John Miedema

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… the literati are doing what her sex education nurse did in her seventh grade – forget to tell the students that the practice is quite fun. “Only the pleasure of reading do they castrate — just a bit — so it doesn’t get in the way; so that we remember that literature is not playing games, and, in general, that life is no picnic” (Oz, 1999, 14)

The modern reader lives in an age of plenty. Sutherland (2006) observed that every week more novels are published than Samuel Johnson had to deal with in a decade. He considered the mind-boggling availability of books should everything go on-line, and the dilemma of how to choose between the good and bad ones. But the print book persists, and for good reason. “It is … a lean-back, not a lean-forward apparatus – and human beings like nothing more than to relax while they read” (34). The reader is urged to slow down and accompany Sutherland in the rediscovery of the art of reading. There are limits to how fast we can read, asserted Sutherland. At some point, we have to return to a focus on quality.

Prose is a renowned author and teacher of literature. In Reading Like a Writer (2006), Prose provided a practical introduction to the art of close reading as a way to learn to write. “I read closely, word by word, sentence by sentence, pondering each deceptively minor decision the writer had made” (3). We all begin as close readers, learning to read by listening word-by-word, phrase-by-phrase, to those reading to us. Stereotypes suggest that literary readers are among the elite, applying professional techniques not suited to pleasure reading. Not according to Prose. She tells of the plain fun she had tracing patterns and making connections in her reading at even a young age.

Prose’s book has been received enthusiastically. Crediting Prose, Grimes (2006) stated that the drudgery of reading as information processing only returns to “the sheer bliss of the childhood reading experience … when time, mercifully, stands still.” Levin (2006) said that Prose has convinced him “to adapt the Slow Food movement to reading. How much one has read matters less than how well one has read.”

The term, ‘close reading’, has emerged out of philosophy and literary departments. Murray (1991) suggested that the practice is so pervasive an assignment at the university level it may be considered a synecdoche for the English essay. But there are diverse perspectives on close reading, both between and within departments. Miller (2002) and Cain (1996) distinguished two forms of slow reading – rhetorical reading that examines the language, and cultural studies that interrogate the way a work inculcates beliefs about class, race or gender relations. The New Criticism advocates close attention to text over external sources, and has variants between British and American cultures. Reader Response Criticism refers to a group of approaches that look at the reader’s subjective response rather than focusing exclusively on the text itself.

Reader Response Criticism ties in with the theme from religious studies discussed earlier that slow reading can change the reader. Miall & Kuiken (2002), for example, examined how cartharsis combines aesthethic and narrative feelings that modify the reader. Birkets (1994) claimed that “serious reading is above all an agency of self-making” (87). If slow reading can compel changes in a reader’s identity, questions must be asked about the ethical application of the practice, especially by teachers (see, for example, Rye, 2000).

The complexity of theoretical perspectives associated with close reading might be sufficient to ward off a reader curious about the practice for recreation. It is not uncommon for academics to protect their discipline with false austerity. Oz (1999) complained that the literati are doing what her sex education nurse did in her seventh grade – forget to tell the students that the practice is quite fun. “Only the pleasure of reading do they castrate — just a bit — so it doesn’t get in the way; so that we remember that literature is not playing games, and, in general, that life is no picnic” (14). To the extent that close reading is highly prescribed and aloof, it is not VSR. Stuffy attitudes about literature should not discourage readers from using any variation of close reading for their increased pleasure and comprehension.

References

Birkets, Sven. (1994). The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. Boston: Faber and Faber.

Cain, William E. (1996) A literary approach to literature: Why English departments should focus on close reading, not cultural studies. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 43.

Grimes, William (2006, September 22). You’re a Slow Reader? Congratulations. The New York Times, p. 25.

Levin, Martin (2006, September 16). Slow reading. The Globe and Mail, p. D25.

Miall, David S. & Kuiken, Don (2002). A feeling for fiction: becoming what we behold. Poetics, 30(4), pp. 221–241.

Murray, Heather (1991). Close Reading, Closed Writing. College English, 53, 2, p. 195.

Oz, Amos (1999). Excerpt from the book The story begins: Essays on literature. Nation, 268(22), pp. 13-14.

Prose, Francine (2006). Reading Like a Writer. NY: HarperCollins

Rye, Gill (2000). The (im)possible ethics of reading: Identity, difference, violence and responsibility (Paule Constant’s White spirit). French Studies, 54(3), pp. 327-37.

Sutherland, John (2006). How to read a novel: A user’s guide. NY: St. Martin’s.