Hellhound(s) on My Trail: Reading Cormac McCarthy's Suttree as a Blues

Abstract

This essay rereads Cormac McCarthy's 1979 novel Suttree as a "blues," examining Suttree's deep relationship to the vengeful, hunted black man Ab Jones, whose scarred body and eloquently articulated narrative of persecution leads Suttree to channel his plaintive suffering. Startlingly, the conclusion of the novel, particularly the final image of the huntsman and hounds who the title character fears are chasing him, suggests that McCarthy draws on Delta bluesman Robert Johnson's most famous tune, "Hellhound on My Trail," in his evocation of these hounds and Suttree's fear of them through his channeling the identity of Johnson (behind whom looms Ab Jones). At the same time, the hounds have figuratively embayed a particular Knoxville populace—its black community—with devastating consequences and the hounds' presence through this lyrical intertext at the end of the novel suggest how that community's inhabitants, particularly Ab, continue to be hunted down by the white community's representatives such as the police.