I’ve read Jamison’s “Empathy Exams” before, and I really
really loved it (and her). This time, I read to examine form and her central
question. It’s hard for me to look at this essay critically, for I love her
writing style, her unwavering honesty and vulnerability, and the universality
of the message, so I got a bit lost in her writing. Enjoying it instead of
analyzing it. Oh well. This time around this essay seemed especially meaningful
to me.
My initial response to what her central question is
would’ve been to say that she is exploring empathy: its definition, use, and so
forth. But I think now that it’s more than just defining and/or categorizing of
empathy. She seems to me to be exploring her own conception of empathy, and to
be really critiquing her own uses of it. This distinction is important. She is
bravely admitting her own flaws in her emotional responses and the responses
she demands from others. In this way, we as readers can even look at our own
responses and expectations in emotions beyond empathy. We can, along with
Jamison, question why we empathize and what we get out of being empathetic. I think
her ability to be ruthlessly honest helps us to do that.
In terms of form/style, I found myself especially
interested in the shifts to second person in the “Encounter Dynamics” on pages
13 and 24. These segments seem to be another way to be self-critical and to
examine herself in a different light. It feels more vulnerable to me. I feel
like those shifts – and the imagined tape recording on 18 – are even more
honest and naked. I decided I really like what she is doing in those places.
I have been working on a lyric essay for a while now
that shifts back and forth between first and third person. In the third person
segment, I am still speaking about myself, but I think I decided to use that
point of view as a way to separate myself (as writer) from a super vulnerable
and naked self (as character). I used this form as a shell, but I have
convinced myself that it works for the essay – probably because I’m too chicken
to just use a regular first person narrative to explore the stuff I do in those
segments. So I think that shifting point of view or maybe even tenses is a way
to play with style and form, but it also gives us a new way to keep asking the
central question – if we do it *right*, that is (what is right? I have no idea).
I’m curious to know what the rest of you think about
those sorts of shifts within essays. Do they strike you as more or less
authentic or honest? Do you think they usually work? Or are they more for the
writer – a way to write about something tough and use form to make it a little
easier?
I find that I don't consider form and style enough, at least explicitly. There have only been a couple times in my creative writing practice that I've considered it directly, and I can say that some of the explicit shifts I've made (in form and style) have allowed me to tell the story or convey my sentiments in the best way possible (at least to me). When I tend to just focus primarily on the content without considering the form and style, I tend to also emulate someone else just because I'm familiar with the style and, as a result, my writing feels generic (or less authentic/honest).
ReplyDeleteFor example, if I'm a fan of Bob Ross and I'm also a soldier who wants to paint a picture to depict some of the horror I witnessed while I was actively deployed, using Bob Ross's form and style in that painting wouldn't cut it. Would I be able to paint something that looks like a scene that occurred while I was at war? Probably, yes. But it wouldn't convey the horror, pain, and shock that I experienced. I need to stop being a Bob Ross emulator and start considering my own form and style to help convey my message in the best way possible.
I needed Eileen Pollack’s piece on the form and content of creative nonfiction. As a newcomer it was so helpful and almost comforting to learn of some of the genetic blueprints of this genre.
ReplyDeleteLike you, Emery, during my first reading of Jamison’s “The Empathy Exams” I completely gave in to her writing, and did not look at it objectively at all. After reading Pollack’s essay I returned to Jamison’s for a second look. Her structure – the vacillation between the scripts of Stephanie (the character of a patient she plays who is dealing, or trying not to deal, with loss and sorrow), and the script she follows as her real self (a patient who is dealing, or pretending to deal with loss and sorrow)—is effective. It scaffolds the complex consideration of empathy in such a clear way that the parallelisms between the role Jamison played and her real life are easy to see. As a reader, I didn’t have to work at trying to follow the narrative and meditation, I could focus my whole attention on what was being said. And beyond a tool for organization, the framework of scripts provided a foil image for the concept of sincere empathy that was being questioned.
And I agree with you, Stephen, that infusing a narrative with the emotion that was felt in the author’s experience is nearly impossible. It is almost like the moment you try, you immediately fail. Yet, some authors seem to know the trick. I know this is fiction, but Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” comes to mind when I think of portraying the horrors of war. In thinking about the style of this piece, and the choices made by Jamison, I think it continues to be about the concept of empathy.
In focusing on Jamison’s piece, it has moments of real heartbreak. As I read of her experience, I felt for her, I empathized. Why is that? What does she do to evoke my emotional investment? I believe her strength is that, as an author, she does not tell me how I should feel about her experience. There are no statements of “Isn’t this sad?” or “Isn’t this horrific?” In fact, the most heart wrenching moments are written with almost a clinical disconnect. As a reader, I know when I read something heart-breaking and/or horrific, but if I’m told it is horrific, then I don’t have to feel it. Am I making any sense? Instead of telling me how I should respond, Jamison opens the door by simply telling me what happened which allows me to respond organically with sincere, homegrown, authentic empathy. I’m thinking that may be one of the secrets.
Emery, I've been thinking about your question concerning the effectiveness of shifts away from first person in essays, and I wonder along with you whether it's mostly a useful exercise for a writer to find some useful vantage point on the material, As a reader, I do find myself questioning any move like that, one that breaks with the usual conventions. In "Empathy Exams" the shifts into third person worked for me because the entire essay seemed an experiment in self-invention and re-invention. We often talk about the difference between now and then narrators in nonfiction essays, but "Empathy Exams" offers entirely new vantage points: inhabiting a character in a medical narrative, and imagining being described as a character in a medical narrative. I think we struggle in essays to find these vantage points--and we want them desperately because we intuitively know that they are fertile sources of insight. Sometimes it's hard enough to simply "get distance" on an experience that is still emotionally raw. The available vantage points are quite limited. So Jameison's essay exploits these opportunities in ways that seem rare to me in nonfiction. (Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night is the only other example of this point-of-view switching that seems even more dramatic). I hope we talk about all this in class.
ReplyDeleteughhhh I just wrote something really smart and then I went to post it and it took me to sign into google and then when it directed me back here it was gone. so this is a test post before I retype my post ha
ReplyDeleteSo in a way less eloquent version of what I wrote previously...
ReplyDeleteIn my rereading of Empathy Exams I pulled out my copy from last summer. This was interesting for me because I read it by the pool and often in my own world, and nothing was assigned and I was thinking it might change the context a lot. But I am thinking now, because my only foray into nonfiction has been in a critical way, that maybe this is the only way I can read it now. I flipped to the spots Emery had marked and I too had marked these, but in a much less smart way. I only knew that there was something there to be noted that these changes were significant, but being as I was a the pool and no one anywhere to discuss form and theory of nonfiction with, my notes fell to the wayside until now. I suppose what I wonder, and since I cannot ask her, were these moments of triumph or were there more moments of struggle in her writing process. Is the distance or the vantage point, almost cheating, or is it somewhere she was trying or planning to get to the entire time?
The essay in this collection that stands out the most to me is the essay on Morgellons. Not only was it a very compelling piece but I also felt it was the closesest we get to Jamison. She is almost more than the subjects, under a microscope, perhaps she is the subject. We find her critically examining herself and the way she reacts, and responds to this situation, even down to her skipping out at the end of the weekend. I would be really interested to hear how everyone else thought this essay sat in relation to the rest of the collection.
I got to the Pollack essay a little late, and it could have better informed my writing about the Empathy Exams, but even still I find it so interesting that the Morgellons piece, the very one I am so drawn to is really performing what Pollack is talking about. In it, and I think it's why I loved it so much, you see Jamison really struggling with all of it. Nevermind, writing the essay, she is struggling just living through it. And in that you can really see her start to dig at the larger questions.
ReplyDeleteIt's also interesting to read this because I had a really similar experience writing my essay everyone read over the weekend. I had this image of my mother, this isolated experience with her, and I knew that for whatever reason it stuck out in my life and I didn't know why. But in the struggle of trying to write about that I found myself on the internet and watching those videos and it was only in that whole process did a larger idea about being young and becoming other people, only then did that emerge for me. so fascinating
Emery I’d like to comment on your question about shifts in persona in your lyric essay. I don’t see anything wrong with separating yourself from a “naked self” sometimes it’s necessary to build some distance between you as a writer and the “super vulnerable self” in order to write without the myopathy that being to close can garner. I don’t want to say that the separation aides in objectivity but it certainly allows you to assess what’s necessary for the narrative not only for you but the reader. Third person also lends a credibility to you as the writer because you can observe yourself and impart dispassionate experience that allows the reader to make experiential decisions for themselves…it’s less preachy than first person. That said shifting to first person can add an aura of immediacy that just can’t be garnered in the third person. I enjoy reading these kinds of shifts because it makes me work and keeps me disoriented enough to be open to exploring new ideas.
ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting discussion, and also in class. As one who has written primarily in third person throughout my career, the ability to write in first or second is so liberating. I really don't have anything from a technique perspective to add to this discussion, but from a personal perspective the ability to play around, to take different perspectives, helps me to see into myself more complexly and then, hopefully, to be able to express myself more deeply than I could ever otherwise get to. This was a great set up for a good discussion Emery. I guess these openers would be considered in-depth "prompts" in the writing lingo?
ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting discussion, and also in class. As one who has written primarily in third person throughout my career, the ability to write in first or second is so liberating. I really don't have anything from a technique perspective to add to this discussion, but from a personal perspective the ability to play around, to take different perspectives, helps me to see into myself more complexly and then, hopefully, to be able to express myself more deeply than I could ever otherwise get to. This was a great set up for a good discussion Emery. I guess these openers would be considered in-depth "prompts" in the writing lingo?
ReplyDeleteSo my comment was deleted somehow. I'll try and remember what I wrote.
ReplyDeleteJamison's use of multiple persons (first/second/third) was reasonably experimental for mainstream literature. I've read a lot of avant-guarde nonfiction--Fluxist, etc--and that stuff is really on another spectrum. But anyway, Jamison's rhetorical moves are helped by her cutting, specific prose. Her honesty. Though her tone is steady, she lays it out there. Very clinical. Together with the other essay on genre and form and style, I found it useful to be able utilize these techniques in my own work. It seems, in general, nonfiction is a more forgiving venue to try out these things. Compared to fiction anyway.