Suttree, first Italian edition
Einaudi, Torino, 2009.
First Italian edition, first printing with complete numberlines from 0 to 6 and from 2009 to 2012 on a colophon page bound after the contents page at the end of the book, which reads “Stampato…nel mese di Ottobre 2009”. Hardcover, 22,3 x 14,3 cm, 560 numbered pages. Publisher’s original greenish-grey cloth lettered in black on spine. White dustjacket lettered in black with a reproduction of the painting “Trout fishing, Lake St.John, Québec” by Winslow Homer on the front panel, a blurb by Fernanda Pivano and the price of “€ 23,00” on the back cover. Red wraparound band lettered in white with praise by David Foster Wallace (translated into Italian): “Suttree, mio Dio quel libro… (“Suttree, my God that book…”). Translation by Maurizia Balmelli.
CONDITION: a fine copy.
Published October 27, 2009, at € 23, in a first print run of 33,000 copies.
Suttree was introduced to Italy thirty years later the original publication in the United States and only after the release of the movies drawn from No Country for Old Men and The Road. This delay underscores, once more, how slowly McCarthy’s body of work gained recognition in Italy.
The admiration for McCarthy’s works by David Foster Wallace is well known. Lucas Thompson explored McCarthy’s influence on Foster Wallace in an essay published in The Cormac McCarthy Journal, Volume 3 (2015), pp. 3-26. Foster Wallace’s correspondence with conceptual artist Kathe Burkhart includes a list of books, datable to 1989, that Wallace requested to borrow from Burkhart, including Suttree and Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. In a conversation with Mark Schechner, Wallace mentioned McCarthy among his favorite living writers alongside Don De Lillo and Cynthia Ozick. In an interview with Gus Van Sant, the author of Infinite Jest, referred to Suttree as “about four hundred pages of the most dense lapidary prose you can imagine”. Lastly, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas features, among the David Foster Wallace papers, a fully annotated paperback copy of Suttree.
COLLECTING TOPICS: while copies in collector condition can be found with relative ease, copies retaining the wraparound band are uncommon. As of December 2024, only one was listed on Abebooks. Rare Book Hub records do not mention any copies at auction. Signed or inscribed copies are not known.
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