50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know - John Sutherland

This is a quick run through of 50 prominent ideas and themes from the history of literature.

This book covers 50 ideas that John Sutherland has deemed to be the essential ones in the world of literature. They range from common themes and literary devices to important aspects from the history of literature and the current world of books. There's a lot of important ideas here and some which are less important thank others (Ebooks for example) and it is all squashed in to 200 pages. This is part of a series - the "50 blank ideas you really need to know"series. This is a nice idea, and I like the idea of a guide to the most important aspects to literature, but unfortunately I think the book suffered from the from the format.

John Sutherland is a master. He's a published author, newspaper columnist and at the top of academia, currently sitting as a professor in Modern English Literature at University College London. The man knows what he is talking about, has written several books on Literature, and is widely seen as one of the top literary critics around today.

The issue I had with this book is that the 50 ideas are squashed into 200 pages. So every idea is given just 4 pages of explanation, along with examples, witty quotes in bold scattered around and little text boxes with food for thought. So John didn't get much space or many words to get into detail on what can be quite complex ideas. It makes the book feel a bit rushed at times, and almost dizzyingly confusing at others. Can anyone be expected to explain irony or allegory in four pages? What about narrative? Can someone who has spent his life studying them be able to explain these ideas quickly, to a degree he is satisfied with? John tried to squeeze his wealth of knowledge into 50 tiny chunks, and the result is almost of all them feel too brief to get the ideas across. I don't think many people would be able to read these ideas without any prior knowledge and feel like they have a strong grasp on them. It's a shame, because I feel like given the space, John could have pulled this book off excellently.

So I mentioned the witty quotes earlier, and though some of them are entertaining and insightful, some of them are plain odd. In the section on Heteroglossia, there is the quote "I hear voices in my head" from none other than the professional wrestler Randy Orton. I don't know if Randy has had a sideline in literary criticism, but I don't think he has even said those words - they're in his entrance music. One of the quotes was immensely satisfying to me though - "Like thatching or clog dancing, literary criticism seems to be something of a dying art" - Terry Eagleton. The reason I enjoyed seeing this here is because I recognised it from Terry's book "How to Read Literature" (Here is the post I wrote on it). If you are new to reading analytically or literary criticism, I would recommend Terry's book over this one. 50 Literary ideas will familiarise you with some of the concepts, but Terry's book will show you how to notice them and look out for them.

So to summarise, this book is great if you want to have a quick dip into 50 key ideas in literature, but if you want to dig a bit deeper and get really clued up, this will all be a bit rushed. I don't know if every book in the 50 Ideas series is limited to the 200 pages, or if John wrote this in a hurry, but this book could have benefited from expanding on some of these ideas, to really get them across.