What Close Reading Really Is

‘Distant’, ‘surface’, ‘deep’, ‘immersive’, ‘critical’, ‘wide’, ‘lay’, ‘mis-’: of all the qualifiers critics add to ‘reading’, the most hotly contested is ‘close’. Not only did the rise of close reading in the 1920s create the technical foundations for modern literary studies in universities, but it remains today a battleground for disciplinary squabbles. To some, it implies a naïve or reactionary formalism set against the claims of history and of politics. To others, it’s its own political and ethical project, training our attention to the finest-tuned aspects of language and of the world. To students, it’s often a test of skill, proving the difference between a plodding scholar and the next William Empson (or Paul de Man, or Marjorie Perloff, or Jerome McGann, or Susan Stewart – take your pick). But whatever you make of it, close reading never seems to stop, and neither do the disagreements. For me – and in this, I know I’m not alone – close reading is often where literary criticism is at its most exciting. It’s where words and meanings collide; it’s where we meet, in Charles Olson’s phrase, ‘the kinetics of the thing’.