Suttry

Cormac McCarthy is a contemporary American classic of the highest order, a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship "for genius," a master of complex experiences and unconventional syntax, well known to our readers for novels such as "No Country for Old Men" (the Coen brothers' film based on this book won four Oscars) and "The Road" (which won the Pulitzer Prize and was also adapted for the screen), the "Border Trilogy" (the first novel, "Cities of the Plain," won the National Book Award and was adapted for the screen by Billy Bob Thornton, with Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz in the leading roles) and "Blood Meridian." A special place in his legacy is held by the epic tragicomedy "Suttry" — "an unimaginable — yet utterly organic — combination of James Joyce's 'Ulysses' and John Steinbeck's 'Cannery Row'" (New York Times), "practically an autobiography" of the famous recluse. So, the setting is Knoxville, Tennessee; the year is the 1950s. Cornelius Suttry, a scion of a wealthy family, for unknown reasons abandoned his wife and young son and took up residence in a houseboat on the river. He survives on fish that he catches himself, drinks whatever burns (and what friends bring him), spends his life "in the company of thieves, outcasts, scoundrels… layabouts, louts, lowlifes, murderers, gamblers, pimps… fools, shady characters… and other various and malevolent ne'er-do-wells," but does not lose his dignity and looks at the world with an detached immediacy.