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A review by savaging
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
4.0
This book reminded me of what I love best in a Camus novel or a Johnny Cash song. The unwashed masses and lumpenproles get to be the center of the story. We get to love the fuck-ups, see how lively are the abject, begin to find their worldview more sane and less cruel than the dominant culture's.
Also like Camus and Cash, this is mostly about white men. In all its many pages the book doesn't pass the Bechdel Test. Whenever young women are mentioned I started cringing. Lots of tired tropes. Heaps of misogyny. Fortunately there are a few old women who get to be just regular (peripheral) people. There is a powerful critique of racism (and a delicious theft of a cop car), but you can't quite shake the sense that McCarthy thinks real stories are about white men.
This will ruin the book for many. It didn't ruin it for me. I just loved these characters so much and the filth they are wading through. I couldn't help it.
Also like Camus and Cash, this is mostly about white men. In all its many pages the book doesn't pass the Bechdel Test. Whenever young women are mentioned I started cringing. Lots of tired tropes. Heaps of misogyny. Fortunately there are a few old women who get to be just regular (peripheral) people. There is a powerful critique of racism (and a delicious theft of a cop car), but you can't quite shake the sense that McCarthy thinks real stories are about white men.
This will ruin the book for many. It didn't ruin it for me. I just loved these characters so much and the filth they are wading through. I couldn't help it.