apologies in advanced because this is going to seem SO weird. i’ve come all the way from the comment section of a mlb fic you didn’t write. first of all, it was amazing but the comment exchange between you and the author brought me just as much joy as reading it did. i hyper fixate on things incredibly easily and the way you analyzed the work i’m referencing filled me with so much serotonin—SSRI who? anyways, you’ve gained a follower (not only is the way you write captivating, but the way you think) and i would love to know more about what goes through your mind when you’re reading a piece of fiction? how do you delve so deeply into the story you’re past the words and able to make these amazing connections/interpretations??? feel free to ignore me and my strangeness, im just in awe
hi!! this was,,, completely and utterly buried in my ask box, and im so sorry i didn't see it until now 😭
thank you so much for your kind words!! 💛 (i have no evidence for this lol, but i do recall losing my goddamn mind [affectionate] in a comment on the self is not weightless by the incredible @ambivalentmarvel, an mlb fic that lives rent free in my mind to this day, and even if this isn't the fic you're referencing lol, everyone should still read ambi's story!! it's incredible!! her mind!!!)
it's hard to precisely describe my thought process when reading fiction lol, but i do know that i attempt to approach all stories (whether fanfic, shakespeare, or assigned texts for class that im never going to pick up again once i finish the course) with a similar level of investment: looking for what the work is doing and how it does it. at its core, im really just doing close reading (but i definitely allow myself to be geekier with it when it comes to fanfic, lol), i.e. i'm weaving my own words with and through the words of another to perform the craft of literary analysis. i've been (formally) studying literature and literary analysis for six years now (four more years 'til i have my phd!!), and plain and simple, it's just something i love to do. to write about literature is a form of creative writing in itself, and i think that mentality probably manifests in some of my fic comments!
jonathan kramnick puts it better than i could throughout criticism and truth:
“Close reading is a craft because it is a skilled practice of making sentences from sentences that are already in the world, the immersive environment of the literary. One learns how to do this. Close reading is also a craft because it is a method of understanding that environment” (7)
“One of the most immersive and engaged practices of writing is quotation. There is no more direct way to reach out to and make something from a linguistic artifact than to wrap your words around it, to accommodate your syntax to syntax already arranged by mood, number, and tense” (11)
“What do literary critics actually do when they write about texts? Close reading isn’t reading. It’s writing” (22)
“In the event, much of literary criticism turns on the art of quoting well: pointing to lines or words of interest to your argument; placing new words up against or around them; describing how quoted words sit among words unquoted or in the tradition of scholarly discussion. In this way, quotation is the art of moving across two orders of writing, one’s own and someone else’s. One composes sentences about and with sentences already made” (33)
“Unlike grammar or chemistry, hermeneutic reconstruction does not follow an exact formula, and like poetry or fiction, it relies on the flair and dexterity of a maker, someone who by application immerses herself in thought and language” (69)
“Only in the study of literature, however, does the raw material of the work enter into and define the scope of the sentence itself. To know something in the field is to meld, mesh, and turn something while maintaining its medium” (73)
i love literature, i love literary studies, it's what i do 💛 why should fanfic not receive as close a reading from me as any other work of art?
baratheonpilled
stormborns
jacobvanloon
yousharknotpass
2087
