Play Book Tag discussion

“He lay down in his blankets. It was growing dark, long late mid-summer twilight in the woods. He wanted to go down to the river to bathe but he felt too bad. He turned over and looked at the small plot of ground in the crook of his arm. My life is ghastly, he told the grass.”

Set in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the early to mid-1950s, this book tells the story of six years in the life of “Bud” Suttree, a man who has left his wife and child to live on a houseboat on the edges of society. He ekes out a living as a fisherman.

It is a sprawling, fragmented narrative, filled with outcasts and misfits. A vast number of characters are mentioned, some for a single appearance, and others winding in and out, such as the goatman, the ragpicker, the street evangelist, and various prostitutes. There is no plot. It is about events and people in Suttree’s life. It is about time, life, and death. It explores the concepts of being and nothingness.

“How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it.”

It is expressively written in long elaborate sentences and short irreverent dialogue. It is occasionally difficult to understand the characters’ motivations – perhaps just they are just doing their best to survive. The tone is dark. Unfortunate things happen to people who are already down on their luck. It is a lengthy book, so after a while, a series of one unhappy event after another gets to be a little depressing, but the writing is superb.

“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.”