Emma Cocker

Close Readings

Close Reading (C.O.P.V., 1950).

Close Reading (G.D.T.F., 1993)

Close Reading (L.I.T.B.T., 2001).

Writing is a duplicitous art; its sentences work to smooth words towards organized flows and
sequential rhythms that once written appear as though they have always been as such. Yet, the
process of writing is often circuitous or discontinuous, not linear. The beginning of a text is
rarely located in the first word much as the ending is unlikely to be the last. The time that it
takes to write the words is condensed into the space that they occupy once ordered into line.
The process of writing pulls liquid thinking towards the brink of thought, where it is coaxed
further still towards the shape of letters congealing across the page. In becoming concrete, the
process of thinking loses some of its flow or fluidity, for there is always a surplus that fails to
be translated, that resists materialization into definitive form. The wrestle of how the words
got there will soon be forgotten. Moreover, words are sonorous as much as signifying units,
the soundness of a text to be tested by tongue and lips as much as by the mind. Certain
language must be rolled in the mouth before it can be fully digested. Engagement with a text
is often fractured or discontinuous, performed through a series of ellipses, loops and returns.
Certain sections are lingered over, whilst others skimmed past. Different methods of reading
generate different registers of affect; there is scope for testing experimental tactics. With
practice, language can be made to stretch or pucker, ruche or fray. With experience, it can be
pulled thin and sheer as delicate gauze or gathered up into thick and impenetrable
creases. Under scrutiny, text can be pressured into its component parts (of ink and page), the
legibility of a word rendered nonsensical the closer it is attended to, as writing slips towards
movement and materiality, as meaning dissipates into pleats and folds. Close reading explication de texte. Drawing on the Latin origins of the word explicare: to fold out, to set forth.
Here, close reading might not always attend to the meaning of words themselves as signs, but
to those other meanings produced by looking at the materiality of words close up through
visual magnification, microscopic observation. Yet, insight is not gleaned by simply getting
nearer to a text, for this will only amplify its detail, bringing it closer into range. Paying close
attention to language does not always clarify any single, stable meaning, but perhaps counterintuitively produces further uncertainty where the more something becomes scrutinized the
less it becomes known. The act of looking harder, more forcefully, can cause a text to retreat
or withdraw, for it might not respond well to such advances. Being open to the true force of a
text requires a different approach, one must learn to tarry, take ones time. Or else, other
meanings can only be glimpsed, caught fleetingly in the corner of the eye. A glimpse can
collapse the totality of a text into a single word. Illumination can be kindled from the smallest
flame. The significance of a text can take years to unravel; the impact of another felt in a
lightning flash. Reading is not bound by the chronology of a texts unfolding. Attention can
be activated mid-sentence or half way down a page. A single sentence might open in one
book, close in another. Conclusions do not always need to be drawn. Every narrative can be
re-edited towards a different ending. Resolution is an illusion, a moment of pause rather than
of completion. Nothing is ever truly finished, for every process always becomes another
becomes another becomes another becomes [] every ending is also a beginning. This is not
the end but rather another place from which to start.