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The Best Books about Books–if such stuff interests you.

By Anita Mathias

John Sutherland’s top 10 books about books

From Aristotle to Roland Barthes, the author and commentator gives his analysis of the critics who find the hard answers to simple questions, and offers some improving ideas for new year’s reading
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  • John Sutherland
    • John Sutherland
    • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 December 2010 10.36 GMT
    • Article history
French Philosopher Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes in 1979. Photograph: Fabian Cevallos/Corbis
John Sutherland staggers under the title Lord Northcliffe professor emeritus of Modern English Literature at UCL. He has written numerous books on literature and a couple on himself (notably a drunkalog, Last Drink to LA). He has taught, principally, in the UK and America. His next book (out in a week or so) has the self-explanatory title: 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know. Roll over Dr Johnson.
  1. 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know
  2. by John Sutherland
  3. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop

Buy 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know at the Guardian bookshop
“There are only a handful of grand-master literary critics in action at any one time in the English-speaking world. We lost one of our greatest literary critics, Frank Kermode, a few months ago. That leaves, by my count, Christopher Ricks, Terry Eagleton, and Elaine Showalter. Others will have a different pantheon – but if they’re honest it will be highly select.
“The hardest lit-crit is that which asks the simplest questions. What’s the difference between a ‘story’ by Ian McEwan and a ‘story’ on the front page of the Guardian? What precisely, is ‘lost’ in translation? Literature ‘means’ something. But is that meaning located in the author’s mind, on the page, or in the reader’s mind? Why does literature (unlike, say, the discourses of law or science) cultivate ‘ambiguity’ – saying many things at the same time?”

1. Aristotle, The Poetics (Ingram Bywater translation)

The still-most-relevant work of literary criticism, given (as a lecture, probably) around the fourth century BC. Aristotle takes on the biggest/simplest questions of all. How can we “enjoy” a performance of Oedipus Rex in which the hero blinds himself with his wife-mother’s brooch pins? Was Plato right to say the poet belongs outside, not inside, any ideal society? How can fiction be “true”? Even, as Aristotle argues, truer than history.

2. Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (1966)

Full blooded assault on “professionalised” academic criticism and its preoccupation with “meanings”. As Sontag saw it: “In place of hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.” Politically Sontag was de-institutionalising literary criticism – tearing it away from the campus. Her thesis is, essentially, a version of Lawrence’s dictum that if you try and nail something down in the novel you either kill the novel or the novel gets up and walks away with the nail. Don’t interpret it, make love to it. Enjoy.

3. Stanley Fish, Is there a Text in this Class? (1980)

Winner of the wittiest title ever coined for a book on lit-crit (the question was initially asked by an artless student in his seminar). Fish’s simple/hard questions: what’s the difference between a “text” and a “work of literature”? How, when the best seminars tend to finish with more disagreement than they started with, do we reach a consensus reading of any text? Is there any such thing?

4. Elaine Showalter, A Literature of their Own (1978)

Showalter was the critic who realised that after the breakthroughs of the women’s movement in the 1960s a new map of literature was required. More particularly some mapping out of the zone in which women talk to women. Why does Jane Eyre mean more to a woman reader than a man? Or does it? Essentially, Showalter takes Virginia Woolf’s “room of one’s own” thesis and applies it to fiction. In her career she went on to help frame a whole new syllabus area.

5. Roland Barthes, S/Z (1977: Richard Miller translation)

The sage of poststructuralism extracts meaning from a short story by Balzac with the care of someone removing kipper bones from their teeth. Is reading a story the second time round (when, for example, we know the butler did it) a richer, or poorer literary experience? Why do we read Jane Austen every year, then, when we know Elizabeth will marry Darcy? How do a few hundred thousand black marks on a white surface become Pride and Prejudice—a “world” with people, places, and events? What “structuration” is at work when that happens?

6. Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (revised edition, 2000)

Why do we crave “closure” in our fictions – “the end”? Why do our brains insist on hearing tick-tock when, acoustically, the clock goes “tick-tick”. What’s the connection between the last chapter of Middlemarch and the Final Judgement in the Bible? Why does modernist literature (specifically) eschew traditional literature’s endings, or play with them mischievously (think, for example, of the three endings on offer in John Fowles’s French Lieutenant’s Woman)?

7. Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976)

This small book – a perennial lit-crit bestseller for 35 years – made the discipline “big”. Literature is not a peripheral thing but infrastructural. Literature matters, Eagleton believes, as much as War, Darwinism, Religion, or Revolution matter. The current government has foolishly forgotten the fact. He has reminded them in the Guardian.

8. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980)

Pioneering monograph by the high priest of New Historicism. You have this time machine and you want to use it to find out what Hamlet really means. Do you put it into reverse and go back to the Globe, 1601: or do you put the machine into forward gear and zoom at warp-speed aeons in the future when the last critics have had their final say? Put another way, can we ever know as much about Elizabethan literature as the Elizabethans knew about their literature? What, then, was the peculiar quality of their knowledge?

9. Christopher Ricks, Milton’s Grand Style (1963)

Literature is all about how to read, and Ricks is the smartest reader we have. His Milton book, one of his earliest, ponders the problem: does the poet have to create his/her own language? Could Milton have done Paradise Lost in a more common tongue? Ricks picks up a bone much chewed over, by TS Eliot and FR Leavis who could never quite make their minds up about Milton and his wholly idiosyncratic diction. Did he build a “Chinese Wall” round literature, or raise the English language where it could most effectively handle literature?

10. Henry Louis Gates Jr, The Signifying Monkey (1988)

The doyen of African-American literary critics, Gates has undertaken the pioneer task of fusing ethnic elements (previously thought wholly sub-literary) with cutting-edge theory – “semiology”, for example, as the word “signifying” indicates. In so doing Gates has defined a discipline within the discipline. More importantly he has widened the definition of what we classify as “literary”. Are rap lyrics literature? Gates, like Showalter, has drawn new maps of literary criticism.

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If you'll forgive me for adding to the noise of th If you'll forgive me for adding to the noise of the world on Black Friday, my memoir ,Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India, is on sale on Kindle all over the world for a few days. 
Carolyn Weber (who has written "Surprised by Oxford," an amazing memoir about coming to faith in Oxford https://amzn.to/3XyIftO )  has written a lovely endorsement of my memoir:
"Joining intelligent winsomeness with an engaging style, Anita Mathias writes with keen observation, lively insight and hard earned wisdom about navigating the life of thoughtful faith in a world of cultural complexities. Her story bears witness to how God wastes nothing and redeems all. Her words sing of a spirit strong in courage, compassion and a pervasive dedication to the adventure of life. As a reader, I have been challenged and changed by her beautifully told and powerful story - so will you."
The memoir is available on sale on Amazon.co.uk at https://amzn.to/3u0Ib8o and on Amazon.com at https://amzn.to/3u0IBvu and is reduced on the other Amazon sites too.
Thank you, and please let me know if you read and enjoy it!! #memoir #indianchildhood #india
Second birthday party. Determinedly escaping! So i Second birthday party. Determinedly escaping!
So it’s a beautiful November here in Oxford, and the trees are blazing. We will soon be celebrating our 33rd wedding anniversary…and are hoping for at least 33 more!! 
And here’s a chapter from my memoir of growing up Catholic in India… rosaries at the grotto, potlucks, the Catholic Family Movement, American missionary Jesuits, Mangaloreans, Goans, and food, food food…
https://anitamathias.com/2022/11/07/rosaries-at-the-grotto-a-chapter-from-my-newly-published-memoir-rosaries-reading-steel-a-catholic-childhood-in-india/
Available on Amazon.co.uk https://amzn.to/3Apjt5r and on Amazon.com https://amzn.to/3gcVboa and wherever Amazon sells books, as well as at most online retailers.
#birthdayparty #memoir #jamshedpur #India #rosariesreadingsecrets
Friends, it’s been a while since I blogged, but Friends, it’s been a while since I blogged, but it’s time to resume, and so I have. Here’s a blog on an absolutely infallible secret of joy, https://anitamathias.com/2022/10/28/an-infallible-secret-of-joy/
Jenny Lewis, whose Gilgamesh Retold https://amzn.to/3zsYfCX is an amazing new translation of the epic, has kindly endorsed my memoir. She writes, “With Rosaries, Reading and Secrets, Anita Mathias invites us into a totally absorbing world of past and present marvels. She is a natural and gifted storyteller who weaves history and biography together in a magical mix. Erudite and literary, generously laced with poetic and literary references and Dickensian levels of observation and detail, Rosaries is alive with glowing, vivid details, bringing to life an era and culture that is unforgettable. A beautifully written, important and addictive book.”
I would, of course, be delighted if you read it. Amazon.co.uk https://amzn.to/3gThsr4 and Amazon.com https://amzn.to/3WdCBwk #joy #amwriting #amblogging #icecreamjoy
Wandering around Oxford with my camera, photograph Wandering around Oxford with my camera, photographing ancient colleges! Enjoy.
And just a note that Amazon is offering a temporary discount on my memoir, Rosaries, Reading, Steel https://amzn.to/3UQN28z . It’s £7.41.
Here’s an endorsement from my friend, Francesca Kay, author of the beautiful novel, “An Equal Stillness.” This is a beautifully written account of a childhood, so evocative, so vivid. The textures, colours and, above all, the tastes of a particular world are lyrically but also precisely evoked and there was much in it that brought back very clear memories of my own. Northern India in the 60s, as well as Bandra of course – dust and mercurochrome, Marie biscuits, the chatter of adult voices, the prayers, the fruit trees, dogs…. But, although you rightly celebrate the richness of that world, you weave through this magical remembrance of things past a skein of sadness that makes it haunting too. It’s lovely!” #oxford #beauty
So, I am not going to become a book-bore, I promis So, I am not going to become a book-bore, I promise, but just to let you know that my memoir "Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India," is now available in India in paperback. https://www.amazon.in/s?k=rosaries+reading+secrets&crid=3TLDQASCY0WTH&sprefix=rosaries+r%2Caps%2C72&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_10My endorsements say it is evocative, well-written, magical, haunting, and funny, so I'd be thrilled if you bought a copy on any of the Amazon sites. 
Endorsements 
A beautifully written account. Woven through this magical remembrance of things past is a skein of sadness that makes it haunting. Francesca Kay, An Equal Stillness. 
A dazzling vibrant tale of childhood in post-colonial India. Mathias conjures 1960s India and her family in uproarious and heart-breaking detail. Erin Hart, Haunted Ground 
Mathias invites us into a wonderfully absorbing and thrilling world of past and present marvels… generously laced with poetic and literary references and Dickensian levels of observation and detail. A beautifully written, important, and addictive book. Jenny Lewis, Gilgamesh Retold 
Tormented, passionate and often sad, Mathias’s beautiful childhood memoir is immensely readable. Trevor Mostyn, Coming of Age in The Middle East.
A beautifully told and powerful story. Joining intelligent winsomeness with an engaging style, Mathias writes with keen observation, lively insight and hard-earned wisdom. Carolyn Weber, Surprised by Oxford 
A remarkable account. A treasure chest…full of food (always food), books (always books), a family with all its alliances and divisions. A feat of memory and remembrance. Philip Gooden, The Story of English
Anita’s pluck and charm shine through every page of this beautifully crafted, comprehensive and erudite memoir. 
Ray Foulk, Picasso’s Revenge
Mathias’s prose is lively and evocative. An enjoyable and accessible book. Sylvia Vetta, Sculpting the Elephant
Anita Mathias is an is an accomplished writer. Merryn Williams, Six Women Novelists
Writing a memoir awakens fierce memories of the pa Writing a memoir awakens fierce memories of the past. For the past is not dead; it’s not even past, as William Faulkner observed. So what does one do with this undead past? Forgive. Forgive, huh? Forgive. Let it go. Again and again.
Some thoughts on writing a memoir, and the prologue to my memoir
https://anitamathias.com/2022/09/08/thoughts-on-writing-a-memoir-the-prologue-to-rosaries-reading-secrets/ 
#memoir #amwriting #forgiveness https://amzn.to/3B82CDo
Six months ago, Roy and I decided that finishing t Six months ago, Roy and I decided that finishing the memoir was to be like “the treasure in the field,” that Jesus talks about in the Gospels, which you sacrifice everything to buy. (Though of course, he talks about an intimate relationship with God, not finishing a book!!) Anyway, I’ve stayed off social media for months… but I’ve always greatly enjoyed social media (in great moderation) and it’s lovely to be back with the book now done  https://amzn.to/3eoRMRN  So, our family news: Our daughter Zoe is training for ministry as a priest in the Church of England, at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. She is “an ordinand.” In her second year. However, she has recently been one of the 30 ordinands accepted to work on an M.Phil programme (fully funded by the Church of England.) She will be comparing churches which are involved in community organizing with churches which are not, and will trace the impact of community organizing on the faith of congregants.  She’ll be ordained in ’24, God willing.
Irene is in her final year of Medicine at Oxford University; she will be going to Toronto for her elective clinical work experience, and will graduate as a doctor in June ‘23, God willing.
And we had a wonderful family holiday in Ireland in July, though that already feels like a long time ago!
https://anitamathias.com/2022/09/01/rosaries-readi https://anitamathias.com/2022/09/01/rosaries-reading-secrets-a-catholic-childhood-in-india-my-new-memoir/
Friends, some stellar reviews from distinguished writers, and a detailed description here!!
https://amzn.to/3wMiSJ3 Friends, I’ve written a https://amzn.to/3wMiSJ3  Friends, I’ve written a memoir of my turbulent Catholic childhood in India. I would be grateful for your support!
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