suttree
2nd String
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2011
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Suttree has often been mistaken for a combination of SU + "tree", apparently with an extra T thrown in for good measure. This is not why I chose the handle. Rather, it's the name of one of the finest books I've ever read. Many consider it Cormac McCarthy's magnum opus, a semi-autobiographical book written during a ~20-year span, containing some of the best writing I've encountered. Frequently hilarious but sometimes achingly sad. A wild array of characters strewn about the seediest parts of Knoxville. I highly recommend it to every one of you. This is the same author who wrote All the Pretty Horses, Blood Meridian, The Road, No Country for Old Men, and several other excellent works.
Here is the first part of the prologue, offering the reader an introduction to the shores of the Tennessee River in a deeply neglected and depressed part of Knoxville. Calm your mind for a minute and take it in:
Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.
Old stone walls unplumbed by weathers, lodged in their striae fossil bones, limestone scarabs rucked in the floor of this once inland sea. Thin dark trees through yon iron palings where the dead keep their own small metropolis. Curious marble architecture, stele and obelisk and cross and little rainworn stones where names grow dim with years. Earth packed with samples of the casketmaker's trade, the dusty bones and rotted silk, the deathwear stained with carrion. Out there under the blue lamplight the trolleytracks run on to darkness, curved like cockheels in the pinchbeck dusk. The steel leaks back the day's heat, you can feel it through the floors of your shoes. Past these corrugated warehouse walls down little sandy streets where blownout autos sulk on pedestals of cinderblock. Through warrens of sumac and pokeweed and withered honeysuckle giving onto the scored clay banks of the railway. Gray vines coiled leftward in this northern hemisphere, what winds them shapes the dogwhelk's shell. Weeds sprouted from cinder and brick. A steamshovel reared in solitary abandonment against the night sky. Cross here. By frograils and fishplates where engines cough like lions in the dark of the yard. To a darker town, past lamps stoned blind, past smoking oblique shacks and china dogs and painted tires where dirty flowers grow. Down pavings rent with ruin, the slow cataclysm of neglect, the wires that belly pole to pole across the constellations hung with kitestring, with bolos composed of hobbled bottles or the toys of the smaller children. Encampment of the damned . . . .
I love that "slow cataclysm of neglect" bit.
Of course, the book's title also happens to start with SU--a nice coincidence. I have gone with "suttree44" or "suttree_tx" (I live in Austin) whenever just plain Suttree is taken (surprisingly often). I've been around a while, not since the AOL days, but got to this group pretty early just the same--at least three or four boards ago.
Trust me: get the book and read it.
Here is the first part of the prologue, offering the reader an introduction to the shores of the Tennessee River in a deeply neglected and depressed part of Knoxville. Calm your mind for a minute and take it in:
Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.
Old stone walls unplumbed by weathers, lodged in their striae fossil bones, limestone scarabs rucked in the floor of this once inland sea. Thin dark trees through yon iron palings where the dead keep their own small metropolis. Curious marble architecture, stele and obelisk and cross and little rainworn stones where names grow dim with years. Earth packed with samples of the casketmaker's trade, the dusty bones and rotted silk, the deathwear stained with carrion. Out there under the blue lamplight the trolleytracks run on to darkness, curved like cockheels in the pinchbeck dusk. The steel leaks back the day's heat, you can feel it through the floors of your shoes. Past these corrugated warehouse walls down little sandy streets where blownout autos sulk on pedestals of cinderblock. Through warrens of sumac and pokeweed and withered honeysuckle giving onto the scored clay banks of the railway. Gray vines coiled leftward in this northern hemisphere, what winds them shapes the dogwhelk's shell. Weeds sprouted from cinder and brick. A steamshovel reared in solitary abandonment against the night sky. Cross here. By frograils and fishplates where engines cough like lions in the dark of the yard. To a darker town, past lamps stoned blind, past smoking oblique shacks and china dogs and painted tires where dirty flowers grow. Down pavings rent with ruin, the slow cataclysm of neglect, the wires that belly pole to pole across the constellations hung with kitestring, with bolos composed of hobbled bottles or the toys of the smaller children. Encampment of the damned . . . .
I love that "slow cataclysm of neglect" bit.
Of course, the book's title also happens to start with SU--a nice coincidence. I have gone with "suttree44" or "suttree_tx" (I live in Austin) whenever just plain Suttree is taken (surprisingly often). I've been around a while, not since the AOL days, but got to this group pretty early just the same--at least three or four boards ago.
Trust me: get the book and read it.
.
