From John Guillory's 'On Close Reading' p.62 We find it difficult to believe that close reading is so minimal a procedure as I am proposing here, not because we do not know how to do it, but because we misunderstand its nature as technique. We misunderstand the constitutive minimalism of technique. At the same time, “showing the work of reading” is more than paying attention to the words on the page. Close reading is a minimal but not a simple procedure. At the least, close reading requires reflection—or, to employ the language of systems theory, a “second order observation.” In close reading, we observe not only the text but our observation of the text. Although such reflection need not extend beyond the scene of thought, it is always capable of being exhibited in oral or written forms of expression, making the work of reading visible to others.80

From Jonathan Kramnick's 'On Method in Literary Studies' p.22 This is the argument introduced in answer to my question: What do literary critics actually do when they write about texts? Close reading isn’t reading. It’s writing. The practice we usually refer to when we talk about method is finally a written one.

A significant difference between #Kramnick's account of close reading and #Guillory's account of it is that for the former close reading is writing, and for the latter it isn't exclusively so.