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juniperd's review
5.0
i feel like it's going to be very hard for me to write a good review of this collection. so if this is a hot, rambling mess -- sorry!!
i am a fan of leslie jamison. her novel [b:The Gin Closet|6949239|The Gin Closet|Leslie Jamison|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1261861457s/6949239.jpg|7183502] really was a stellar read for me, so i was stoked for this collection. some of the essays, many of them, had previously been published online or in magazines, but having them all together is great.
to quote from robert polito, "...the span of topics Jamison tosses up is correspondingly smashing and wondrous: medical actors, sentimentality, violence, plastic surgery, guilt, diseases, the Barkley Marathons, stylish "ex-votos" for exemplary artists, incarceration, wounds, scars, fear, yearning, community, and the mutations of physical pain."
there's some pretty heavy stuff here. most of it was fascinating. while i was most interested in jamison's writings on empathy, illness and pain, i was really absorbed in, say, the essay on the marathon. but, really, each of her essays is anchored by the idea of empathy, or can be tied into that idea without much difficulty.
jamison seems to be highly self-aware which, for this book, is a good thing. i think without her moments of recognition on this front, i could have easily felt there was far too much self-absorption going on. or jockeying for angles. everything, it seems, is fodder. i had empathy, at times during the read, feeling certain people in her stories were being used. they were a means to an end. so, as much as i loved the book - and rated it highly - i had challenging moments. they didn't really come into play, though, until the very last essay: Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain (which you can read online here; it's a longread, so be aware). this is quite the essay, but it also hit deeply and personally for me. i found myself feeling defensive or critical at moments, while feeling exhausted, sad, sympathetic, and empathetic for pretty much all womankind.
i also have to give total props to jamison for including ponderings about [a:Lucy Grealy|57229|Lucy Grealy|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1383238381p2/57229.jpg] and her book [b:Autobiography of a Face|534255|Autobiography of a Face|Lucy Grealy|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386921470s/534255.jpg|95778].
so those are my thoughts right now, as i try to just get something down here.
i am a fan of leslie jamison. her novel [b:The Gin Closet|6949239|The Gin Closet|Leslie Jamison|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1261861457s/6949239.jpg|7183502] really was a stellar read for me, so i was stoked for this collection. some of the essays, many of them, had previously been published online or in magazines, but having them all together is great.
to quote from robert polito, "...the span of topics Jamison tosses up is correspondingly smashing and wondrous: medical actors, sentimentality, violence, plastic surgery, guilt, diseases, the Barkley Marathons, stylish "ex-votos" for exemplary artists, incarceration, wounds, scars, fear, yearning, community, and the mutations of physical pain."
there's some pretty heavy stuff here. most of it was fascinating. while i was most interested in jamison's writings on empathy, illness and pain, i was really absorbed in, say, the essay on the marathon. but, really, each of her essays is anchored by the idea of empathy, or can be tied into that idea without much difficulty.
jamison seems to be highly self-aware which, for this book, is a good thing. i think without her moments of recognition on this front, i could have easily felt there was far too much self-absorption going on. or jockeying for angles. everything, it seems, is fodder. i had empathy, at times during the read, feeling certain people in her stories were being used. they were a means to an end. so, as much as i loved the book - and rated it highly - i had challenging moments. they didn't really come into play, though, until the very last essay: Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain (which you can read online here; it's a longread, so be aware). this is quite the essay, but it also hit deeply and personally for me. i found myself feeling defensive or critical at moments, while feeling exhausted, sad, sympathetic, and empathetic for pretty much all womankind.
i also have to give total props to jamison for including ponderings about [a:Lucy Grealy|57229|Lucy Grealy|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1383238381p2/57229.jpg] and her book [b:Autobiography of a Face|534255|Autobiography of a Face|Lucy Grealy|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386921470s/534255.jpg|95778].
so those are my thoughts right now, as i try to just get something down here.
sarahetc's review
1.0
You know you might need to read a book about empathy when you're reading a book about empathy and you keep thinking, "Nobody gives a shit about your feelings!"
But back up with me for a second. The Empathy Exams is a series of essays, ostensibly on how we cultivate and experience empathy. It fronts like explorations of all the varieties of shared human pain. What is really is, though, is Leslie Jamison's experience of pain and how much she wants you to know she is in pain, experiencing pain, even other peoples' pain, and how that makes her a better, more significant person. It's a tour de force of performance agony. Nobody can experience anything that Leslie will not be along to inhabit. Except the parents of the victims of the now exonerated West Memphis 3. They're just angry. Anger doesn't make Leslie more significant, so she dismisses them and their dead children.
I've always felt a certain amount of contempt for people who academize their own internal lives. In an entire world of ideas, you think the most worthwhile thing is to dig down deep inside yourself and report on your findings, as if they are and should be relevant to everyone else? That the self and its foibles are reified with the language of semiotic deconstruction. Really? There is not enough room in the known universe for me to roll my eyes.
And that is exactly how empathetic I am.
But back up with me for a second. The Empathy Exams is a series of essays, ostensibly on how we cultivate and experience empathy. It fronts like explorations of all the varieties of shared human pain. What is really is, though, is Leslie Jamison's experience of pain and how much she wants you to know she is in pain, experiencing pain, even other peoples' pain, and how that makes her a better, more significant person. It's a tour de force of performance agony. Nobody can experience anything that Leslie will not be along to inhabit. Except the parents of the victims of the now exonerated West Memphis 3. They're just angry. Anger doesn't make Leslie more significant, so she dismisses them and their dead children.
I've always felt a certain amount of contempt for people who academize their own internal lives. In an entire world of ideas, you think the most worthwhile thing is to dig down deep inside yourself and report on your findings, as if they are and should be relevant to everyone else? That the self and its foibles are reified with the language of semiotic deconstruction. Really? There is not enough room in the known universe for me to roll my eyes.
And that is exactly how empathetic I am.
danoreading's review
2.0
2.5 stars. I enjoyed a few of these essays a lot, but in general I wasn't a fan of the author's writing style and couldn't connect.
cwalsh's review
3.0
The first story in the collection was STRONG. And I mean really strong. I expected each following essay would be equally as profound, however as the book progressed I found myself bored and frustrated. While it is evident that Jamison is an excellent writer, I often felt like her narcissism plagued each scenario at hand.
mersell's review
5.0
The opening essay, The Immortal Horizon, In Defense of Saccharin(e), Fog Count, and Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain are my favorite essays from this collection, but I enjoyed all of them.
quenchgum's review
3.0
I’ve been a bit obsessed with nonfiction essays recently — the more creative, the better. I award bonus points for literary stuff that brings in public thinkers, other authors, and artists of all stripes and persuasions. I want you to quote Sontag and Foucault and Berlin. I want you to bring art and philosophy to life.
ENTER: THE EMPATHY EXAMS. On first blush, this essay collection checked all my boxes. It’s intelligent. It’s literary. It raises provocative questions and invites you to consider actively cultivating empathy where you disagree.
And yet: I found this book good, but not great.
The through-line that holds together these essays is our relationship with empathy. Jamison urges us to keep our hearts open and to reconsider our instinctual judgments. Each essay calls for a revolutionary ethos of patience and care where we don’t traditionally give it: when we are self-absorbed and laud ourselves for showing basic care for others; when we feel drawn to self-identify with our own pain (or judge others that do so) at the exclusion of our other identities; we unfairly discredit women that melodramatically exhibit their pain; we don’t usually reserve patience and care for those that struggle with pains that many view as self-imposed (e.g., those with Morgellon’s disease, those that self-harm); etc. We can all benefit from extending care to others, especially where it feels unnatural. It’s a great theme, and it’s one I’m particularly simpatico to. (Me? I felt bad for the killers in Capote’s In Cold Blood).
So what’s the issue? Jamison didn’t execute as well as she could have. The writing is often vague and the transitions are abrupt. More damning, though, was Jamison’s seemingly compulsive need to call out any thoughts she felt ashamed of. It read like she needed to punish herself by publicly bearing witness to every embarrassingly self-centered (read: human) thought she’d ever had. And, sure, I understand that her obsessive honesty positioned her as trustworthy and fallible. Maybe more importantly, it also further developed her arguments around the idea that we should have empathy for even the least like-able among us. And now you may say: these are noble goals! Why not?! The issue is that Jamison’s repeated focus on herself ultimately held back the narrative instead of adding color to it. Each of her essays ostensibly focused on serious situations about others until they got just a little bit — or sometimes entirely — sidetracked as Jamison turned the focus to her life and her quibbles about it and the mountains that she makes out of them. It weakened essays that could have been spectacular.
I can’t help but feel that a select group of star-studded essayists (I’m thinking Alexander Chee, Joan Didion, Hunter Thompson, Maggie Nelson, Cathy Park Hong) could have taken this concept and run with it. It could have been tighter, more piercing, more shocking, and more meaningful. It was good but it could have been excellent.
3.5/5.
ENTER: THE EMPATHY EXAMS. On first blush, this essay collection checked all my boxes. It’s intelligent. It’s literary. It raises provocative questions and invites you to consider actively cultivating empathy where you disagree.
And yet: I found this book good, but not great.
The through-line that holds together these essays is our relationship with empathy. Jamison urges us to keep our hearts open and to reconsider our instinctual judgments. Each essay calls for a revolutionary ethos of patience and care where we don’t traditionally give it: when we are self-absorbed and laud ourselves for showing basic care for others; when we feel drawn to self-identify with our own pain (or judge others that do so) at the exclusion of our other identities; we unfairly discredit women that melodramatically exhibit their pain; we don’t usually reserve patience and care for those that struggle with pains that many view as self-imposed (e.g., those with Morgellon’s disease, those that self-harm); etc. We can all benefit from extending care to others, especially where it feels unnatural. It’s a great theme, and it’s one I’m particularly simpatico to. (Me? I felt bad for the killers in Capote’s In Cold Blood).
So what’s the issue? Jamison didn’t execute as well as she could have. The writing is often vague and the transitions are abrupt. More damning, though, was Jamison’s seemingly compulsive need to call out any thoughts she felt ashamed of. It read like she needed to punish herself by publicly bearing witness to every embarrassingly self-centered (read: human) thought she’d ever had. And, sure, I understand that her obsessive honesty positioned her as trustworthy and fallible. Maybe more importantly, it also further developed her arguments around the idea that we should have empathy for even the least like-able among us. And now you may say: these are noble goals! Why not?! The issue is that Jamison’s repeated focus on herself ultimately held back the narrative instead of adding color to it. Each of her essays ostensibly focused on serious situations about others until they got just a little bit — or sometimes entirely — sidetracked as Jamison turned the focus to her life and her quibbles about it and the mountains that she makes out of them. It weakened essays that could have been spectacular.
I can’t help but feel that a select group of star-studded essayists (I’m thinking Alexander Chee, Joan Didion, Hunter Thompson, Maggie Nelson, Cathy Park Hong) could have taken this concept and run with it. It could have been tighter, more piercing, more shocking, and more meaningful. It was good but it could have been excellent.
3.5/5.
notghosts's review
3.5
Some essays - the first, the last, the essay on Morgellons - were very good. Some captured interesting topics e.g the Barkley marathons or the West Memphis three but there were quite a few duds in the middle. The essay on sweetness and sentimentality stands out for being practically senseless and incoherent and I found myself unconvinced by her rhetorical devices jn the last essay, though it had its moments.