Don't tell me who I'm like (Suttree p. 13-22)

There's a little bit of a pattern forming. McCarthy's chock full of words I don't know when he's describing something, usually something mundane. This nine page block is mainly dialogue, and it's the dialogue of the southern U.S. It's simple diction, and it's a stark contrast to the narrative; it makes the characters seem simple. We haven't really learned anything about Suttree until this scene. His uncle John visits and we learn some important facts. 1) He is distant (seems to be a self-imposed distance) from his father. 2) He spent time n the workhouse.

An American workhouse was initially a government run institution set up to help those who couldn't make ends meet. You worked there, you got room and board.

In 1834, the Poor Law was passed. The people behind the workhouses figured out a way to keep people from trying to get into them: make them awful. For all intents and purposes, it was a jail. There's a spot in Suttree's workhouse for solitary confinement. The diet's not good. There's fights and moonshine. He's careful to point out that it's not a jail, implying he chose to go there. We'll head to the workhouse in the next entry.

Words I Didn't Know (p. 13-22)

"A dextrocardiac, said the smiling doctor. Your heart's in the right place."
11. dextrocardiac (13) - I headed to the OED for this one. There's a multi-volume set at our public library. It's actually defined in the second sentence. Dextro - right, cardiac - heart. He means well.

These next two are Suttree daydreaming about a stillborn baby. Charming.

"The infant's ossature, the thin and brindled bones along whose sulcate facets clove old shreds of flesh and cerements of tattered swaddle."
12. sulcate (14) - this means marked with furrows, or grooves. It's often used to describe trees, think of a Western Red Cedar. Good old thuja plicata (what a wonderful phrase).

"Perhaps his skull held seawater. Born dead and witless both or a terratoma grisly in form."
13. terratoma (14) - A word that confirms to me that McCarthy is MAKING WORDS UP. This isn't in the OED, so you kind of have to sleuth it out. Terra, that's earth. Toma was a short-lived 70's cop show starring this hairy bastard.


Tony Musante aka David Toma. Baddest narcotics cop on the Jersey shore. In 1973. Actually, I found out -toma refers to a tumor, or swelling. Greek.








"Up these steep walkways cannelured for footpurchase, the free passage of roaches."
14. cannelured (21) - Grooved, fluted. Seems to be an architectural term, also a part of bullet culture. Check out this sweet cannelured ammo to your right.




Suttree's "footpurchasing" his way to a little hole in the wall bar he spends a lot of time at.

"The room was otherwise barren, a white marble fireplace masked with a sheet of tin, old varnished wainscotting and a high stamped rococo ceiling with parget scrolls and beaded drops of brazing about the gasjet where a lightbulb now burned."
15. parget (22) - this one's neat. It's plaster spread on a wall, made of lime mixed with cowdung, usually used to line chimney flues. Or (more likely) it's an ornamental plaster.

It's clear that McCarthy read a few books on architecture before writing this novel, and that he has more than just a passing interest in the stuff. Dude doesn't have a passing interest in anything. The WSJ asks him here, why don't you write shorter works?

CM: I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.