Blood Will Tell
Cormac McCarthy's Correspondence with His Father
In the new assortment of Cormac McCarthy’s personal papers just made available to scholars by the Wittliff at Texas State University, literary sleuths will discover several fascinating letters between McCarthy and his father.
In October of 1979, Charles Joseph McCarthy wrote the following to his son, forty-six years old at the time:
“One of God’s mistakes was arranging for people to have children before they have acquired sufficient wisdom to be parents. I was no exception.”
I suspect countless fathers have been beset by similar thoughts, but how many articulate them with such rawness? There’s a painfully honest tone to this letter, a pleading, desperate one. These are the words of a father who believes he’s lost his son—perhaps, irretrievably.
In addition to this letter’s familial context, there’s a literary one. McCarthy’s Suttree had been published five months before his father’s letter in May of 1979, and it’s clear from other letters that Cormac’s father read and liked his son’s haunting masterpiece, though the novel’s autobiographical elements unsettled him.
The following scene between Cornelius Suttree and his Uncle John must have struck a nerve:
“Look, said Suttree, leaning forward. When a man marries beneath him his children are beneath him. If he thinks that way at all. If you weren’t a drunk he might see me with different eyes. As it is, my case was always doubtful. I was expected to turn out badly. My grandfather use to say Blood will tell. It was his favorite saying. What are you looking at? Look at me.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Yes you do. I’m saying my father is contemptuous of me because I’m related to you. Do you think that’s a fair statement?
I don’t know why you try and blame me for your troubles. You and your crackpot theories.
Suttree reached across the little space and took his uncle’s willowing hands and composed them. I don’t blame you, he said. I just want to tell you how some people are.
I know how people are. I should know.
Why should you? You think my father and his kind are a race apart. You can laugh at their pretensions, but you never question their right to the way of life they maintain.
He puts his pants on the same way I do mine.
Bullshit, John. You don’t even believe that.
I said it didn’t I?
What do you suppose he thinks of his wife?
They get along okay.
They get along okay.
Yeah.
John, she’s a housekeeper. He has no real belief even in her goodness. Can’t you guess that he sees in her the same trace of the sorriness he sees in you? An innocent gesture can call you to mind.
Don’t call me sorry, said the uncle.
He probably believes only his own benevolent guidance kept her out of the whorehouse.
That’s my sister you’re talking about, boy.
And she’s my mother, you maudlin sot.
Sudden quiet in the little cabin. The uncle rose shaking, his voice was low. They were right, he said. What they told me. They were right about you. You’re a vicious person. A nasty vicious person.” (pp. 19-20)
I believe that this is the passage that prompted Charles Joseph McCarthy’s desperate letter to his son. He wanted to disabuse Cormac of the notions that Suttree holds. He wanted to reassure Cormac that he loved and respected him, that he blamed himself for the problems in their relationship.
Cormac’s response must have shattered his father’s hopes for reconciliation. Here it is in full:
