Distant Reading

This book is made of 10 essays that attack, from different angles, issues that obsess the author: - the existence of a 'world literature', as a huge set of extremely diverse styles, forms and stories and, later with the globalization, as an organism or system. Franco Moretti speculates on how this system works, what are the mechanisms for new literary production, specially in the clash of the center and the periphery. He uses archetypes and metaphors brought from evolutionary biology, such as diffusion (wave), divergence (tree), confluence (anastomosis),... - the problem for the literary critic theory, that can't access the entire world literature corpus. A critic can only read an extremely tiny percentage of all those books, and usually chooses what is considered canonical, thus leaving outside the "great unread". - the possible solutions to this problem, what he calls 'distant reading', "distance [...] is a condition of knowledge: it allows you to focus on units that are much smaller or much larger than the text" - the role of the market as an space or environment that shapes literary evolution, genre creation and successful literary artifacts discovery (again, under an evolutionary biology perspective) Among the things that makes this book extremely interesting is the fact that the author wanders through difficult issues, often invalidating or revisiting previous ideas (he's playing, he's inviting to play). For instance, one of the first essays is 'Conjectures on World Literature'; this essay was published and received several critics; another essay in the book, 'More Conjectures' introduces many of these critics, the ones the author reckons as more interesting, he admits he was wrong in some cases, defends other points of views, and the whole feels as a true conversation, a one the author is enjoying. To some extent is like reading an epistolary novel. These conversations: with other critics, with himself, and between essays that constantly return to the same issues, makes the book a system itself, a network. Franco Moretti has been criticized for proposing an approach to books that no longer requires reading (that is: enjoying) books. I think this is just a provocation, a "social artifact" (in his own terms) to get attention to the issues he points. What he actually proposes is an "extended reading", that also requires reading, but that goes beyond by focusing on the small (identifiable artifacts contained in books) and the big (corpora of books that can't be read by a single human). As an example from the book: Moretti analyzes a small subset of detective novels written in a single decade of the XIX century, "The total came to 108 (plus another fifty items or so [...]), and--it took time. But I have read them all". If you thought Moretti doesn't read books... Finally, one virtue Franco Moretti has and is largely exposed in this book, is his ability to make good questions. As he says "the trouble is, we literary scholars are not good at that: we are trained to listen, not to ask questions". An example of one he poses, that might seem strange at first, but that lead to interesting paths of inquiry: why novels are written in prose?. Is already a cliché that a data scientist main skill is to identify (to craft) good questions, that this ability is more important even than the capacity to provide the best answers to already existent problems. In that sense, Moretti is an excellent data scientist.

Generally fine, revisionist reading. Too bad Moretti knows hardly anything about present Latin American narrative, a discussion of which would have gone a long way toward making his arguments more solid and convincing. Having read one canonical novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude does not allow him to pontificate about a whole region. In that regard he is no better than Jameson. Yet, Moretti is not as turgid, and can even throw in a joke.

The title is capitalizing on the fashion of "distant reading" by collecting a number of essays by Moretti. Your money is better spent elsewhere unless this is a text book or something.

Other reviewers have given good accounts of the general contents and structure of Moretti’s “Distant Reading,” so here I will comment on its value in terms of using data, charts and graphs in literature analysis. As Moretti states early on “world literature” is too vast to be analyzed in the more conventional way of a detailed reading of a small cannon of classic books. Careful reading and interpretation is still important, but other means can be used to “narrow” the field to hone in on aspects and works to examine in a more comprehensive manner. There are also different ways to go about studying literary arts and stories in this emerging era of “big data.” Among my favorite parts of “Distant Reading” that illustrate Moretti’s approach include chapters entitled “The Slaughterhouse of Literature,” “Planet Hollywood,” “Evolution, World-Systems, Weltliteratur,” “Style, Inc. Reflections on 7,000 Titles (British Literature 1740-1850)” and “Network Theory, Plot Analysis” where his employment of charts, graphs, and other visual analytical tools are particularly vivid. More specifically, “The Slaughterhouse of Literature” is a metaphor that Moretti uses were “the prime cuts” (my words) are determined by the “butchers”/readers as they keep certain literary works current and at the forefront through their buying/reading habits. Moretti illustrates this process by examining how Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes” detective fiction emerged as prominent in the genre through its use of “clues.” Tree diagrams on pages 73 and 79 are key to his analyses. In “Planet Hollywood,” Moretti employs world maps and box office results (e.g. see page 103) from the trade paper “Variety” to show how audience reception and popularity of action/ adventure, comedy, drama, and children’s film genres compare and contrast in different regions. Within “Evolution, World-Systems, Weltliteratur,” he utilizes linguistic trees (e.g. on page 126) to show ways language families have come together in fiction overtime in literature around the globe. “Style, Inc. Reflections on 7,000 Titles (British Literature 1740-1850)” incorporates scatter plots with the length of book names and then numbers published over time (e.g. see page 183) to demonstrate the manner in which reading preferences and markets changed. “Network Theory, Plot Analysis” applies diagrams of social relations among the characters in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” (e.g. see page 213) and Chinese novels to try alternative means of “looking” into and visualizing story lines. While like the author himself, one can find flaws at times in his methods and conclusions, Moretti does provide valuable examples of data, chart and graph use to analyze literature that are well worth consideration and emulation.

A rather simplistic neo-Darwinian conception of literary evolution and a reductive picture of world literature.

Innovative and interesting use of research strategies not often applied to literary studies, but sometimes a little too literally. Wish it had been literary rather than literal.

Anyone interested in the study of literature should read this book. You might not agree. But I guarantee that you'll find it thought-provoking.

Morettis Essaysammlung schwankt meiner studentischen Meinung nach zwischen wirrer Gedankensammlung zu einem neuen Forschungsfeld ohne klare Richtung einerseits, mutigen Ideen und deren hartnäckig-konsequenten Umsetzung andererseits. Es wird deutlich, wie ein Akademiker versucht, die ihm bekannten Pfade zu verlassen und seine textübergreifende Untersuchung gewisser Entitäten durchzuführen. Die thematische Problematik besteht wohl auch nach einigen Jahren noch darin, das breite Feld von Fachkollegen von der Sinnhaftigkeit seines Unterfangens zu überzeugen. Die Leserfreundlichkeit oszilliert mMn um eine recht niedrige Prozentzahl, denn um Morettis Gedanken folgen zu können, benötigt man die Ausdauer, sich zu einem seiner wenigen klar formulierten Sätze durchzuarbeiten.