Editing Suttree

{{Short description|1979 novel by Cormac McCarthy}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{Infobox book|<!-- See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels]] or [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Books]] -->
| name              = Suttree
| title_orig        = 
| translator        = 
| image             = Suttree - Cormac McCarthy.jpg
| caption           = First edition
| author            = [[Cormac McCarthy]]
| illustrator       = 
| cover_artist      = 
| country           = United States
| language          = English
| series            = 
| genre             = [[Autofiction]]
| publisher         = [[Random House]]
| release_date      = May 1979
| english_release_date = 
| media_type        = Print ([[hardcover]])
| pages             = 471 (paperback)
| isbn              = 0-679-73632-8
| oclc              = 26322333
| preceded_by       = 
| followed_by       = 
| set_in            = 1950s [[Knoxville, Tennessee]]
}}
'''''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 [[flashback (narrative)|flashbacks]] and shifts in [[grammatical person]]. ''Suttree'' has been compared<ref>{{Cite web|title=The New York Times: Book Review Search Article|url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/mccarthy-venom.html|access-date=2021-05-11|website=archive.nytimes.com}}</ref> to [[James Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' and [[John Steinbeck]]'s ''[[Cannery Row (novel)|Cannery Row]]'', and called "a doomed ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn|Huckleberry Finn]]''"<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/mccarthy-suttree.html|title=Suttree|website=archive.nytimes.com}}</ref> by [[Jerome Charyn]]. ''Suttree'' was written over a 20-year span<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu/research/a-z/mccarthypapers.html|title=Cormac McCarthy Papers|date=July 7, 2020|website=www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu}}</ref> and is a departure from McCarthy's previous novels, being much longer, more sprawling in structure, and perhaps his most humorous.

==Plot summary==
The novel begins with Suttree observing police pull a suicide victim from the river. Suttree lives 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 abandoned his wife and young son.
[[File:Knoxville bridges.jpg|thumb|left|Bridges over the Tennessee River that are featured in ''Suttree''.]]
A large cast of characters, largely composed of [[wiktionary:misfit|misfit]]s and [[grotesque#In literature|grotesque]]s, 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 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 (reward)|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. Prior to the beginning of the book, Suttree was also married to 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==
Novelist [[Nelson Algren]] argued that the novel was "a memorable American comedy by an original storyteller."<ref>In ''Chicago Tribune Book World'', January 28, 1979.</ref> Reviews by writers and literary critics such as [[Anatole Broyard]],<ref>''New York Times'', January 20, 1979</ref> [[Jerome Charyn]],<ref>''New York Times'', February 18, 1979</ref> [[Guy Davenport]],<ref>''National Review'', March 16, 1979</ref> and [[Shelby Foote]]<ref>''Memphis Press-Scimitar'', February 17, 1979</ref> were followed by the ''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'' review which saw the novel as "[[William Faulkner|Faulknerian]] in its gentle wryness, and a freakish imaginative flair reminiscent of [[Flannery O'Connor]]."<ref>Hislop, Andrew, ''TLS'', no. 4490 (21–27 April 1989), p. 436.</ref> The 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."<ref>Backcover blurb of 1979 USA first edition.</ref> Late in life, film critic [[Roger Ebert]] wrote, "I began to live through this desperate man's sad life."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Ebert |first1=Roger |title=I think I'm musing my mind |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/i-think-im-musing-my-mind |date=24 October 2008}}</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
*[https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/mccarthy-suttree.html Charyn, J., Suttree, ''New York Times Book Review'', Feb 1979]
*[http://web.utk.edu/~wmorgan/Suttree/suttree.htm "Searching for Suttree", by Wes Morgan (2004)]; photographs of some of the Knoxville locations featured in ''Suttree''

{{Cormac McCarthy}}

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:1979 American novels]]
[[Category:American autobiographical novels]]
[[Category:Novels by Cormac McCarthy]]
[[Category:Culture of Knoxville, Tennessee]]
[[Category:Southern United States in fiction]]
[[Category:Tennessee River]]
[[Category:Novels set in East Tennessee]]
[[Category:Fiction set in 1951]]
[[Category:Novels set in Appalachia]]