One of the most underrated novels in literature is McCarthy’s Suttree. It is certainly as difficult, abstruse, intellectual, and word-besotted of a narrative as you will read. It is Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake with a Tennessee twist. Where Joyce followed the currents of the Liffey under Dublin’s bridges McCarthy documents the flotsam and jetsam of Knoxville’s filthy river of detritus where dead babies, prophylactics, and rogues float, bob, and abide.

It’s not an easy read to see what is.

But with each rereading I find that the right music enriches it. Mark Lanegan’s album Black Pudding captures it. One senses the damp granitic smells of Appalachian caves near Knoxville and can hear the accents of those who wear UT shirts as tourists but never spent nights on the river amongst Suttree’s kith.

Here’s Lanegan’s album. Gone too soon, Mark. Thanks for your appreciation of McCarthy, Suttree in particular, and to your faithfulness to singing the unspeakable but vital.

McCarthy, You lived a long life and wrote better than anyone since Shakespeare, to a world drunk on adolescent self-absorption and mimesis. Some of us are with you. May you reap your rewards. And may you find the faithful to sing your literary praises in the river’s hollers to all who sway to magical goblined linguistic waves.