Sinykin. at The Nation: "Drawing from the anthropologist Marcel Mauss and his student André Leroi-Gourhan, [John] Guillory argues that close reading is a 'cultural technique' more than anything else, a 'set of methodical actions that accomplish specific ends, that alter something in our environment or in ourselves.' His point in using such technical language is to situate close reading as a kind of reading and to make clear that reading is a long-standing practice of the human animal that belongs to the same category as 'swimming, dancing, riding a bicycle, even tying shoelaces.' [...] Close reading is simply 'a technique of reading that makes an account of the reading process the basis for interpretation.' It entails nothing more than showing one’s work. 'We might be tempted to say of "showing the work of reading," "Is that all?"' Guillory writes. 'Yes, that is all.'"
In other words, according to Guillory, "close reading is nothing more than transforming quotes into evidence to explain how one reaches a certain conclusion about the text" (Sinykin's summation), or "transforming quotations into evidence for claims that can undergo peer review and become scholarship"
Sinykin, however, embellishes upon this: "We must [...] revise Guillory’s definition: Close reading is, in fact, more than merely showing the work of reading—if it’s that at all. Close reading is a genre that turns quotations into evidence for well-crafted arguments made beautifully."
"[T]his makes it difficult to perform well. One must master various skills. What counts as a reasonable inference, for example, when moving from a particular detail to a claim about what it means? How does one notice a detail ripe for interpretation in the first place? How do we teach students to learn these skills and synthesize them into a graceful close reading?"
"if we embrace [the] broader definition of close reading, if we take a closer look at how it works and what is required of it when it succeeds, we can teach it better. We can specify the steps of close reading, even if no close reading succeeds by performing the steps alone but requires beauty and grace. We can note that one should [...] quote a detail worth noticing and construct an argument to persuade one’s reader how to understand that detail, why it matters, and how it changes what we know about the text. Each of these steps entails skills that we can teach and that can sometimes blossom—with, yes, practice and imitation—into beautiful performances. We can, in other words, democratize close reading."