Introduction: Uncertainty in Numbers
1. Facts and Difference
2. Archive and Sample
3. Genre and Repetition
4. Influence and Judgment
5. Discourse and Character
Epilogue: Difference in Numbers
Appendix
Acknowledgments
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Hoyt Long is associate professor of Japanese literature at the University of Chicago, where he codirects the Textual Optics Lab. He is the author of On Uneven Ground: Miyazawa Kenji and the Making of Place in Modern Japan (2012).
[Long] is a leader in the melding of quantitative analytics and
established methods of close reading to produce new understandings
of corpus and canon . . . [this is] a truly pathbreaking book, one
that at last brings the field of modern Japanese literary studies
into ongoing methodological conversations that are rippling through
the humanities.
*Journal of Asian Studies*
A deft reflection on disciplinary practice, history, and identity,
The Values in Numbers is a thought-provoking application of
computation to study concepts like genre, voice, and race set in a
fascinating non-Western transnational context. This book sets a new
standard for the field—a must read.
*Andrew Piper, author of Enumerations: Data and Literary
Study*
Lucid, eloquent, and scrupulously measured in its claims, The
Values in Numbers offers a fascinating tour of the history and
present state of computational approaches to literary research, and
does so through case studies that are themselves rich, persuasive,
and often surprising. I know I won't be alone in saying that I've
been waiting for this book for years.
*Michael Emmerich, author of The Tale of Genji: Translation,
Canonization, and World Literature*
The Values in Numbers is a major intervention in transnational
literary studies and in methodological reflection and innovation in
digital humanities. Long convincingly shows that the values
associated with literary traditions and disciplines do not have to
be in tension with numbers and can be embodied by them.
*Katherine Bode, author of A World of Fiction: Digital
Collections and the Future of Literary History*
Long’s pioneering book argues that the value in numbers is also the
value of numbers. His superb analysis of post-Meiji Japanese
narratives recovers century-old practices when quantitative methods
helped to understand emerging literary forms. The result is an
urgent call to review the many disciplinary worlds that constitute
world literature.
*Priya Joshi, author of In Another Country: Colonialism,
Culture, and the English Novel in India*
Uncovering a history of Japanese writers and critics since Sōseki
who turned to quantitative methods to get past Eurocentric
hierarchies of literary value, Hoyt Long shows the value in numbers
for literary study. Both a toolkit of statistical techniques for
analyzing literary texts and a critical genealogy of those same
techniques, this is digital humanities at its best.
*J. Keith Vincent, author of Two-Timing Modernity: Homosocial
Narrative in Modern Japanese Fiction*
Recommended.
*Choice Reviews*
There is no question that Long is the right person to do this work,
as well as no question that all of us working on Japan who wish to
speak to the issue of quantitative methods in literary analysis
need to read this book and grapple with its claims.
*The Journal of Japanese Studies*
As both meticulous explanation and demonstration of Long’s methods,
The Value in Numbers is a unique, valuable resource that ignites
crucial self-reflection on long-held assumptions and inherited
practices, while also providing blueprints for possible solutions
and pathways forward.
*H-Sci-Med-Tech*
This is a pioneering work in the study of Japanese literature.
While introducing new methods, Long connects his intervention to
the conventional literary criticism. This is a bold and learned
intervention and it deserves the widest possible audience.
*East Asian Publishing and Society*
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