Displaying items by tag: suttree landing park
Cormac McCarthy, a beautiful chronicler of our darkest and best hearts who drew from his Knoxville roots, dies at 89
The final passage, describing a character’s dreams about his father, from Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country For Old Men.” The acclaimed book was developed into a screenplay that ultimately won an Oscar for best picture. Thomas Fraser/Hellbender Press
‘A malign star kept him:’ McCarthy offered a fever-dream toast to Knoxville’s frontier river town roots
KNOXVILLE — Cormac McCarthy, the onetime Knoxvillian who rose from obscurity to the heights of fame by penning some of the most violent works in the Western literary canon, died Tuesday, June 13 at his home in New Mexico.
McCarthy was considered by some critics to be America’s greatest living author. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2007 novel “The Road.” Another novel, “All The Pretty Horses,” won the National Book Award in 1992 and a movie made from his book “No Country For Old Men” won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Picture.
The novelist studied at the University of Tennessee and became an infamous recluse who lived at points in a dairy barn and an RV. He rarely gave interviews, and was known to prefer the company of scientists to that of other writers.
McCarthy admired the works of Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky and William Faulkner, and he is the only Knoxvillian to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction other than James Agee. His work was often divisive, however, as his relentlessly masculine and unsentimental outlook led him to plumb the depths of human desperation and depravity through characters such as cannibals, necrophiliacs and mass murderers.
His literary vision focused on humankind’s cosmic insignificance by pitting rough-hewn men against primordial nature on a succession of vividly realized stages carved from history and myth. Faulkner might have said the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself, but McCarthy opined that serious authors should focus on the struggle of life against death.
According to Knoxville historian Jack Neely, McCarthy drew heavily from his surroundings, especially in the vivid depictions of Knoxville contained in “Suttree.”
“The descriptions of Market Square, in both “Suttree” and his first novel, “The Orchard Keeper,” are dense, accurate, unsparing and poetic,” Neely said. “I quoted them in my Market Square book, and a passage from ‘Suttree’ is engraved in marble in the middle of the square.
“One, from Suttree, ostensibly from a day in 1951, could have described a scene I witnessed there last week: ‘He went among vendors and beggars and wild street preachers haranguing a lost world with a vigor unknown to the sane.’”
Neely also singled out another passage that comes just paragraphs later, where McCarthy describes the old Market House: “Where brick the color of dried blood rose turreted and cupolaed and crazed into the heat of the day form on form in demented accretion without precedent or counterpart in the annals of architecture.”
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Doing good deeds for the Tennessee River, and enjoying it, too
Racers of all stripes assembled Saturday for Cheers to Clean Water boat races on the Tennessee River. Keenan Thomas/Hellbender Press
Cheers to Clean Water celebrants race, learn and scrub the river at Suttree Landing Park
KNOXVILLE — Beneath the sound of a beckoning banjo, partiers and athletes alike paddled the shores of Suttree Landing Park, picking up trash as they floated down the Tennessee River.
The fifth Cheers to Clean Water Celebration on Saturday (June 11) featured 4k- and 8k-kayak races, a cleanup in and around the Tennessee River, and a central gathering area punctuated by booths for land- and water-based advocacy organizations.
“It’s both on water and on land, cleaning up this section of the Tennessee River,” AmeriCorps member Madison Moore said on Saturday from the park. “After the boating is over, they’ll come down here for the celebration, where we have a whole bunch of other vendors that are helping us make this day a possibility.”
The celebration promotes the importance of maintaining and cleaning major waterways like the Tennessee River.
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Race your ride and scoop some gnarl this weekend on the Tennessee River
KNOXVILLE — Knox County and the Water Quality Forum will host the fifth-annual Cheers to Clean Water Celebration and Clean-Up on Saturday (June 11) at Suttree Landing Park across the river from downtown.
The event, which includes a water race for kayaks and paddle boarders, kicks off at 11:30 a.m. and registration is open until 10:30 a.m. the day of the event. Following the race there will be a celebration that includes local vendors and booths, kids’ activities, kayaks for rental, blue grass music, food trucks, rain barrels, and prizes. The celebration and cleanup are free and open to the public. The race costs $15. Local breweries have donated beer for purchase.
“This event is a fun way to promote the importance of keeping our rivers and streams clean,” said Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs.
For a full list of prices and to register for the event click here.
The Water Quality Forum is a coalition of diverse partners including local governments, non-profits, utility companies and businesses that work together to keep East Tennessee waters clean. The Knox County stormwater office is working with the forum to host the event.
— Knox County government