Cormac McCarthy Discussing Suttree
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2024
- Today, we will examine one of the only times Cormac McCarthy has written about one of his works! While applying for a Guggenheim fellowship, McCarthy wrote a statement about his 1979 novel Suttree!
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McCarthy is a fantastic writer...may he rest in peace....
Just finished Suttree for the first time. Great video, thanks for sharing. Loved this novel most of everything I've read from McCarthy.
Agreed! It's a beautiful one
No time to watch this rn, but I'm an ardent supporter, Ian. Keep it up 💯
Shoutout to Ernest the Croffeek Fiend!
I just love the characters in this book.
Another author may have made these characters seem pathetic or worthy of scorn.
Cormac really gave them dignity and substance.
I don't think McCarthy stopped being a prophet in his final years so much as gave up the attempt to communicate his prophecies. Ties back to your Cormac vs. Wittgenstein video.
Great work, as always!
Love this video! You've got so many. Love the in-depth knowledge, passion and analysis. Have subscribed :)
Ayeee! Let's go! Thank you! There are I think 100 other McCarthy videos so have fun!
I appreciate this video so much. Thank you, as always!
Thank you! BOOM!
I'm about to read Suttree for the first time! Great video, Ian.
Judging from all your past comments you will love it Seth! Has some very esoteric elements to it!
You still reading? Suttree was my favorite for some reason.
brotha, idk if you will see this. But, on a livestream some time ago I remember that you talked about your two favorite McCarthy quotes. One was from child of god. It really struck me and I've been thinking about it since. However, I can't find it or remember the exact quote to find it lol. Could you email me if you remember (if it was even you who posted them.) Thanks! contact@writeconscious.com
am I able to find the original letter online? i'd like to read it for myself.
Did you visit the McCarthy papers archive? Have you read the Suttree drafts? Would love to know.
Yes and Yes!
@@WriteConscious awesome, would love to pick your brain about the whole experience.
Will make a video on it sometime. Honestly didn't get as much as I wanted out of it. This was years ago and in a time in my academic career where McCarthy was on the backburner. I wasn't doing serious research and looking for things. More of just reading and browsing for fun. There are also within one hour of each other at San Marcos and UT so many different author archives. I spent more time looking at David Foster Wallace's heavy marking of most of McCarthy's novels in his archive than with McCarthy's work lol. That's partly because DWF was a lit crit genius and cracked the code to a lot of what McCarthy was doing. In the McCarthy archive you might spend twenty minutes looking through grocery lists or really random shit lol.
Want to go back this year. Am starting a Substack soon to fundraise to go back for a week or two in October. There are a couple things I know I need to pinpoint to share to the community. Suttree being one of them.
Blood Meridian and "Suttree" both incredible novels from one man's creative mind....
Yes!
Is there any way to see the Guggenheim application statement on Suttree in full?
Gotta go to the archive. But, I'll get back to you on that. May have a colleague that has the entire thing saved.
my favorite by CM, may reread it soon
Worth it!
Gonna just rant about McCarthy hold up.
I have read almost all McCarthy's books and a decade ish later am reading them all again. Just on chapter 2 of Suttree now.
McCarthy captures something in his novels that I can't describe. You mention that he is portraying and exploring the soul of humanity and it's probably as close to a description as I can make but it sounds too airy-fairy.
Even in some of his darker books like Outer Dark there is still something beautiful about it all that I can't place.
The way he captures life. It's humanity, it's nature, with all the beautiful landscapes and setting he describes then juxtaposed against some sort of human violence or tragedy yet it all seems beautiful.
Like how Job praises God even when God let's the devil ruin Job's life to test him. It's still a joy to be alive despite it all.
He always sets the context, or suggests, that it has and always will be the way it is. The way he describes the Tinker's body decomposing in Outer Dark, exploring the passage of time. The skull being overgrown and forgotten to time. He does this throughout his books in different ways and it's just great.
He is the only fiction author I read. I only read history books or the bible. Fiction doesn't capture me at all, as it isn't real and doesn't matter. Except McCarthy. He portrays a sort of beautiful yet brutal, realism? that captures my imagination.
Something that I always enjoy in his books are when people share food together. The coffee, the beans, the tortillas, the mystery meat, the idle conversation or just the silent company as they eat. If you like eating beans, tortillas and coffee then the Border Trilogy is the literature for you!
It has really made me appreciate breaking bread with people a lot more. Even just a basic dinner with my wife, sat at the table on a work night too tired to talk really. It's nice to share bread and company because out their someone is at a fire in the wilderness eating mystery meat sat across from evil itself.
I like what you are getting at. You describe McCarthy as someone spinning his stories across from you at a campfire. Something real. That is how he should be viewed as I think.
Suttree is my favourite book and I think it is McCarthy's best. Blood Meridian is great and has a pretty underrated sense of humour on its own, but Suttree has more humanity to it. I love how Suttree will decline a drink at times and you get disappointed as a reader when he declines. It is like you are a participating in the attempt to get him to debase himself.
Yes!
Suttree is his best
Yup!
Belongs on the highest shelf of American literature.
I just finished Suttree! I liked it overall but I feel like I needed more of his backstory, I kept expecting some explanation or even flashbacks of his old upper class life that he abandoned but of course it never comes. Without it his suffering in the present just doesn't seem to have context, it's just about the inherent loneliness of human existence. If McCarthy's point is that living a poor life is better or more fulfilling, it's a bit too subtle for me to see it. I also don't really see the all humanity is one angle either, in particular I'm thinking of when he goes on a bender with the shellfish farmer and they abandon his whole family to hunger and deprivation. It is an interesting theory though and I do see it to some extent, I'd like to hear more of your ideas on it!
It is all very subtle. But, I agree. He helps screw over the shellfisher's family, then proceeds to sleep with his underage daughter, and then dips when they all die lol.
It's shit that happened. No hidden meaning. It happened.
I do not think that is what Sutrree is about at all. I think it a story about self affirmation. By the end of the book Suttree starts to care about himself again and literally avoids a dog of the Huntsman at the very end. Throughout most of the book Suttree seems to be in a fugue state and he manages to break out of it.
@@odoaceroftheneoromanempire7178 that's how i interpreted it too. By the end of the novel, all of his friends have succumbed to the aimless debauchery of such a life, they have succumbed to the "huntsman". Suttree was in fact in a fugue state like many people experience in their twenties, one filled with drinking and sex and generally unsustainable acts. The huntsman and his hounds roam the Earth, killing those who don't escape these self-destructive cycles.
@@stevowilliams8279 But does he call his trade to each?
Its been... a decade since I read it, but did Suttree try to kill himself? What was the scene about him taking that medicine stuff with the black lady?
He gets a bad fever and she is a weird healer.
I don't think he ever attempts suicide, I believe he even says something along the lines of "I will never bring on oblivion myself". The scene with the black lady seemed to be a drug experience similar to the tribal practices of taking ayahuasca. I'm sure you can find information on these African rituals being brought over into America.
This is actually you describing Suttree lol
I listened to the sutree audiobook til the end hoping to find out why he hated his mom. The only moral of the story is. Drinking is bad , it's a cold world, and only the worst kind of dirt bag (like sutree) would abandon their own child in this cold world
One does have to ask themselves after reading his books , his ties to Maxwell and Epstein and how many references he makes to underage girls....I love his writing but that can't be ignored
I think it's pronounced SUE-tree...
Nope, he wrote in a letter that its SUT
What were your thoughts on his new “intelectual” novels? I thought they were terrible. I prefer the anti intellectual McCarthy, the man of trees and rivers with old Celts blood in his skull.