The Anatomy of a Close-Minded Reader

In this week’s newsletter, we’ve covered paranoid reading and why it’s holding us back from becoming more sophisticated thinkers/readers. Today, let’s expand on the idea and list some key characteristics of a paranoid reading so you can spot it, name it and implement some protocols to guard yourself against close-mindedness.

Most of what I’m about to write about comes from a brilliant chapter in Eve Sedgwick’s book: Touching Feeling. It’s a very technical paper that draws on critical theory, psychoanalysis and literary criticism, but a few key ideas stand out:

1: Paranoid reading hates surprises