McCarthy's prose [is] laudable, his characters the most inhabited, his sense of place the most blood worthy and thoroughly felt of any living writer." —Esquire
“Suttree contains a humour that is Faulknerian in its gentle wryness, and a freakish imaginative flair reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor.” —The Times Literary Supplement (London)
“All of McCarthy’s books present the reviewer with the same welcome difficulty. They are so good that one can hardly say how good they really are. . . . Suttree may be his magnum opus. Its protagonist, Cornelius Suttree, has forsaken his prominent family to live in a dilapidated houseboat among the inhabitants of the demimonde along the banks of the Tennessee River. His associates are mostly criminals of one sort or another, and Suttree is, to say the least, estranged from what might be called normal society. But he is so involved with life (and it with him) that when in the end he takes his leave, the reader’s heart goes with him. Suttree is probably the funniest and most unbearably sad of McCarthy’s books . . . which seem to me unsurpassed in American literature.” —Stanley Booth
There are the books you read and then there are the books you experience, like The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong. Poet, photographer and bestselling author, Vuong’s novels are spun from gorgeous prose and vibrant, original imagery. Ocean joins us to talk about autofiction, language, wonder, characterization and more with Miwa Messer. This episode […]
Cormac McCarthy was notorious for not doing interviews about his writing; he was always very clear about letting the work speak for itself. And speak it did, starting with the wild gothic terrain of Suttree, to Blood Meridian, thick with violence (and recently rediscovered by a new generation of readers), to his classic Westerns, All […]
We’re closing out 2022 with something new: A Poured Over Double Shot with host Miwa Messer. Cormac McCarthy doesn’t really do interviews—If you want to know about the work, it’s on the page, he says. Jenny Jackson and Chip Kidd are part of the team that publish McCarthy; Jenny’s been his editor for the last eight years, […]