On the Southern Literary Trail discussion

I thought there could be an entire thread on this subject, since the book is incredibly stylistic. How does everyone react to McCarthy's style? Do you enjoy the archaic vocabulary, the shifting points of view, etc.? Do you like the dialogue but not the prose, or vice-versa?

Personally, I like everything about McCarthy and this book so far. I think the vocabulary offers a complexity that enriches the book without making it unreadable. I'm still in the very early stages of the book (haven't even made it through the first 50 pages), but the one thing that's made it difficult is the shifting perspective and the unspecified pronouns. For the first thirty pages, "he" referred to Suttree, and then there was a section break and "he" started raping watermelons. It wasn't until seven pages passed that I realized "he" was not Suttree but Harrogate. So, I guess my advice to myself is: go slowly, be careful, or I will end up being very, very confused.

I love the dialogue, but I could sure use some quotation marks!

I think he also deals with dialect very well--it's subtle but gets the point across. However, I could be biased since this dialect is close to my own native dialect. I'm very interested in what everyone else has to say.

Jessie wrote: "I think he also deals with dialect very well--it's subtle but gets the point across. However, I could be biased since this dialect is close to my own native dialect. I'm very interested in what e..."

I agree about the dialect. I can't actually say if it's accurate or not because I didn't live in 50s Knoxville, but it creates an authentic feeling mood that's not too disruptive to the flow of the book. Other books like Uncle Tom's Cabin use dialect to an extreme degree that slows down your reading and just feels like it gets in the way.

And I think the juxtaposition of the simple, dialect-ridden dialogue with the intricate narration and Suttree's inner thoughts is interesting.

Do you know how to pronounce Suttree?

I just found excerpts from CM's letters:

...Woolmer to McCarthy. August 22, 1989. Carbon, 1 p. Inquiring how to pronounce “Suttree.” Arguing with friend that it is
“Suhtree.”

McCarthy to Woolmer. September 6, 1989. ALS, 2 pp. (1 sheet of paper).
“Thanks for your note. You win the wager. It never occurred to me that folks would pronounce Suttree to rhyme with shoe tree but they do…”

http://www.thewittliffcollections.txs...

Zorro wrote: "Do you know how to pronounce Suttree?

Weird. I never would have thought there was a question either. Shoe tree, Sue-tree? Bizarre.

Christopher wrote: "Jessie wrote: "I think he also deals with dialect very well--it's subtle but gets the point across. However, I could be biased since this dialect is close to my own native dialect. I'm very inter..."

As an east Tennessee native, I can tell you that the dialect is eerily authentic. Such authenticity could only come from living in a region for a number of years. For those of you that can't bear another fake or misplaced southern accent in the media, this is your redemption. "They law", "they shitfire", these are all terms I remember hearing from relatives when I was younger. But interestingly, accents do change...many of the younger generations have adopted a more "standardized" southern with less local color.

Thanks!

I know we are all tired of the Virginia Tidewater being used as the "default" Southern accent;)

Jessie wrote: "I love the dialogue, but I could sure use some quotation marks!"

This is an interesting comment whether you intended it to be or not. A lot of folks who I recommend McCarthy novels too always complain about the lack of quotation marks and some go so far as to say it's so off putting that they can't stand to finish reading any of his works.

My take on this is rather simple. In our daily conversations we don't walk around and "put quotes," so to speak, before and after every utterance of ours. It just falls out of our mouths and we say it.

I'm sure McCarthy would never admit to this but I feel he is in some ways inspired by Jack Kerouac in this aspect of his writing. Kerouac, as most folks know, tried to write in a jazzy stream of conciseness and was largely successful in doing so. One of his big complaints when he wrote ON THE ROAD was that his editors wanted to put commas in between city and state. Ex: Des Monies, Iowa instead of it appearing Des Monies Iowa. He said something along the lines of that was not how people talked, nobody says Des Monies comma Iowa in their everyday speak so there is no need for it.

McCarthy uses his lack of quotes as a tool to keep the page clean. After I got used to it in his novels it became quiet enjoyable and is a technique that some other authors have tried as well; William Gay comes to mind immediately.

Like Faulkner, McCarthy is best read slowly over time and read in bulk. Taking just one of his works, in this case Suttree, and trying to glean something of his writing style from it is difficult. If anybody has trouble with his work then talk to others who have read it or read the book again. Once the light-bulb comes on it will shine brightly and the magnitude of his novels will leave you in awe.

In response to the initial question: McCarthy's style is a unique voice in the history of English Language literature. The term most often associated with it is that he writes in a "Biblical" manner and I think that's a great term to use. It's heavy but that's okay. Sometimes big issues need to be explained with big words.

Justin wrote: "Jessie wrote: "I love the dialogue, but I could sure use some quotation marks!"

This is an interesting comment whether you intended it to be or not. A lot of folks who I recommend McCarthy novels..."

But there's a reason those marks evolved in our written language. They didn't just appear there at the whim of your English teacher. We actually do "put quotes" around everything we say because that's what quotes represent--the things we say, as opposed to the things we think.

BTW, I hate jazz, too. ;^)

I have read all of McCarthy's novels, and I do not even notice the missing punctuation anymore.

Justin, do you think the Border Trilogy and Blood Meridian are more "Biblical" than the Southern novels?

I must admit I don't notice the lack of quotation marks any more either. Jessie it's interesting that you wrote back in May that you mention the dialect as getting he point across very well. I agree and I'm from Australia so I think it's pretty much universal. Of course we are very exposed to all things USA in Australia so we we get fluent in all US dialects. It's interesting though I have a broad Australian accent and had a lot of trouble being understood in the Southwest but not in the South...

Dougal wrote: "It's interesting though I have a broad Australian accent and had a lot of trouble being understood in the Southwest but not in the South... "

That *is* interesting! I guess those accents are more compatible. Heehee.

I have a lot of trouble understanding accents from the north of England, but not from Scotland. I have no idea what that means.

Justin wrote: "McCarthy's style is a unique voice in the history of English Language literature. The term most often associated with it is that he writes in a 'Biblical' manner and I think that's a great term to use. It's heavy but that's okay. Sometimes big issues need to be explained with big words."

Then Zorro wrote: "Justin, do you think the Border Trilogy and Blood Meridian are more 'Biblical' than the Southern novels?"

Having only read the one book, I'm having trouble understanding what is meant by "Biblical." Would either of you mind elaborating?

Thanks!

I will try to find a passage that seems biblical to me. I thought that Suttree's actions toward his friends and community were almost always done with a "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" attitude. He seemed that he acted in a very Jesus-like way (except he was a binge drinker/alcoholic). But that is not what I see as biblical. So I need to look at the book again.

Jessie, I think that we meet several 'prophets' in Suttree. Here is one:

I am reading from my Kindle which says that this passage is p. 105 of 471 pages (21%)

"Coming down the steep and angled path behind the tall frame houses he thought he heard a voice. He tilted back his head to see. Half out from a house window high up the laddered face of sootcaulked clapboards hung some creature. Sprawled against the hot and sunpeeled siding with arms outstretched like a broken puppet. Hah, he called down. Spawn of Cerberus, the devil's close kin." ...... and goat's eyes smoking, and thrust a bony finger down. Die! he screamed. Perish a terrible death with thy bowels blown open and black blood boiling from thy nether eye, God save your soul amen.
(and continue reading on through the next paragraphs to the end of this scene) "Great godamighty, he said."

This crazy old man seems to be a prophetic figure to me. And although he is ranting at Harrogate, he is seeing/speaking about the typhoid fever that Sut suffers later. Or he may just be a crazy old man!

So to me it is these side characters that seem Biblical.

Sut's wandering for days in the forests of the Great Smokies seems like wandering in the dessert in the bible.

In the western Border Trilogy we see the character roaming the vast mountains and deserts of Mexico, Texas, New Mexico. They meet several prophetic characters. And in most of these the main characters, such as John Grady Cole in All the Pretty Horses, are young innocents.

One of the books is even named "Cities of the Plain" which is a Biblical reference to Sodom and Gomorrah. At the end of this book, an El Paso, TX, homeless man sees two sunrises...one in the north followed by the natural sunrise in the east. If you know the time frame of the story and the location of the character, you can figure out that the first sunrise is an atomic bomb test at White Sands followed by the dawning of that day. I think Cormac is writing of the Apocalypse in some of his books.

His next book is The Road which is post-apocalypse in the eastern US, with a few survivors of a cataclysm.

Zorro,

I think every McCarthy novel is influenced by the Bible. He's very forthright about how his "books are made of other books" and I think Blood Meridian has the most variety of identifiable influences: Moby-Dick (the Glanton gang:Indians::the Pequod:the white whale), Paradise Lost (the scene where the judge creates gunpowder from dirt and urine is lifted straight from a scene where Lucifer does the same), and myriad references to the Bible or Bible-derivative stories.

I think the reason for this is that much of the Bible fits McCarthy's aesthetic. McCarthy writes about death and it's full of death. It contains the darkest evils, which McCarthy obviously loves writing about. Where they diverge, I'd argue, is that McCarthy is uninterested in the Bible's redemptive aspects, except in the rarest of circumstances. I found the endings of Suttree and The Road uncharacteristically optimistic, in the sense that yes, the world is shit, but there's the slightest possibility that one or two people may escape death, at least for a little while.

There's a great Yale lecture here that discusses Blood Meridian's influences.

Christopher's quotes include:

“I ain't got an original thought in my head. If it ain't got the scent of divinity to it, I ain't interested in it”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Sunset Limited

I like that one and I haven't read the plays yet.

Yeah, I love that quote! And Sunset Limited is great. I think it summarizes the two warring philosophies of Cormac McCarthy (also explored in Suttree) very well: that of crushing loneliness, despair, evil, nihilism, etc., and that simple belief of a saving grace, aka God.

"You have no right to represent people this way, he said. A man is all men. You have no right to your wretchedness."

"Suttree stood among the screaming leaves and called the lightning down. It cracked and boomed about and he pointed out the darkened heart within him and cried for light. If there be any art in the weathers of this earth. Or char these bones to coal. If you can, if you can. A blackened rag in the rain. He sat with his back to a tree and watched the storm move on over the city. Am I a monster, are there monsters in me?"

Jessie, your comment about understanding Scottish accents easily is very interesting. The "Inland South" dialect encompasses western North Carolina, eastern KY, north GA, and the entire TN River valley(including Huntsville). Linguists have identified this accent as being the most influenced by the Ulster Scots(Scots-Irish).

Brandon wrote: "Jessie, your comment about understanding Scottish accents easily is very interesting. The "Inland South" dialect encompasses western North Carolina, eastern KY, north GA, and the entire TN River va..."

Brandon, here's another one I'll let you run with, and that defied logic to me. Long ago, I was curious about the pronunciation of the large double-pronged "nail" that was used to attach barbed wire to a fence post. Most of the people that I knew, with that highland Southern accent, pronounced it like the little metal bit that comes out of a stapler. But some people pronounced it like the tall towering portion of a church. When I asked them where their families came from, they generally came from south Georgia and south Alabama.

Logically, the nasalization of the "Inland South" accent, as you term it, would lead to the [i] sound evolving from an [e] sound, but it seemed to be vice versa in this case, unless the evolution of the word for the specialized nail was not from the word "staple."

What do you think?

Christopher wrote: "Zorro,

I think every McCarthy novel is influenced by the Bible. He's very forthright about how his "books are made of other books" and I think Blood Meridian has the most variety of identifiable i..."

Thank you for this! I just shared this exchange between you and Zorro on the August 2023 read of All the Pretty Horses. 😊

Cormac McCarthy’s Secret Muse - Read a very interesting online article in Vanity Fair last night about a long term relationship McCarthy had with an interesting woman named Augusta Britt of Tucson. They met in 1976 and kept in touch until his death. Written circa Nov 2024 by Vincenzo Barney. I think all fans of McCarthy will find it fascinating.