Wednesday 7 December 2011

"50 Literature Ideas you really need to know" by John Sutherland

I think I expected this book to be more about creative writing than it was. It started well with Mimesis (which just means imitation ie writing that tries to mirror reality) but very quickly it got into the world of literary criticism. What is a classic? Does a text belong to the writer or the reader and where does the meaning reside? Deconstruction means that every text is inherently indeterminate of meaning. Where does plagiarim begin and hommage end; where does this leave fanfic and the e-book? These topics might be fascinating to an academic but most of them came nowhere near my conception of the 50 Literature ideas I wanted let alone needed to know.

Disappointing.

December 2011; 203 pages

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