Suttree

Cormac McCarthy · 1979 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Contemporary

Having walked out on a wife, a child and a family with money, Cornelius Suttree runs trotlines from a houseboat on the Tennessee River and drinks his way through the McAnally Flats end of 1950s Knoxville. Ragpickers, a goatman, a witch and the irrepressible Gene Harrogate, jailed for congress with watermelons, come and go while the river gives up bodies. Twenty years in the writing, and the funniest book its author ever produced.

Open Suttree in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Attributes

Closest analogues

• The Adventures of Augie March
  Saul Bellow · 1953 CE · Novel

  62% · 15 shared
  NovelComedyClass & InequalityContemporaryWandererEverymanTricksterPicaresqueEpisodicThe Cityvs Selfvs SocietyComicRealistModern / American
• The Railroad Stories
  Sholem Aleichem · 1902 CE · Short Story

  58% · 11 shared
  ComedyIsolation & AlienationClass & InequalityWandererEverymanTricksterEpisodicThe Cityvs SocietyComicRealist
• White Noise
  Don DeLillo · 1985 CE · Novel

  56% · 13 shared
  NovelPsychologicalComedyIsolation & AlienationDeath & MortalityContemporaryEverymanTricksterEpisodicvs Selfvs SocietyComicModern / American
• Miguel Street
  V. S. Naipaul · 1959 CE · Short Story

  56% · 12 shared
  ComedyIsolation & AlienationClass & InequalityContemporaryEverymanTricksterEpisodicThe Cityvs Selfvs SocietyComicElegiac
• Father Mother Sister Brother
  Jim Jarmusch · 2025 CE · Film

  56% · 12 shared
  PsychologicalComedyIsolation & AlienationDeath & MortalityContemporaryEverymanTricksterEpisodicvs SelfComicElegiacModern / American
• Manhattan Transfer
  John Dos Passos · 1925 CE · Novel

  55% · 12 shared
  NovelPsychologicalIsolation & AlienationClass & InequalityWandererEverymanEpisodicThe Cityvs Selfvs SocietyRealistModern / American