Make It Scream, Make It Burn

June 3, 2019
These illuminating and ruminative essays from Jamison (The Recovering) explore obsession and alienation, combining reportage, memoir, and philosophy. The first (and most successful) section is largely focused outward, beginning with a profile of “52 Blue,” a blue whale with an extraordinarily high-pitched song who never found a mate, but did garner many human admirers who identified with his (perceived) loneliness. Jamison moves on to considering reincarnation, through uncanny cases of children seemingly remembering past lives, taking an approach “skeptical of knee-jerk skepticism itself.” In Part II, Jamison progresses into aesthetics and literary theory, discussing an exhibit of Civil War photography and James Agee’s sociological tome about Alabama tenant farmers, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which notably “documents the process of documentation itself.” Part III is decidedly more personal, as Jamison details struggles with intimacy and a series of doomed relationships, hitting a high note with her consideration of the evil stepmother archetype in the light of becoming a stepmother herself. Jamison is positively brilliant when penetrating a subject and unraveling its layers of meaning, such as how 52 Blue represents “not just one single whale as metaphor for loneliness, but metaphor itself as salve for loneliness.” Fans of the author’s unique brand of perceptiveness will be delighted. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie.

June 15, 2019
A collection of essays, some journalistic, some critical, some memoiristic, all marked by the author's distinct intelligence. In "Mark My Words. Maybe." an essay not included here, Jamison (Director, Graduate Nonfiction Program/Columbia Univ.; The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, 2018, etc.) recounts getting Roman playwright Terence's quotation Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto ("I am human, nothing human is alien to me") tattooed on her arm. That apothegm, which also served as the epigraph to her first collection, The Empathy Exams (2014), is put to the test in her latest book. Whether encountering a boy in a wheelchair in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, or a pushy woman on a layover in Houston, the author wonders at the limits of empathy. In "We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order To Live Again," she recounts her interview with a man who claimed he was "not a gun nut" even as he handled two guns and left "a collection of bullets spread across his comforter" for her to find: "Had I been foolishly unwilling to acknowledge that some people were alien to me? Did I need to identify with all the gun-loving men of this world? Was it naive or even ethically irresponsible to believe I should find common ground with everyone, or that it was even possible?" Jamison's other main intellectual concern is the exploitative role of the journalist. In "Maximum Exposure," she offers a sympathetic portrait of the photographer Annie Appel, who must ask her subjects, "Can I take this moment of your life and make my art from it?" The common cause she finds with the journalistic skepticism of Janet Malcolm and James Agee is odd, though, considering how many of her essays begin as reporting. Jamison thinks and writes so elegantly, the subjects that serve as many of her jumping-off points risk feeling superfluous to the real business of her essaying. Still, as with nearly all of her writing, this one is well worth reading. A commendable essay collection by one of the leading practitioners of the form.

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September 15, 2019
An edgy spirit of inquiry, a fascination with obsession, a penchant for sharing personal experiences, and incandescent writing skills make Jamison (The Recovering, 2018) an exciting premier essayist. This collection of 14 investigations takes its title from Jamison's passionate elucidation of how James Agee turned his never-published article about his sojourn among poor sharecroppers in Alabama, with photographer Walker Evans, into the tumultuous narrative for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). Agee's torment over the ethics of turning other people's suffering into one's art speaks to Jamison's own concerns and stokes her profile of American photographer Annie Appel, who spent decades taking pictures of a Mexican family. Jamison also chronicles the world's infatuation with 52 Blue, a lone whale with a unique song; a journey to civil-war-battered Sri Lanka; surprising revelations about the virtual world of Second Life, and, on the confessional front, failed relationships; her Vegas marriage to a native she met in New York, a fellow writer; a dive into the folklore and realities of stepmotherhood, and a resplendently moving and redemptive birth story. Magnetizing and thought-provoking.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2019

Essayist (The Recovering; The Empathy Exams) and novelist (The Gin Closet) Jamison gathers a seemingly eclectic group of 14 essays into a triptych organized by the headings "Longing," "Looking," and "Dwelling." Linked thematically by the human quest for answers and love, the pieces range in topics from the elusive lonely whale, 52 Blue; children who dream of past lives; people who survive their lives by spending time in the virtual world; a museum devoted to relics of relationships past; and the author's own personal life--all written with care and intricacy, drawing readers in and making us care. Many of the pieces originally appeared in publications such as the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, and Oxford American and are a reminder of the author's richly diverse writing. VERDICT Jamison's observational skills, genuine empathy, and lack of sentimentality create an intelligent blending of journalism, scholarship (she directs the graduate nonfiction program at Columbia Univ.), and memoir. [See Prepub Alert, 3/11/19.]--Pam Kingsbury, Univ. of North Alabama, Florence

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2019

The author of New York Times best sellers like The Empathy Exams, Jamison returns with 14 fresh essays blending memoir, criticism, and journalism. Among her subjects: 52 Blue, the world's loneliest whale; the awful yet somehow remote Sri Lankan civil war; and a museum exhibiting relics of broken relationships.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.