...Close Reading

I'm having a difficult time keeping this blog-thing going - keeping it from becoming a useless political rant, that is. The link to the left (under "I could never hate Scotland, but..."), for instance, raises a host of questions and issues I am unqualified to comment upon (I had never heard much of what is reported in this piece, on the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103). It's a crazy story with all sorts of connections, many indirect, to our present political moment, and I am resisting for the time being the desire to say a bunch of things about these connections. It's enough to point to the piece for now and to ask, if anybody is reading this, if other peole have thoughts. Also, I'm terrified of flying on airplanes.

I'm inspired by other bloggers: their creative formats, readable voices, and interesting links. And I still really like the idea of writing in a more general, less academic way (though choosing the C19 periodical essay as a kind of model, or primary inspiration, was maybe a poor choice for getting started). My intention was to use this space for reflection on books, ideas, issues, etc. outside of or away from my academic interests. Now I guess I'm changing my mind.

I've been intrigued this past semester by a set of essays written by Franco Moretti under the title "Graphs, Maps, Trees" (see part 1: http://newleftreview.org/?view=2482). Moretti's is an attempt to chart - or really to render - a shift in literary study: away from "...the close reading of individual texts to the construction of abstract models" drawn from disciplines such as quanatative history, geography, and evolutionary theory. Moretti's conclusions are preliminary and provocative. And they have me wondering about the kind of work I do in the classroom and in my writing. The implicit premise behind Moretti's argument is that we have hit a kind of saturation point with regards to the kind of work we produce (in literary studies). At what point do we have enough close readings? Can we get closer to, say, Pride and Prejudice? When we find other, less well known texts from Austen's period should we subject them, too, to close readings? How many is enough? Or do only certain texts make themselves available to close reading?

Given recent bibliographic work and a host of assumptions practiced under the rubric of "cultural studies," it seems impossible, thinks Moretti, that we keep doing what we used to do. When I have raised this point with my students they have laughed dismissively (or excitedly) at the prospect of reading not too closely. Critics against close reading, though, are not for skimming (I don't think). They are against the whole set of disciplinary procedures and forms that comprise the practice of "close reading." Two questions: can Moretti's graphs, maps, trees actually get use closer to texts by moving us out and away from them (our eyes so close to the page now that the words have become blurry)? Or is this too missing the point. Closeness is not what models are after. What kind of work, then, do these abstract models allow for? And what would that work say about our disciplinary selves (what we write, teach, talk about, have conference panels on)?

Here's the big question: do they (or what they point to) offer an opportunity to make our field more and better connected (or relevant) to the world beyond academe?

Actually that was four questions.