(Over 60 diverse thinkers on how to get more from books)
Gallop is an American professor of English and Comparative Literature.
When we read we tend to project what we think the author would have written rather than seeing what they actually wrote (Gallop 2000, 10). A simple example is how we fail to spot typographical errors, especially in our own writing: we know what we expect to see, so that’s what we find. However, we project at all levels of reading. Gallop is interested in what we miss when we read ourselves into the text rather than listening to what it truly says.
“Projecting is the opposite of learning” (p. 11). We only project what we already think, so are unable to see anything new. We also project when we stereotype. We’re familiar with the impact of negative, harmful stereotypes, but Gallop is also concerned with their “positive” counterparts such as the “noble savage and the selfless nurturing mother”—both types are dehumanising (p. 15). She argues that through them we tend the view the Other as “our polar opposite”, which affects how we view people, authors, and texts (ibid.). This polarisation leads us to treat a book as either “great, wise, admirable”, or “bad, stupid, dangerous”, brooking no nuance (p. 16). In the first case, we “read it lovingly looking for instances of its wisdom, ignoring those things that seem wrong or off to us”; in the second, we “read it aggressively looking for examples of its stupidity, ignoring those things that we might actually like or agree with.” (ibid.). Both stances are totalising and projective. When an author has been accused of holding particular prejudices, for example, readers can feel that they need to fearfully defend the author’s reputation because a flawed author can no longer be enjoyed (pp. 15–16). Likewise, some of Gallop’s students read (p. 16):
using a mental checklist to look for sexism, racism, or something else from the ever-growing list of official prejudices so they can dismiss it. If it fails the checklist they feel they don’t have to deal with it, don’t have to learn what’s inside.
She suggests that the antidote to this state of affairs is “close reading”: looking at what is actually on the page, “noticing things in the writing” that stand out. The aspects she identifies seem marginal. They’re both minor yet “nonetheless emphatic, prominent”, they “textually call attention to themselves” (p. 8). Gallop offers the following examples of what a close reading may notice (p. 7):
- unusual vocabulary, words that surprise either because they are unfamiliar or because they seem to belong to a different context;
- words that seem unnecessarily repeated, as if the word keeps insisting on being written;
- images or metaphors, especially ones that are used repeatedly and are somewhat surprising given the context;
- what is in italics or parentheses; and
- footnotes that seem too long.
Focusing on these kind of features “is a method of undoing the training that keeps us to the straight and narrow path of main ideas” (p. 8). We are trained to read a book globally: “to think of the book as a whole, identify its main idea, and understand all of its parts as fitting together to make up that whole” (p. 11). However, this general outline is most likely what corresponds to our preconceptions; by “concentrating on details, we disrupt our projection” (ibid.):
When we close read, we zero in on details but we do not immediately fit those details into our idea of the whole book. Instead we try to understand the details themselves as much as possible, to derive as much meaning as we can from them.
This applies to non-fiction as much as to fiction, making us hyperaware of even elements of “newspapers” and “signs in shop windows” which otherwise went unnoticed (p. 8). It is also “a technique to maximize learning” because it forces us to look not at the familiar, but at the surprising—so we see the material we need to learn [Gallop (2000), pp. 11. It aids our writing because it forces us to attend to what other people will see when they read our work (pp. 8–10).
The general principle of close reading, then, is “read not what should be on the page but what is”: “become conscious of what [you] usually remain unconscious of” (pp. 8–9). By focusing our attention away from the big picture, on the easily stereotyped features, we are able to listen fairly to the text. Even more important for Gallop, we should apply this principle to our interpersonal interactions in order that we listen to the Other more carefully, too. Close reading is a way of listening more attentively, causing us to notice “unexpected words and allowing them to shake up our preconceived notions” (pp. 12–13). Gallop wants us “suspicious of our tendency to project” (p. 13).