Suttree is an early work, and said to be heavily autobiographical. I read it as a key to understanding McCarthy's view of the world, being essentially tragic.

I'd suggest there's a similar identification between the author and the Kid of Blood Meridian.

What McCarthy thinks of Melville's Moby Dick I have not heard, but for the reader anyway, there's a rich cross-fertilization. Both of ideas -- being a pawn within a monstrous, doomed enterprise -- and of technique, as with the cryptic oracles of catastrophe who say their piece and then vanish from the narrative.