When I first read the “graphs” portion of Franco Moretti’s book, I wasn’t quite getting it, however after reading it a few times I think what hes trying to say is that graphs help you gain access to a more rational history. Moretti goes in and says that quantitative data helps you cut the time that you would need to understand literacy and history in a much more efficient manner. Although I agree that data helps us understand time periods I also think that reading closely helps us appreciate it. Moretti says that the graphs help give an idea to how novels influence people and how its rise and fall contribute to society, politics, and choice of genre. Figure 5 was interesting to me. The figure itself was about the fall of the novel in France and Italy. In the small caption it says that the novel has an uncertain relationship with politics, however the fun part is when it says “radical” writers used shorter forms such as poems and short stories. It goes on further to say that information from 1917 were not put into the novels until the 1960’s when the politicians changed! Makes me think were going through something similar now. Are house republicans going to censor our novels till we have a new administration? Crazy how I though about that hmm?
InformationIsBeautiful.com was very impressive. The first thing I clicked was the “Based on a true story” visual. The visual literally broke down which movies are accurate to its story and which parts are true and false. Its very effective because you can easily go back to a part in a film and say “wow I thought there was no way that happened” and see that something was really true, it also helps us understand that many award winning films might not be true to its story. It was a great visual.
“International Number Ones” was also very cool, I had no idea that all these countries had these talents that they were great at, some bad, and some good. America the leader of spam email, it made me “LMAO” and it is a perfect form of remix data giving us a new look at culture. I really enjoyed the website.
Prittania Shaw
I also find International Number Ones to be very cool because of the breakdown it gives us of each country based on what they are good at or bad at. Why do you think it was a great remix data?
Mpenzi Campbell
I found your article to be very interesting. However, I was totally shock that you were not aware that these countries had so many talented people. Keep in mind, many movies that we see on the main screen today are remake of foreign films or based on an American version of a foreign film.
Brandon Sookhoo
Sadad
After reading your blog, I have a question what is it about close reading that helps us “appreciate” it ? I think you are right more about Morett’s central argument because he’s more focusing more on logic and rationality. This is why I believe he incorporates graphs and charts into his article because it’s logical and a better way to organize large groups of data whereas if you were to write about it would be very tedious. What do you think?
Andie Silva (she/her)
I’m curious to know if you buy Moretti’s argument about the cyclical nature of literature. It seems to me that data always seems recurring in one way or another when we put it in a graph (especially using an x/y axis)…
Your point about censorship, however, is important: so much of how history is framed/interpreted can only be understood in hindsight. But we can, of course, fight censorship.
I wish there was more information about the visualizations you visited–it’s always worth considering a reader that is unfamiliar with the work you’re describing; what do they need to know? how much information should you provide?; what overall conclusions and critical reflections can you offer about what you looked at?