Chris' Fish Place

Disclaimer: Read via Netgalley. 

A 4.5 rating simply because the line about the English Football team sent me into the zone of can’t stop cracking up. Fortunately, for non-football (you know, the REAL football) fans, this book has several other things going for it.

You might have heard of John Sutherland. He wrote those question books about literature, like Henry V War Criminal?. The books confront questions in literature and are well worth reading. This book is not like that. It is what it says it is – a short history of literature – written in a very easy to read almost chatty tone.

If this book was a course, it would be the type that has a waiting list.

Sutherland starts with the question of what literature is and moves onto to myth. The book ends with a belief look at e-reading, including a very brief look at how fan fiction ties into literature.

In many ways, the book is like that sightseeing bus tour that I keep seeing around every single city I go to. Here’s the high points, folks, type of thing. The difference is that while the bus may stop at Ford’s Theater to let people off, Sutherland strongly encourages you to go inside and then points out that you should visit the place across the street, walk a few books to that Chinese restaurant that use to be the boarding house, and plan a trip to Illinois. It is this aspect that makes the book a joy to read even if you are a long time student or reader of literature. He might be telling you things you already know, but there is such joy in it.

Not only that, Sutherland will most likely mention one author or book, even in passing that you haven’t read but now that he’s mentioned it you want to pick it up. Part of this seems to come from Sutherland’s love of literature, and part of it seems to come from his look at literature related topics. I’ve read a few histories of English literature and this is the only history I’ve seen that actually addresses copyright, movies, ownership, and the reader among other things in chapters as opposed to asides in chapters about Yeats or whoever.

Sutherland’s comments, in particular about the development of the reading public and influence of film on literature (or vice versa) are insightful and bring freshness to the style of book. It is like Fahrenheit 451, which Sutherland mentions as a response to the television. This book brings literary histories into the here and now, moving them out of academic circles. Unlike Bloom, this is done with a sense that the reading public is different than the academic reader. Bloom impresses you with his knowledge and ego. Sutherland just wants you to love literature as much as he does.

The book does contain a chapter on race and writing. There is attention to poetry. While feminist writing doesn’t get its own chapter, Sutherland does zero in on the topic not only in the section on Woolf, who gets her own chapter, but also on the Brontes and other women. There is a rather interesting chapter on censorship and another on empire. These make up for the fact that the book is largely English literature centric. At times, it does open up but the writers are pre-dominantly English language writers. At times, short sentences do awhile with a larger story, for example the comment about Wilde and his family. It’s true they were not a large part of his public life, but that wasn’t the only reason why they didn’t join him after his release from jail. Still, Sutherland’s history is a wonderful history. Absolutely wonderful. It has nice pictures too.