It’s rare, and quite thrilling, to encounter a writer who so elegantly incorporates her own writerly anxieties into her work, who is so composed and confident about the value of her own self-doubt. Jamison is fascinated by the porousness of the borders between herself and others, and by the way in which that porousness can permit the smuggling in of something like solipsism. Running through all of this, stitching it together, is a strong thread of autobiographical narrative, which becomes a sort of artful self-portraiture of Jamison’s own scarring-from an abortion, from a violent mugging in Nicaragua, from a history of eating disorder and bodily self-harm.
There’s a long essay-manifesto on the difficulties of writing about female suffering-on the ease with which it can be dismissed as a cliché, and the necessity of doing so regardless. There is an essay on the West Memphis Three, who were wrongfully imprisoned in the 1990s for the supposed ritual murder of three young boys. There is a superb piece in which Jamison attends a gathering of people who suffer, or feel that they suffer, from something called Morgellons Disease, a delusional condition whereby things-often colored fibers or crystals or threads, and sometimes tiny living creatures-are imagined to emerge through the skin from inside of the body. The Empathy Exams contains pieces on poverty tourism, on visiting prisoners, on the terror and violence of the Mexican narco wars, and on the ghoulish compulsions of the addiction-centered reality show Intervention.
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