SUTTREE by CORMAC McCARTHY (1979)

I'm glad I am not Cormac McCarthy. Never mind that he is a supremely talented writer. I couldn't live with the kind of thoughts he evidently has running through his mind.

Suttree is one of the most unpleasant books I have ever read. It is filled with vivid imagery, all of it picturing a grimy, putrid world. Cornelius Suttree, the protagonist, is a drunk from a rich family who has left his own wife and child, for reasons unrevealed, to live a life of debauchery among thieves, whores, and other derelicts of society. The plot consists of several incidents involving his fellow drunks and other acquaintances, most of whom come to a bad end. Readers who expect or desire some sense of redemption for Suttree (or any of the characters) will be disappointed. I can't perceive at all what the point of the novel might be, except to showcase McCarthy's extraordinary talent.

The narrative alternates between straightforward, detailed actions and conversations and sections of surrealistic, stream-of-consciousness prose, wherein McCarthy unleashes his inner Faulkner. These make for a strange and uneasy combination. Mind you, the surrealistic bits are impressively written and very evocative, even if they don't always make logical sense.

Anyone deciding to read this should also be aware that McCarthy is prone to using an esoteric vocabulary filled with $20 words where a $1 word would serve quite well. This habit comes to seem pretentious. I often felt that he was trying too hard to be deep and different.

This is, of course, not among McCarthy's best known works. Those would be All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian and The Road, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. None of his novels are pleasant to read, with only The Road ending on a somewhat hopeful note. But he does have a way with words, even though the reality they picture is indeed grim.