Comments on: Pro Close Reading

By: Travis Godsoe

Travis Godsoe — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:57:01 +0000

You may have a point there.

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:44:38 +0000

Travis,
I’m with you, but for one exception. We’re in an age of the proliferation of book-length expositions of various ideas that only really require a long essay. Various reasons for this, but I think they mostly boil down to vanity (books are more prestigious than essays) and an interest in cashing in on a hot topic.
Insofar as some of these books do have merit, but aren’t worth reading in their entirety since they’re just padded out essays, I’m happy to skim their essence in something like the NYRB.

By: Travis Godsoe

Travis Godsoe — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:53:31 +0000

My concern with reviews like this one in the NYRB is that they often function not just as a review that avoids reviewing, as The Literary Saloon points out, but as direct competition for the book they claim to be reviewing. After reading a long-form essay on the subject of the book (which is the NYRB specialty,) why would you bother reading the book? I get concerned when many NYRB reviews essentially steal the concept of a book and turn it into a published essay in a prestigious publication. It would be nice if this created a buzz that led readers of the NYRB to seek out more books on the subject. I’m sure the authors see a bump in sales just because of the exposure, but I suspect many NYRB readers read that paper and feel satisfied to leave it at that.

By: Wrenkin

Wrenkin — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:33:57 +0000

I’m pretty sure readers of the NYRB or LRB know what they’re getting into, especially with regards to the non-fiction. If they wanted a book report, they’d go elsewhere.

By: PJ

PJ — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:43:50 +0000

I know it wasn’t recent, but doesn’t it sound like Mason is referring to the NBCC panel on long-form book reviewing that took place in the fall — at which, according to the NBCC blog (and as quoted here at Conversational Reading), panelists “warned against abusing the opportunity [of a long review] for extensive textual analysis”?
Funny thing is, one of the panelists was Jennifer Szalai, book review editor of… Harper’s Magazine. Of course, maybe the recap quoted above was hasty or misconstrued things — and maybe Mason is talking about another panel altogether anyway.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:25:39 +0000

Steve,
I can’t speak for Mason, but my read of his remarks, and of his literary criticism in general, suggests that you and he are for the same things.
As to the reading experience, I think it can be embodied both in very tightly focused readings and in ones that pull back to consider a novel’s arc.

By: steve mitchelmore

steve mitchelmore — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:49:01 +0000

For what it’s worth, two of my very recent posts have also addressed the issue of close reading.
Anyway, if close reading means ignoring the arc of a novel and thereby setting aside the experience of reading, then close reading is not literary criticism either.
I agree with Guy Davenport against Mason. Literary criticism is about attending to the work in itself (the work’s sensibility, not the author’s) and to literature, not festishising the range of possible interpretations.