The Voyant Discoveries

The Journey of "Not Reading"

 Have you ever seen a movie, then gone home and told your family/friends how much you liked it, encouraging them to go see it? For most of us, the answer is yes. You may think you're just providing a recommendation (and yes, you are) but what you may not know is that you're also shaping the course of future movies. The same is true of literature. Franco Moretti brought this to light in his Slaughterhouse of Literature by saying, "past successes are leveraged into future successes" (Moretti 211). So how do we evaluate the percentage of books that are "slaughtered"? That is where distant reading comes in to play.

For this experiment, I chose to analyze the book The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Citation information follows:

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: The Moonstone

Author: Wilkie Collins

Release Date: January 12, 2006 [EBook #155]
Last Updated: September 11, 2016 

I started by making predictions. I wanted to get in the mindset of a detective (since it IS a detective

novel)and so I channeled my inner Sherlock Holmes and got to work. Here is what I came up with:

I think this book is going to be about a person or group of people trying to solve the mystery of

where a "moonstone" is. I think there will be lots of challenges the person/people face and that

they will end up finding it. I think maybe it'll be used to solve some big problem (like a town in

trouble or a creature or something like werewolves).

I know, VERY impressive. 😏

Anyway. Now that I had my prediction, I was ready to get to work. I hopped over to the Voyant site

and got to work. I started by analyzing the novel as a whole. And man is this sucker long.

 So as you can see, these most frequent words are PRETTY BORING, and don't really tell me that much about the novel (besides the fact that the author loved formal names). It was time to crack my knuckles and get down to business. *crack* I split the novel in 2 places, the first 18 chapters (the shorter piece) and the remainder of the book. I'll begin where the book does--THE BEGINNING.

IMAGINE MY DISAPPOINTMENT. It's basically the same. Except that I see the word sergeant, and my Sherlock Holmes light bulb goes off. "Hey, wait just one minute. Sergeant is a cop term!" The plot thickens. At this point I decided to use some of the other tools.

This "link" tool actually provided me with a little insight. Franklin probably isn't the sergeant, but he IS referred to as "Mr.", often enough for the link to be the biggest one. His last name might be Blake, and we also receive the names "Godfrey" and "Betteredge". Now were getting somewhere.

I found this phrases section interesting because how in the world are all these phrases used twice?!

So I learned a few things from this:

1. His name is definitely Franklin Blake.
2. It's written from the perspective of the "head of the servants".
3. This guy knows a whole lot about other family's drama.

It was time to delve into the rest of the book. I started with the terms once again.

 CUE REPEATED DISAPPOINTMENT. Zero clues. *drag of imaginary pipe* Next tool:

 

 GREAT SCOTT! SO MANY CLUES! The moonstone was stolen, and they are looking for the thief. Someone lost a great deal. Indians are hiding somewhere. A TRAP DOOR?! This is the stuff.
Time for more tools.

This one didn't tell me a whole lot, but look at how pretty it is! I can tell they used the word "miss" a lot in the beginning, and towards the end they started talking a lot about time.

 This definitely wasn't what I was expecting when I thought of Mandala. But I did get another name--Rachel. Time for one last tool.

I'm not going to lie, I had a little fun with this one. I only used the "from text" button, in the hopes that I could gain a little understand from little snippets I received. I think I am honestly a little more confused. I did think it was interesting that Veliza asked "did you think they might not be sure that rachel has told the whole truth". I don't know Veliza, YOU know more about this than I do!

The Conclusion

And so concludes the research portion of the experiment. So to the comparison. Distant reading vs close reading: two totally different methods with the same purpose--understanding the novel. I feel like for some books (this one included) distant reading adds a barrier to being able to understand it. Because I didn't have access to all the clues, I don't understand the majority of the story line. As far as comparing with Moretti's methods, I'm having some difficulty. I don't really understand the assortment of metaphors, and I don't really understand the triangle of local/local/foreign. I will say that I see the potential in being able to view books from afar instead of having to read all of them, since there is such a large number of books that have been slaughtered. I do believe in learning from the past, whether it be from mistakes or successes, and I think this is really a great way to do so, especially when you can analyze it enough to deduce the important details and story line while saving hours of time. Ultimately, the best way to receive the meaning of a book is to read it, but in the case of all the books that have been forgotten, or are too numerous (or boring) to read, having a method available to analyze and extract information is a true asset.