John Sutherland

I went to hear John Sutherland talk at the London Review Bookshop last night, about his new book How to Read a Novel. He was thoroughly engaging and interesting, and came across as a very nice bloke (although I still wasn't tempted to buy the book). He had that effortlessly democratic attitude to reading that comes from spending forty years being paid to do it, while several audience members were more anxious for the kind of guidelines about how and what to read that the book doesn't seem to contain. One audience member preceded his question (forget what now) by being scornful about the idea that Shakespeare would be writing soaps, and Sutherland very deftly said how fascinating it is the extent to which we surround ourselves with narrative. I liked that response as it managed to reconfigure the original point into something much more interesting, while remaining sweetly polite.

At the end, he talked about ways in which the relationship between author and reader is changing and becoming a more equal and active transaction. "Oh," I thought, "wouldn't it be funny if he mentioned fanfiction?" He talked a bit about reading groups (he is a member of a reading group, but doesn't mention that he's an academic, bless), and then - bingo. There he was, talking about 'more of' and 'more from' and character rape and slash and Cassie Claire. He was selling the idea to a very mainstream audience, so made a big deal about how respectful fanfic writers are to their sources (and he used 'slash fiction' to mean 'fanfiction'), but he was terribly enthusiastic about the whole thing and made a point of saying how good some of it is. But we knew he had it in him from Can Jane Eyre be Happy?, didn't we? Come out, come out, wherever you are.