The Invention of Close Reading

I was an English major in college, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t understand why I should pay to study literature when I knew how to read and could do so more happily on my own time. Like many others, I majored in English for the creative-writing workshops; I thought I would be a famous novelist or, barring that, a notable philosopher. But I failed at fiction, and reading Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations cured me of my hopes in that field. I next tried outdoor education, permaculture farming, and journalism. By 26, I was in a PhD program for… English. Fairly quickly, I developed a reputation, a friend told me, for being bad at close reading.