A review by jnzllwgr
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

4.0

The consensus amongst intelligentsia seems to be that Suttree is a departure from the typical McCarthy novel, and I agree. It’s much longer and sprawling. The plot is, well, ‘thin’ might be the best way to describe it. It took about 200 of the 570 pages before I realized that reading it as a series of short stories or vignettes was the best way to manage it. The through line, of course, is that it follows our protagonist, Cornelius Suttree over about a 4 year period intersecting with a host of colorful others including a cast of supporting regulars. The lack of plot frees the reader from having to manage the wide ranging experiences and events and attempt to generate a meta narrative — perhaps, a bit like life? While I rarely enjoy long works, eventually I did warm to this one. Some of the situations McCarthy concocted were absolutely ridiculous and hilarious (very uncommon) and others absolutely tragic (more common). In both modes, in a vein like Genet or Bukowski (and H Miller?), CMcC challenges the structures that order society to inject nobility at every strata of economic or social status.