The email that I want to close read is not particularly familiar, but neither is it uncommon. It also isn’t personal, and I will try to take this fact into account in my reading of it.
First of all, the subject: “academic year Job Opportunity available.” The author is immediately telling me something important. This is not just the subject of the email, but the content as well. “Job Opportunity” is capitalized to catch my attention—I am actually looking for a Job Opportunity at present, and here it has arrived. Academic year clarifies, of course, that I will not be expected to work through the summer, because of course I will be going home then.
The letter then begins with “Dear Student.” Indeed, I am a student, but I am also anonymous. Any special skills that I might have are irrelevant to this Job. If I have a lot of qualifications, this tells me that the Job is probably a poor one, since anyone can do it. On the other hand, if I undervalue my knowledge and skills, then this lack of discrimination could be reassuring. If the author doesn’t even care who I am, then surely I am qualified.
The first sentence asks, “Are you interested in working part-time during the academic year?” If I found the subject enticing, then this question heightens my interest all the more. Then, “Our organization offers competitive remuneration…” So not only am I anonymous, but so are they. Nowhere, in fact, does the email specify what organization this is. My first reaction, naturally, is one of suspicion. I generally avoid business with unknown organizations. And yet, “offer” is such an unobtrusive, unassuming word. Then, if I still have doubts, “competitive remuneration” restores my trust. Most con artists I know would never be able to conjure such an eloquent, sophisticated phrase.
Confidence renewed, I only need to skim over the rest of the paragraph. I miss the grammatical incongruence of the last sentence, though the word “offer” stands out, because I have seen it before, as do “comfort,” “computer,” “determine,” “working time,” “express,” “opinion,” and “freely,” being the longest and most unusual parts of the sentence. I glide over the rest, because it is either too technical or neutral, and land finally on “paid well.”
Needless to say, this is all extremely encouraging. But it also seems improbably favorable and easy. Maybe there is a competitive application process? “To start,” it says (at the beginning of a new paragraph, so that I can’t miss it), “you just need to have the willingness to share your honest opinion and have a computer with Internet Access.” “Willingness,” “honest opinion”—these words have the relaxing power of a shady maple or oak in the middle of an August meadow. Yet my reverie is not deep enough that I miss the practical force of “Internet Access.” This is a welcoming door through which to return, however; even if I don’t have a laptop, I can use one of the computers on campus.
“Please reply to this email soon as places are limited.” There, after all, is the catch. Because I need to respond quickly, I don’t waste a lot of time on the rest of the email. “Best regards” is professorial, but friendly. The signature, “prof.David Hill,” tells me that, whatever the Organization is, it has the membership of a professor, yet one with an informal signature and an average-sounding name. David Hill is in his 40’s, but he has a charming boyishness that comes from a combination of warmth and simplicity.
Finally, at the bottom, “Important: If you do not like to receive additional mail from us, please reply to this mail with REMOVE in the subject field.” There is a mix-up with tense here, but the general idea is perfectly clear. One point of interest, however, is the long space between “mail” and “with.” On Monday, we discussed Pound’s use of this technique in “In a Station of the Metro,” if I remember correctly, as a way to emphasize the words preceding the spaces. Does the author of this email intend the same effect? If I am influenced to pause after “please reply to this mail,” might this make me more likely to do so? It should at least focus my attention on the idea of the action of replying, by forcing me to slow briefly, allowing the words to linger in my memory before being displaced by “REMOVE.”
1 comment:
Isaac,
You've produced a lively account that combines the exercise of close reading with a narrative a reader-response, in this case yours. This is to say that you extract the details within the email text like the eccentric capitalization in the subject line with the salutation's word choice (technically, the address of "Student" is a "generic" one, in that it categories the recipient in a genre), and do so while telling the story of how you read it, placing the process in time: narrating it. This is done well, but make sure you understand the distinction between the two categories. (It is a difference between subject [you] and object [text]; we enter here onto philosophical territory, but it is enough to grasp the distinction.) In other words, you've narrated a close reading, and that itself makes for animated reading. Your comparison to the Pound poem is interesting—and certainly bestows a level of artist intentionality on the email. Earlier, the vicissitudes you describe occurring between the lack of experiences as an asset and as a drawback is especially interesting: it anticipates a number of potential readers, and responses, all the while anchoring it to your "I." You are in noting what you call the grammatical incongruence—this is a kind way to phrase what is in fact ungrammatical sentence structure; it lends the email an air of only marginal professionalism, heightened by the so-called "professor" informally shortening his title, and eliding any mention of his affiliation. Your reading is as smoothly rendered as this email ain't; it may be a con job, but your reading is the real thing.
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