{"id":97,"date":"2020-06-24T17:15:13","date_gmt":"2020-06-24T21:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmbaker.net\/?p=97"},"modified":"2022-08-19T07:00:43","modified_gmt":"2022-08-19T11:00:43","slug":"on-the-value-of-close-reading-for-writers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmbaker.net\/on-the-value-of-close-reading-for-writers\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Value of Close Reading for Writers"},"content":{"rendered":"
The practice of close reading<\/a>\u00a0a text is an interesting one. It implies that normal reading is less close. So what is the point of reading a text more closely than normal? Does it yield a better reading experience? Does it provide a window into the soul, or at least the technique of a writer? And did the writer actually compose with as close an attention to detail as the reader brings to the text when they do a close reading? Was every scintilla of meaning and technique that the close reading uncovers placed there by the writer with deliberate and conscious intent, or does the close reading uncover the tacit process of composition<\/a>? Or is it in fact an imposition on the text, an invention rather than a discovery?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n All these questions arise because of an exercise in close reading that forms part of the Historical Novel Society Master Class<\/a> that I am currently enrolled in. The assigned passage is the first paragraph of Flannery O’Connor’s famous short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find<\/em>. (Not historical fiction, but an excellent subject nonetheless.) I’m going to present my close reading exercise here, and then use it to try to tackle some of the questions raised above. I present it here not with any pretense at (or knowledge of) O’Connor scholarship. I didn’t choose the subject matter. I present it merely as an object of reflection on the value of close reading.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is the opening paragraph of A Good Man is Hard to Find<\/em>.<\/p>\n The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of The Journal. “Now look here, Bailey,” she said, “see here, read this,” and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just your read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is my close reading:<\/p>\n “The Grandmother.” Why is the main character introduced this way? Why not give her a name? Every character, like every person, has not only their personal identity, but their office. In life, it is usually more than one office: husband, father, sister, grandmother, doctor, patient, CEO. In fiction, though, it is often only one, or only one that matters to the story. Here O’Connor decides to present her character as the holder of an office. She is never named, though she is referred to as “the old lady” outside the context of her family.<\/p>\n Why focus on the office?\u00a0 The office a person holds comes with expectations, responsibilities, and relationships. By naming the office \u201cThe Grandmother\u201d, O\u2019Connor tells us the office that the character holds in the family. If the line read \u201cMavis did not want to go to Florida,\u201d the line would be almost entirely vacuous. What else did she not want to do? But the line \u201cThe Grandmother did not want to go to Florida\u201d sets up an immediate opposition. The grandmother in the household is a dependent. It does not belong to her office to determine where the family will go on vacation. By naming the office that the character holds, rather than giving the character a name, O\u2019Connor immediately introduces tension into the story.<\/p>\n But there is more to it than that, and the rest of the paragraph builds on this violation of office. “She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee…” Here we are shown that her first loyalties lie outside the family. She wants to visit some of her \u201cconnections\u201d in east Tennessee. Not family, just \u201cconnections\u201d. Her loyalties are external. And yet she wants the family to devote their vacation time to taking her to visit her connections. Again, she is not conforming to her office as grandmother.<\/p>\n The rest of the paragraph builds on this alienation. \u201cBailey was the son she lived with.\u201d It\u2019s a domestic arrangement. There is no affection suggested here, only a domicile. \u201cHe was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of The Journal.\u201d This is the most prominent visual detail in the entire paragraph, and it is of a chair, a table, and a newspaper. Bailey himself stays out of frame. It is the newspaper that the eye is directed to, its orange color, its name, the particular section he is reading. It is the most visually precise description in the entire paragraph and it obscures Bailey himself. Bailey is effectively hidden behind his newspaper \u2013 not by O\u2019Connor saying as much, but by her decision to describe the newspaper and not the man reading it. As much as we ever see of Bailey is his bald head when the grandmother rattles the paper at him. As much as we see of her is her thin hip. The newspaper, the barricade between them, the weapon she wields against him, is the most prominent physical feature in the entire paragraph. We see a hip, a bald head, a newspaper. We never see a face.<\/p>\n Then we have the introduction of the Misfit. What is striking here is that all that has come before it establishes the grandmother as a misfit herself. She is not performing the duties of her office as grandmother, but pursuing her own ends. She is cut off from her son by his newspaper. She would rather spend time with her connections in East Tennessee than with her family. She is a misfit.<\/p>\n The fact that The Misfit calls himself that name is significant. It is not the name others have given him. He has given it to himself. He is more self aware than the grandmother, who shows no awareness of being a misfit herself. In this sense, he rebukes her (as he will do in person at the end of the story).<\/p>\n The grandmother\u2019s speech to Bailey is manipulative. She is trying to shame him into doing what she wants. But the appeal to her conscience is the significant element here. It is entirely self serving. It is not her conscience, but her will, that prompts everything she says. And here again we see that she is a misfit. She is deaf to her conscience and willing to appeal to it for entirely self-serving reasons. Normal human beings are restrained by their conscience, but she, like The Misfit, is not.<\/p>\n O\u2019Connor\u2019s language is spare here. There is little in the way of physical detail, and what there is is in service of the portrait of disjuncture within the family that she is painting. The grandmother is a misfit, and, most importantly, a moral misfit. The emphasis is on the grandmother\u2019s moral state, and no words are spent on anything that does not speak to that theme.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n