Suttree.com: Casual Games, Social Software by Duncan Gough

// Before you ask, here’s my reading list

Happy to be bypassed in the recent books and music discussions, (primarily these two) I’ve decided to charge in like a piscean bull regardless.

First and foremost, Suttree has been a huge influence. I say ‘has been’ since my first reading didn’t such much knock me off my feet as bury me deeper into a pit I’d been convincing myself was good for me in a very Pavlovian way.

I mined a seam in a very real sense, I wanted dirt under my fingernails, I saw the colour brown on every surface and I picked away at the thread of history because I wanted to see how time decayed.

Recently I’ve been interested in reading Suttree again. I don’t know that I should though. Much better, by way of distraction, is this ongoing discussion on Suttree. However, I wouldn’t recommend Suttree to anyone in the same way that I wouldn’t recommend Valis. Start elsewhere, skirt the novel and read it only if you the other books appeal. Both Valis and Suttree are autobiographical. Neither fits in with the tone of their companions. They are like flags though, markers against the decay.

Elsewhere, if the main theme of this post isn’t auto-biographic breakdowns in print, it’s the fulfillment of an abstract need to recreate that borders on heroic. That Our Lady of the Flowers made it to print is such an achievement. Reading the history of Darling/Divine and keeping everything in place is hard, explaining it here is even harder. Needless to say, if you dig deep enough into the soil there will be worms and grubs to uncover.

Further to that thread, Lolita is a pseudo autobiographical novel whose opening paragraph is unmatched. It is the lift before the descent, the coffin into the dirt. Nabakov is a huge inspiration, Ada or Ador came close, but Lolita should be hailed for its use of language. If I were a writer I’d order every word against the next. Lolita is a very poetic, ordered novel.

Nabokov is less of a ‘figure’ in comparison to Cormac McCarty and Jean Genet, none of whom can compare to Rimbaud. The nexus, for me he connected literature and the wider world. I was a kid buried in books and Eric Cantona appeared on my radar, mentioning Rimbaud (in a heavy French accent that left plent of people under the impression that he’d meant Rambo). That wasn’t just literature and society, that was books, football, Dylan, theatre (I’d recently seen a play of Rimbaud and Verlaine at Greenwich theatre) and television (or Television, at a stretch). The fact that Cantona went on to assualt a racist South Londoner a few years later cemented my understanding of the differences between words and action.

That Dylan connection, too. All of these authors and poets don’t stand as favourites on their own, they are grown alongside the music of that time. Suttree is tethered to the magnificent Southern Harmony & Musical Companion*, which is in turn, influenced by religion and healing. More recently, American Pastoral is seeped in a particular Tori Amos song. Whilst Tori Amos will always remind me of The Waste Land

Of course, it’s not all heavy weed pulling. The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien is the funniest thing I’ve read. Much, much better than that Saucy Confessions of a Physicist rubbish that was Atomised, or the last minute homework that was The New York Trilogy.

Currently reading? A Confederacy of Dunces, no, not that one.

* The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion pre-dated ‘grunge’, had very little to do with it other than the swamp and funk that was it’s core, the amp buzz that opens and threads the record. In terms of artistry and musicianship, it buried grunge with talent and depth. Those layered guitars, alternate tunings, acoustics that sounded like acoustics. The fact that it was recorded in 8 days. More impressively, the next album, Amorica, was recorded with the aim of hearing a rock band play without distortion. Once again, those layered guitars, alternate tunings and percusive acoustics really worked. Amorica is the last album I’ve heard that manages to be heavy without resorting to distorion. Credit to the Black Crowes for following on from albums like Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street, bands like Little Feat and the Allman Brothers Band in creating a album that doesn’t hide behind volume.

– http://www.allisonmoorer.com