When I was a little girl, my mother used to read to me every night before bed. When I was old enough, I began reading by myself. It quickly became my favorite thing to do. My mother used to take me to the public library in Iuka. I remember systematically reading my way through their entire junior book collection, staring with RL Stine's Goosebumps series. I read every single Goosebump book that the library had. I would then beg my mother to buy them for me whenever I found one at a yard sale or thrift store. During that time, I used to fantasize about reading every book in the world. It was an ambitious (and naaive) desire, but it was one that I tried to hold onto. It was not until much later that I realized that the Iuka library did not, in fact, have every book ever written in it. Actually, it only had a small percentage of all the books. It was then that I realized the error in my childhood dream.
Moretti seemed to discover this same problem. No matter how much we read, we will never have read enough to have a good grasp on literature. Kathryn Schulz recently published an article on the New York Times website entitled, "What is Distant Reading?". In it, she explains what Moretti meant:
"We need distant reading, Moretti argues, because its opposite, close reading, can’t uncover the true scope and nature of literature. Let’s say you pick up a copy of “Jude the Obscure,” become obsessed with Victorian fiction and somehow manage to make your way through all 200-odd books generally considered part of that canon. Moretti would say: So what? As many as 60,000 other novels were published in 19th-century England — to mention nothing of other times and places. You might know your George Eliot from your George Meredith, but you won’t have learned anything meaningful about literature, because your sample size is absurdly small. Since no feasible amount of reading can fix that, what’s called for is a change not in scale but in strategy. To understand literature, Moretti argues, we must stop reading books." - Kathryn Schulz, NYTI feel like this is a bit extreme. How are we to understand literature if we don't read? Moretti is trying to turn literature into science, which seems a little impossible. And what is the point of literature, then, if we stop using it as it was intended? What will happen if people begin to follow Moretti's advice and stop reading? I'm not sure that I want my children picking up Hank the Cowdog or Harry Potter or even The Catcher in the Rye and then collecting data, comparing it, solving for x, etc. I want them to freak out when Hank the Cowdog winds up stuck in a briar bush. I want them to weep when the Harry Potter series ends with a flash into the future of the "golden trio's" lives. And I want them to read The Catcher in the Rye and wonder what on earth it is about.
I do agree that we will never be able to read every book out there and that we will ever only be able to read a tiny fraction of them. Moretti's concern was that we would never understand literature because we would never be able to read everything. Why must we understand literature to begin with? As a writer, I don't compose a novel thinking, "This noel will become a tiny piece in the major scheme of things." I compose to make points of my own and to bring pleasure to my audience. If people stop reading they will completely ignore the purpose of literature - to be read and enjoyed.
This is similar to Shakespeare's plays being read instead of performed. My English IV teacher in high school had our class watch Hamlet in class because it was meant to be performed and not read. Likewise, literature is meant to be read and not turned into a scientific experiment.
