Cormac McCarthy Tennessee Trip

On March 19, 2010, thirteen students in Dr. Blake Hobby’s Cormac McCarthy seminar traveled to Tennessee to experience first-hand the land and culture of Suttree, one of McCarthy’s ten works of fiction read in the course. Our route took us from Asheville through Cherokee, North Carolina, The Great Smoky Mountain National Park, into Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, Sevierville, and ultimately to Knoxville, the setting of Suttree.

Traveling along winding roads cut deep into the Smoky Mountains, we stopped along the way to walk down a steep path to a beautiful waterfall. Despite the scenic drive, we began to understand the ambivalent attitude toward nature in McCarthy’s fiction—a vision of romantic wilderness and natural beauty. 

As we entered Cherokee, billboards, cheap souvenir shops, and a monstrous casino emerged from the landscape, a shock to the visual peacefulness of the mountains. “American Indian” paraphernalia covered the buildings, stereotypes, which to our minds, represented cultural mockery rather than actual history, including a Native American clad in battle dress and posed in front of a tepee, an anachronism for the Cherokee tribe that was meant to appeal to tourists. With only glimpse of Cherokee, we continued to navigate the rural mountain roads until we reached The Magnificent Seven, a mountain lodge we rented for the weekend near Townsend and the Park boundary. Overlooking the valley below with a working farm and grazing cattle, we witnessed a stunning sunset while we relaxed on the deck in rocking chairs. We understood even then that this was no ordinary university field trip. 

We cooked dinner together that night and had a leisurely breakfast the next morning before making picnic lunches and heading down the mountain toward Knoxville. Arriving at the University of Tennessee Library, we met ourSuttree guide, psychology professor Dr. Wes Morgan and had lunch and preliminary conversations about McCarthy and the setting ofSuttree. Dr. Morgan is a McCarthy scholar and aficionado and regularly leads walking tours of downtown Knoxville, pointing out specific places of interest mentioned Suttree. 

Our walking tour officially began at the Sunsphere, an observation tower built for the 1982 World’s Fair, offering 360-degree views of the city. It served as a reference point for many of the locations we visited as we meandered throughout the city. From the Sunsphere, we traveled through an historic part of Knoxville and viewed such notable landmarks as the town square, the courthouse, and the Blount Mansion overlooking the Tennessee River. In addition, we followed Dr. Morgan to the lower level of a parking garage where we climbed over a stairwell railing and walked toward a fenced area nestled behind concrete columns supporting a highway overpass, the location of a character’s makeshifthome in the novel. We were actually in a place we had only seen in our minds’ eye. A few of us shimmied under an opening at the base of the fence, curious about what a black hole in the concrete might reveal. 

From the base of the underpass, we made our way to an older section of downtown, passing a striking old cemetery, weathered and worn with an unspoken history of its own, as though protecting its own secrets within the cityscape. The final point of interest, the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception, was the church where Suttree went to reflect on his life, and it seemed fitting we should do the same. The walk back to the university was one of quiet reflection on the physical locations of the city. The tour emphasized the descriptions we may have overlooked and provided us with a new way to read the novel.

We returned to our cabin, thinking back on the day’s events and enjoyed quiet conversations as we made dinner together. The route back to Asheville was a stark contrast to the scenic trip to Tennessee. Coming out of the picturesque Smoky Mountains, we crested a hill and were greeted by an endless skyline of tourist-attraction sprawl and four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. We uttered a collective sigh of relief as we made our way back to the mountain roads heading east toward Asheville. 

The trip to Knoxville was important on many levels. It enhanced our reading experience of McCarthy’s works and allowed us to observe Suttree’s natural habitat. The familiar settings described in McCarthy’s early novels were brought to life as we traveled through the beautiful Smokies. Our discussion and Knoxville tour with Dr. Morgan allowed us to experience Suttree’s time from a 21st-century perspective. We forged new friendships and came together as a class. The trip opened our minds, expanded our horizons, and left us with a feeling of fulfillment. It was bittersweet to leave, but, in the words of Suttree himself, “Tell me goodbye . . . I’m leaving Knoxville.”

by Jessica Yee

 photos by Lily Dancy-Jones