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/lit/ - Literature

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17533186 No.17533186 [Reply] [Original]

I just finished this. This is a masterpiece.

>> No.17533190

>>17533186
Favorite character?

>> No.17533214

>>17533186
I just read this about a month ago, quite good, much better than Blood Meridian. Look forward to rereading it someday down the line.

>> No.17533376

>>17533186
Yeah, it's very impressive. I dislike Suttree himself more than I suspect you're supposed to, but the writing is just superb.

>> No.17533391

>>17533376
I think you are supposed to dislike him, but he has his moments. It's McCarthy's way of punishing and owning up to his mistakes.

>> No.17533393

>>17533186
Just finished reading your post. This is a masterpiece.

>> No.17533564

>>17533186
Anyone read Outer Dark? Was thinking about getting it.

>> No.17533594

>>17533564
I've read all his books and all are worth buying and reading. Outer Dark is all sorts of grim but it's good still. A pretty quick read after Suttree, too. But anon, just read them chronologically.

>> No.17533614

>>17533594
Ok thanks anon

>> No.17533686

>>17533564
Reading it right now, it's fucking great. It's the old testament equivalent of his oeuvre, a lot of his later work has origins in it.

>> No.17533693

>>17533391
Yes, of course Suttree is sympathetic in many ways. He's not actually malicious. He's an intelligent and basically good-natured man who has completely given up, physically and morally.

He reminds me of Terry Lennox, a character in The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler. Lennox is a charming alcoholic who becomes friends with Philip Marlowe. He fakes his own death and later shows up again but Marlowe doesn't want to know him any more:

---

"I'm not sore at you. You're just that kind of guy. For a long time I couldn't figure you at all. You had nice ways and nice qualities, but there was something wrong. You had standards and you lived up to them, but they were personal. They had no relation to any kind of ethics or scruples. You were a nice guy because you had a nice nature. But you were just as happy with mugs or hoodlums as with honest men. Provided the hoodlums spoke fairly good English and had fairly acceptable table manners. You're a moral defeatist. I think maybe the war did it and again I think maybe you were born that way."

---

"Moral defeatist" strikes me as a perfect phrase for Suttree. (Although maybe by the end of the book he's sort of pulled himself together.)

>> No.17533753

>>17533190
Harrogate is the easy answer. But it's Suttree. I've never identified with a character more than him.

>> No.17533761

>>17533564
Yes, read it.

>> No.17533781

>>17533753
I wrote a bit about Suttree in a thread about high-IQ characters. He's an amazing achievement because it's clear how sharp he is even though he never really says or does anything spectacular. He's just slumming it, fitting in with all the oddballs & derelicts & junkies & so on, but he's obviously a cut above them all. He has an extra later of ironic detachment; he can laugh at himself and his situation. This is how a high-IQ author writes a high-IQ character. It's the exact opposite of the Hollywood idea of a genius, where they just have the guy reciting pages from the encyclopedia or something, but it's all completely unbelievable.

>> No.17533812

>>17533781
Suttree is based on McCarthy himself, so no wonder he nailed it.

>> No.17534110

>>17533564
Yes, the three books before Suttree are all good

>> No.17534460

>>17533186
Read this for the first time my senior year in high school and one more time since. It was the book that made me like reading again for the first time since I was a kid, I think it's singularly responsible for my becoming a voracious reader and for making me want to write myself. Been at least 3 or 4 years since I've last read it, I'd really like to return to it at some point.

>> No.17534543

>>17533186
"someone's been fuckin' my watermelons"

>> No.17534732
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17534732

>>17533186
Which parts did you like the most?
For me it's the trip into the forest, visiting the uncle/the photo album, and the bat shenanigans.
And of course the intro letter. The intro is just McCarthy dunking on readers who are expecting just another southern novel by turning his McCarthy-isms up to 11.

>> No.17534754

when did mccarthy become such pleb bait?

>> No.17534889

What does the last paragraph mean?

>> No.17534908

>>17534889
Scratch that. What does Fly them. mean?

>> No.17534950

>>17534908
"Fly them" means "run away from them".

e.g. Macbeth:

BANQUO: It will be rain tonight.

FIRST MURDERER: Let it come down.

[ATTACKS BANQUO]

BANQUO: O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!
Thou mayst revenge—O slave!

>> No.17535036

>>17534754
Wut?

>> No.17535909

>>17534950
Interesting. I was under the impression that it was a command, as in talking to the huntsman, assuming that the huntsman was the one with the ability to "fly" or "send out" the hounds. I've always gotten the point of the novel, but I was confused by that specific wording. "Fly them" is then I assume a direct message to the reader.

>> No.17535957

>>17535909
I always thought of 'fly them' as a call to fly your flag and claim your life. Suttree, on some level, is about a man who does not compromise his freedom for anything including death.

>> No.17535998

>>17535909
Yes, it's talking to the reader.

>> No.17536026

Frends why don't I like american novels? I started orange clockwork from the lit starterpack but it's language cringed me out
Whereas I love reading russian and Japanese literature
Translated obv
I also like british and irish way of writing
Why is american lit cringey to me frens

>> No.17536038

>>17533214
>much better than Blood Meridian.

It is, but the kiddos here are a lot more enthralled by dumb violence than literary arts.

>> No.17536039

>>17535957
I'm the anon above who knew he wasn't getting it, I was just confused about the language. "them" definitely refers to the hounds

>> No.17536054

>>17536026
Yeah I'm thinking it's bait

>> No.17536068

>>17536026
Clockwork Orange was written by a Brit, Einstein.

>> No.17536109
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17536109

gonna give it a try

>> No.17536135

>>17536026
I was writing a reply, was about to send it but deleted it completely. When I started looking at my library I noticed that most of the American authors' work I read I like it. There's just some that feel cringey to me, just some of them.

>> No.17537594

bump

>> No.17538281

>>17533186
Don't know if it was due to the semi-autobiographical aspect of it, but the characters felt so viscerally real.

>> No.17538284

>>17533564
reading it now. really good.

>> No.17538587

>>17538281
Many of them probably were, more or less

>> No.17538725

>>17533781
Hm, good post anon.

>> No.17539268

>>17538281
J bone was based on McCarthy's friend jim long

>> No.17539320

>>17536038
This is just wrong. I like Suttree too but BM is far from just gratuitous violence.

>> No.17539551

>>17533186
Which one of you has been fucking my melons?

>> No.17539651

>>17533186
>>17533214
>>17533393
>>17533753
>>17536038
BASED. I love seeing Suttree bros on here. BM fags are so intolerable

>> No.17539652

>>17539551
That would be me.

>> No.17539655

>>17539551
Harrogate the Melon Mounter

>> No.17539878

>>17539651
I had a brief phase where I attempted to understand the BM fags love of it and discuss it with them. Every attempt, no matter how I worded it or how I phrased it ended with pseud or filtered, never once got more than a one word response.

>> No.17539895

>>17539878
I honestly didn't even care to finish BM. I read Suttree first - not even knowing anything about mccarthy, I just liked the first page - and I think I set the bar too high by doing this

>> No.17539908

>>17539895
BM was the first McCarthy I read and almost the last, some anon posted the first page of Suttree and that was enough to get me to give him another go. Not sure if I will read more of him, I don't have strong feeling about it one way or the other and I have plenty on my reading list already.

>> No.17539931

>>17539908
oh shoot was that the guy saying he couldn't even write one good page but mccarthy writes like pic related for 350 pages?? That'd be crazy if so because I'm a tourist when it comes to /lit/

>> No.17539944

It's also the McCarthy that most clearly betrays his debt to Joyce.

>> No.17539949

>>17539931
Nah, just some random unrelated thread of people posting random shit.

>> No.17539976

>>17539878
There have been tons of threads on BM with genuine discussion. Are you sure you didn't just post reactionary posts shitting on it?

>> No.17539985

>>17533564
I must be the only one on this board who recognizes it as his worst novel

Which is still a good novel btw

>> No.17540024

>>17539976
I never said nor implied there were not such threads. I stated what I liked and disliked and asked questions, in threads with good discussion. Response was much like yours, assumption.

>> No.17540628

>>17539985
His worst is the first one desu, which is still pretty good. Interesting structure and magnificent prose but thematically and plotwise it's his least interesting book.

>> No.17540637
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17540637

>>17539931
i was happy with how that thread went. very comfy thread

>> No.17541112

>>17539985
>>17540628
No lads, that would be Cities of the Plain. Which is still a very good etc.

>> No.17541179

>>17541112
mmmmmm, that's certainly a contender for sure
>>17540628
i ended up liking that one a bit more when i re-read it after going through some secondary literature that situated it in the romantic tradition. with outer dark i feel like he executed on the gothic / gnostic stuff far more profoundly later in the crossing. although i guess you could also say that ATPH is a better romantic entry than Orchard Keeper was

>> No.17541234

>>17541179
I see your point. The symbolism was too obtuse for me where I had to look up to know what the themes even were. It's one of the few books that I have read solely because how good the prose was.

>> No.17542318

>>17536038
>Tfw some greasy faggot tells me I'm too dumb

>> No.17542598

>>17539944
anon explain more

>> No.17542640

>>17542598
not him but its all about a guy hanging out with his town's colorful characters, drinking and getting into nonsense, and the prose is probably mccarthy's most modernist

>> No.17542819

>>17533693
Have you watched Five Easy Pieces? It's a classic Jack Nicholson movie. The main character is a lot like Suttree, McCarthy even said so himself in a NYT interview with the Coen brothers
The movie is worth a watch

>> No.17542834

Was my favorite McCarthy but now after rereading BM I appreciate BM a lot more. I'll reread suttree too probably

>> No.17542839

>>17542819
Yes indeed; I think I said in a thread a while back that Suttree is basically Five Easy Pieces crossed with Under Milk Wood. (The opening two pages of Suttree are almost an exact copy of the opening of UMW).

>> No.17543250

>>17539651
They're both good homes
>>17539944
That's a stretch
>>17539985
Well it's better than The Orchard Keeper, and I really like that one. I haven't read Cities Of The Plain or his 00s novels so I can't say