Friday, October 5, 2012

YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT WATCHES: SUTTREE AND CORMAC MCCARTHY'S KNOXVILLE



Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece, SUTTREE, is an autobiographical novel, bent to suit the author's literary ambitions, written in a lush poetic vernacular and quasi-biblical prose. It lends itself to a wide variety of philosophical interpretations and is demonstratively laced with the quirky artifacts of Knoxville's historical past at the same time.

This volume, YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT WATCHES, by a bevy of the best McCarthy scholars on the planet, illuminates the heart of the novel as well as the peripheral fringes. It takes on both McCarthy's grand ideas and its little-known facets, such as the arcane but extremely interesting histories of the many characters which pass through the novel.

This collection includes and builds upon the 2005 Special Issue of the CORMAC MCCARTHY JOURNAL, then edited by the Professor Emeritus of McCarthy critical literature, Edwin (Chip) Arnold. Editor Rick Wallach, himself a legendary author and Cormac McCarthy scholar, has included a wealth of new material, eyepopping in its revelations, in one spectacular volume.

The twenty-one essays are divided up into four sections: Cormac McCarthy's Knoxville Environs; The Intertextual Suttree; Suttree the Asocial, Suttree the Political; and finally, Suttree as Text. Don't miss the foreword by Dennis McCarthy, Cormac's younger brother, who reveals a haunting childhood memory, sure to interest McCarthy scholars until the end of time.

If you found SUTTREE fascinating before, order this book and prepare to be stunned.

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