MixedBookforumIf The Empathy Exams was concerned with the practice of identification, Make It Scream seems to propose an ontology that makes such identification possible: We can connect with others because we are all, deep down, the same. It’s possible that relinquishing the ego is a useful practice for a journalist. Jamison’s determination to avoid quick judgments gives her a keen eye and often endows her reporting with clarity and restraint. But she is primarily a personal writer, which raises the inevitable question: How does the personal essayist write about a self that she believes to be unoriginal and interchangeable? ... The problem is not a lack of specificity ... But there is a dashed-off, generic quality to the writing, as though the profusion of concrete nouns is meant to disguise the absence of a distinct authorial consciousness ... The paradox is that Jamison’s eagerness to connect forecloses, in the end, the kind of intimacy that readers look for in an essayist—an honesty unconstrained by the sociable compromises and false niceties that color so much public discourse. In diluting her life to make it broadly relatable, Jamison betrays a lack of faith in the very ideals on which she has staked her brand ... It’s often said that empathy is impossible because we, as a culture, have lost faith in the ability to understand and inhabit other lives. But it can also break down when writers stop believing that their private self is a reliable locus of truth—or, worse, when they lose sight of the self entirely.
