A New Life: Textual Investigations
This project is composed of two parts:
- The first is a visualization of the interactions between Levin and the other characters in A New Life. Given that much of the book's conflict revolves around information (or the lack thereof), this visualization intends to give insight into how power dynamics between characters shift over the course of the novel as they learn new information and begin to strive towards their own goals and agendas. The visualization effectively charts the metadata of the conversations in A New Life; readers can choose to filter based on characters involved or type of conversation. For example, a reader can choose to view "Conversations between Levin and Pauline," or "Conversations between Levin and Pauline where Levin learns new information." The visualization will then display where conversations that fit this description occur over the course of the book.
- The second aims to find specific textual differences between the 2nd edition manuscript and the published novel and analyze them through close reading. This will complement the meta-analysis of Part One by offering concrete examples of how Malamud's refinements reflect his attempts to create power dynamics via the use of information in A New Life. Readers should therefore also have the opportunity in this section to analyze how character relations change not only over the course of the novel, but how they change between editions as well.
Reading through Malamud's A New Life led us to realize that Levin's laughter is described as "broken" in the novel during situations where he feels defeated or awkward. So, out of curiosity, we decided to use quantitative analysis to get at potentially deeper insights. Searching for "brokenly" through Voyant led to the following visualization:
Interestingly, the word "brokenly" appears three times in the text, and it's used as a description for laughter in each instance. ("Brokenly was used rather than "broken" since "broken" was associated with too many situations other than laughter in the novel to produce relevant data.) But diving back into the text revealed an interesting behavior: the first two instances of laughing "brokenly" refer to Levin's laughter, but the final instance refers to Gilley's laughter. While arguably minor, this nuance is something that gives more insight into the shifts in power dynamics between Levin and Gilley throughout A New Life, and it's a nuanced that would have gone unnoticed without the benefit of both close and distant reading.
While this project operates under the general assumption that information correlates to power in A New Life, it does not intend to force the reader into specific conclusions related to the specifics of those power dynamics. Instead it hopes to more readily enable the reader to make theirown conclusions and interpretations through both close and distant reading.
Contents:
- Introduction
- Google sheets visualizations
- Explanation of metadata + comments from the coder
- Close reading & textual examples
- Voyant visualizations
- Discussions of weaknesses + coding
- Conclusion