Abstract
After Cormac McCarthy submitted his final draft of Suttree to Random House in 1977, editor Albert Erskine asked him to condense the book, eliminate dull dialogue, and clarify his view of his protagonist. Over a period of eight or nine months, McCarthy revised, deleting five episodes, four of which reflect his engagement with the narrative complexities and troubling cruelties of the Sut Lovingood yarns. Drawing on typescripts and correspondence, this article summarizes and analyzes the unpublished episodes, evaluates what each had contributed to the novel and what was gained and lost when McCarthy deleted them. His revision process did little to make his attitudes toward Suttree more explicit, but it reduced the distasteful realism of the novel, sacrificed a few plot connections, abandoned interesting (if not always successful) material relating to oral storytelling and its transformation into literary storytelling, and reduced the indications that Suttree is a writer in the making.
