The great thing about literary analysis is that it teaches core skills which can be used in very practical, vocational ways.
I hand someone on my team a thick and dense review of our recruiting results over the last decade around the world. Who got hired; who stayed and performed exceptionally well; what it cost to recruit for our Mumbai office vs. London.
I ask- “please work through this and develop some conclusions”.
This isn’t James Joyce or Hemingway we’re talking about… just a country by country review. Employee A “gets it” immediately- find the trends, develop a theme backed up by fact, figure out if there are demographic or economic factors which account for differences, understand that educational pathways around the world differ (i.e. what represents “elite” schooling in China isn’t the same as in Germany), figure out if the global banking meltdown in 2008 is reflected in the numbers, etc.
Employee B is clueless and wants an algorithm- what is the numerator, what’s the denominator, what should I include and what should I ignore. I say “ignore the stuff that isn’t relevant to your thesis and include the stuff which supports your conclusions” and I see said employee start to get frustrated that there isn’t a “right answer”.
Seems to me that literary analysis is pretty good training for a lot of corporate work. Figuring out a marketing plan; develop an investment portfolio based on themes and trends in the economy and society; calculate the benefit or damage to tweaking the retirement benefits of a large cohort of former employees; make a case for buying a set of raw materials domestically even though the price is marginally lower by buying internationally; come up with a coherent rational for a price cut of your primary product… these activities all use numerical analysis (but not terribly sophisticated - and the retiree question usually gets the heavy lifting done by an actuarial team and then punted to someone in HR) but require the ability to stitch together a narrative BASED on the numbers. The numbers don’t give you the right answer (many times there are multiple right answers… like is Mrs. Bennett a heroic or tragic figure in Pride and Prejudice?)
Agree that clear writing trumps all.