course fishermen.

At times Suttree hits me like a complicated musical chorus, a surreal painting, and a ballet of misfits and grotesques, all chopped up and swirling in a dirty river's refuse. I won't look at a summer watermelon with the same degree of innocence again.

67 people found this helpful

Challenging Read/Listen, Narrator Outstanding

Where does Suttree rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Very near the top. I've long been a Cormac McCarthy fan, and this was a challenging book, but well worth the effort and trips to the dictionary. Richard Poe does so much to bring the characters to life, each with a unique and wonderfully authentic Southern accent.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Gene Harrogate because I also love watermelons. You have to read the book to understand.

Which scene was your favorite?

Too many to choose from--t's a very episodic book--full of interesting, quirky scenes.

If you could take any character from Suttree out to dinner, who would it be and why?

Suttree. He would be a fascinating conversationalist, I'd love to find out what the problem he had with his father was, and he could probably use a good meal.

Any additional comments?

If you are willing to give it the attention you need to, this book will repay your efforts in ways you can't begin to imagine. The world of 1950s Knoxville comes to life and the characters flourish with the voice acting of Richard Poe in ways I didn't think possible. Southern accents are easy to get wrong, often becoming cartoonish or all sounding alike. Poe was able to infuse all of the characters with a life and voice of their own. Brilliant.

65 people found this helpful

Glorious Flotsam & Jetsam on the River Styx

I picture McCarthy, pen in hand like a sorcerer's wand, masterfully hurling words, falling precisely into magic. Reading McCarthy is like Dorothy opening the door of her impacted little shades of gray house onto the colorful world beyond the rainbow; his genius leaves me speechless, (McCarthy is the author I would most like to meet--and I would be speechless). It does have the Faulkner vibe, as well as Steinbeck, James Joyce, Wolfe; I'm reading O'Connor now and feel a connection there also--but in my mind, McCarthy is peerless.

Suttree is the most distant from McCarthy's other novels. You read or listen and the story moves around you, revealed through the characters, the conversations, the day to day; it is macabre, distorted, dark, and humorous and warm--richer as it goes. Minds better than mine would have to explain the story--I still get a different view each time I take this heady trip. Suttree, Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, and Gardner's Nickel Mountain are books I return to, *palette cleansers*, because I read some things that leave a film around this already mired little brain, but this was my first audio experience of Suttree. Listening, his words ...yeggs, midnight melonmounters, trestle trains that go by, go by, go by, became poetry--I think this may be may favorite way to experience this book. Like a warped Twainian river ride, river rats and all, with Hieronymus Bosch at the oars.

53 people found this helpful

Faulkner Came Back to Life and Wrote Another Novel

First of all, I'm intimidated to even review a Cormac McCarthy book. That being said, if you've read other McCarthy novels, you pretty much know what to expect. The writing is....awe inspiring. I listened to the first chapter 4 times before I even continued.

I was really feeling a strong Faulkner vibe, from the beautiful prose to the surreal gothic Old-South setting. As when reading Faulkner, I sometimes had to snap myself back to the story-line after realizing that I was drifting lazily along the surface of the lovely descriptive passages.

So, if you love and appreciate good literature, get this novel. If you love it, but don't like the idea of rolling in the deep for 20 hours, get The Road instead. Personally, I savored all 20 hours, and the story was enjoyable as well. Mostly pretty dark and intense, but a few hilarious moments and characters that had me laughing out loud. I highly recommend for those who are looking for a big ribeye steak of a book.

50 people found this helpful

Beautiful prose, but ultimately disappointing

Any additional comments?

As a fan of McCarthy's other work I was looking forward to Suttree. Suttree is an unusual book as much of the content (every second or third sentence!) is comprised of beautiful descriptors, poetic metaphor and simile, most of which is irrelevant to the "story". Which takes me to the big problem with Suttree as a novel. There is no story to tell, no plot. Just a guy wondering through his alcohol-addled version of life. Not much happens. Yes, we do gain an appreciation for the particular subculture that Suttree finds himself within, and for that you can appreciate McCarthy's efforts. The narrative jumps around, reducing any coherent semblance of story that may exist. The ending isn't really an ending but just the point where the author decided to stop writing. I really tried to like Suttree, but this is not anywhere near McCarthy's best work. It comes across as a vehicle for exercising his creating juices, but unfortunately that creativity didn't extend to plot.

30 people found this helpful

No story, as others note

As others have noted, there is no real story here, just an author with a dictionary for a foundation of vocabulary knowledge and the poetic means to use it in a hypnotic sense. Blood Meridian pulls both the above concept and a great story together that allow McCarthy's words to spill out gore onto the page in tantric swipes of page turning horror and interest. This, while still along the same lines as that, fails to do so since the story just kind of mimics the flow of a river by meandering around bends until it just ends. Simply put, there is no driving force, no goal or underlining current that is there for the main character to achieve.

Did I like it?
Even with the above.... Yes.

Would I recommend it?
Yes. It is worth the listen just to see/hear a truly great writer flinging massive amounts of talent out across the blank page.

18 people found this helpful

Most intense novel I have experienced in years

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

If you are a fan of Faulkner, Steinbeck, Williams this is a most logical and welcome progression.

16 people found this helpful

Perfect narration & wonderful imagery..but no plot

I recommend this audio book to anyone that would like to get lost in quality writing and narration. However, if the reader needs a plot, then skip it!

14 people found this helpful

Blown away by it's simple complexity

Would you listen to Suttree again? Why?

Yes. Because the combination of Richard Poe and Cormac McCarthy is a perfect combination. I've already listened to Blood Meridian several times and I'm sure this book will require several listens. The simplest observations of the surroundings in this book are poetic and strangely familiar.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Harrogate. A character I will never forget and who reminds me to never underestimate anyone.

Which scene was your favorite?

Too many to list

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

"This movie will suck, because it's impossible to recreate the feel of the book"

Any additional comments?

Just get it already...

10 people found this helpful