A Beginning/Words I didn't Know (Suttree p. 3-5)

I shunned American literature in university, in favour of Canadian stuff. That's the way it works up here. We're taught to be proud we're not Americans, and to embrace our culture (musicians, novelists) above others. So, I never knew about this Cormac McCarthy fellow until the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men. I read that, then read everything else. This is America to me, this guy's words.

I'm not an expert, but I'm the kind of guy who knows a lot of words. Meaning, I do crossword puzzles, I passed a Jeopardy! audition, I read a lot.

What do I love about the man's books? I love the honesty, the bleak truth that he puts on every page. I love when I hit a paragraph where I don't know the meaning of a half dozen words.

So this project is something to keep me busy during a time of "under-employment" in my life (read: I don't have a job until I begin substitute teaching again in the fall). My plan is to pick out words I didn't know - tell you what they mean, and talk about the book. Groundbreaking.

I'll begin with the book I most recently read, Suttree. It's a rambling, deeply funny collection of transpirings set in Knoxville, Tennessee. The protagonist is a man who spurns his life of privilege to live on a houseboat and make a nominal living fishing for carp and catfish. The opening 2 1/2 pages of the book are enough to throw anyone for a loop. I will be using the Vintage Intl. 1992 Edition for all citations. Definitions will be a lumping together and translating thing.

Words I Didn't Know (p. 3-5)

"Out there under the blue lamplight the trolleytracks run on to darkness, curved like in the cockheels in the pinchbeck dust."

1. cockheels (3)
I should've known what this meant. It's cock feet. Still, not in my dictionary.
2. pinchbeck (3)
This is an alloy, some type of brass that looks like gold. He's also some dude that advocates the use of LSD and shrooms.

"Gray vines coiled leftward in this northern hemisphere, what winds them shapes the dogwhelk's shell."
3. dogwhelk (3)
I had an idea what this meant, a type of marine lifeform. This is a dogwhelk.



It doesn't survive long out of water. A parallel to Suttree.



"Old tins and jars and ruined household artifacts that rear from the fecal mire of the flats like landmarks in the trackless vales of dementia praecox."
4. dementia praecox (4)
I figured this was some form of mental illness (dementia, duh), and I was right. The 'praecox' part means the illness is in the early stages. Labyrinthine imagery (usually using 'junk') arises many times in the novel.

"...wave on wave of the violent and the insane, their brains stoked with spoorless analogues of all that was, lean aryans with their abrogate semitic chapbook reenacting the dramas and parables therein and mindless and pale with a longing that nothing save dark's total restitution could appease."
5. abrogate (4)
Just means canceling something, annulling it.

This is the way reading this book goes for me. A few pages chock full of new vocabulary (I reckon there are going to be words in here I can't find the meaning for - McCarthy might be just making it up) and then 10 pages of hilarious dialogue and events. Pages 5-50 were clear sailing for me, but we'll discuss them a little and lay out the characters next time.