50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know by John Sutherland

The “Need” remains largely unsatisfied

John Sutherland is a British literary critic who writes books on books for both academic and general audiences. His book 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know, published in 2010, is an attempt to explain concepts and themes of intellectual lit-crit to a popular audience of book lovers with above-average intelligence. I review a lot of books (about 1600 since I started this blog in 2012), and although I tend to avoid heavy lit-crit analysis and speak to nonacademic readers, I figure it couldn’t hurt to learn a little bit more about the concepts of literary criticism and the terminology employed. So, when this book popped up as a Kindle Daily Deal, I snatched it up at a reduced price. Though there is certainly information here that would be of interest to any bibliophile, overall I found 50 Literature Ideas a disappointing learning experience.

As one might expect, the contents of the book consists of 50 literary terms or ideas, about five pages on each. Sutherland really doesn’t do a very good job of explaining these terms and concepts to the reader. For each idea, he’ll tell you that Frank Kermode said this about it, and T.S. Eliot said that about it. Then he’ll give you a few examples from Shakespeare, Dickens, and Virginia Woolf. All of these opinions and examples usually contradict one another, and none of them really elucidate the topic at hand. Sutherland doesn’t really seem interested in truly educating readers about these 50 Ideas. Instead, he seems to want to conduct book-club salon-type discussions that showcase his erudition.

Since this book is aimed for a general audience rather than the literary intelligentsia, however, Sutherland has to dumb down his discourse, which only serves to make the conversation more vague and ill-defined. He defines “bricolage,” for example, as “using what’s at hand,” a meaning so vague that it could encompass pretty much all literary writing. What author doesn’t use what’s “at hand?” Same with “imagery.” All words create pictures. Duh. How does that help us understand literature? Sutherland tells us the history of “deconstruction,” but never really explains what it means. In regards to “metafiction,” Sutherland suggests that “all fiction is metafictional to some degree.” If the concept is that vague, what’s the point of talking about it? Sutherland would do his readers a favor by practicing more “solidity of specification” (Idea #29, which, after reading this book, I’m sure I’ve misunderstood). Sutherland does fare better with the last ten or so terms, which are more issue-based than conceptual, like “plagiarism,” “obscenity,” and “libel,” for example.

In the examples that Sutherland selects to illustrate these ideas, he makes it clear that he thinks the only literature worth writing about is English literature. Very rarely does he reference a work from outside of Britain. (The much-cited T.S. Eliot and Henry James were born in America, but opted for life in London.) The same was true of the other book I’ve read by Sutherland, Curiosities of Literature (2011). That book was basically an assemblage of literary trivia, but it didn’t claim to be anything more than that. 50 Literature Ideas, however, does claim to be more, but it’s still just a hodgepodge of trivial facts and quotes about books and authors. 50 Literature Ideas is part of a series from the publisher Greenfinch, a subdivision of Hachette UK. There are over 30 books in the “50 Ideas” line—in physics, architecture, psychology, and politics, for example. I would hope that other books in that series are more enlightening than this one. However, I suspect that a big part of the problem is the format of these books, which confines the author to delivering lessons that are required to be brief and shallow.

Curiosities of Literature: A Feast for the Book Lover by John Sutherland

A decent snack of trivia, if you like English fare

John Sutherland is a professor of English Literature at University College London who has written several books on literature that appeal to both an academic and a general reading audience. His 2011 book Curiosities of Literature likewise has crossover potential, as it is researched with scholarly erudition yet accessible and humorous enough to appeal to the average (as the subtitle indicates) “book lover.” Curiosities of Literature is a book of trivia, plain and simple. It doesn’t claim to be anything more, and if you know that going into it then you know just what to expect. The text is comprised of brief anecdotes and unusual facts about books and authors, mostly famous authors but a few obscure and forgotten writers as well. The important question is, is it interesting and amusing trivia, or is it just a tedious assortment of minutiae? The answer, in this case, is about half and half.

The book is divided into thematic chapters on subjects like food, body parts, sex, or guns, but the boundaries between those topics are not hard and fast, as Sutherland rambles from one story to the next however they seem to strike his fancy. He clearly has an encyclopedic and arcane knowledge of literature, and he relates his anecdotes with style and wit. Sometimes a little too much style and wit, to be honest, as the prose sometimes reads like a showcase for Sutherland’s prodigious vocabulary and clever turns of phrase. As a literary raconteur, sometimes Sutherland the storyteller outshines the stories he’s telling.

Sutherland is a British author, and about 90 percent of the book’s contents pertains to British literature, much of it from the Victorian Era. I don’t fault the author for that, but you really have to be up on your English lit to fully appreciate all the information he’s offering here. Sutherland assumes the reader is well-versed in the Brit-lit canon. Thackeray, Fielding, Trollope, and Wilkie Collins garner repeated mentions, and Thomas Carlyle seems to be a constant presence throughout the text. I’m sure many Brits would probably get bored reading a book full of trivia on American authors they haven’t read, and the reverse is true here. A number of American authors are discussed in the remaining 10 percent of the text. Only a few French writers are mentioned, such as Hugo and Proust. Other nation’s literatures seem to be absent from the discussion, except for a very interesting section on German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, and how it inspired hundreds of young men to commit suicide. Sutherland takes a very humorous and flippant approach to the topics of death and suicide, so beware if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing.

Some of the most interesting items in the book relate to old products that were inspired by literature, or—vice versa—intentional product placement in recent novels. There’s an awful lot of discussion about cigarettes. World record-type entries are always interesting, such as who published the most novels (John Creasey, according to Sutherland) or what’s “the longest novel in the literary canon”? (Clarissa by Samuel Richardson). Whether or not a particular story or factoid interests you will probably depend on your literary tastes. Some bits will no doubt prove fascinating, while others merely seem to take up space. Curiosities of Literature is a rather inexpensive book, and if you truly are a lover of classic literature, then it’s certainly worth a look. You’ll likely get your money’s worth of entertainment out of it.

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