Q Did you consciously structure Make it Scream,
Make it Burn differently to The Empathy Exams?
A Absolutely. I think certain core questions or
obsessions are continuous between the collections,
and they’ll probably continue across the course of my
life – fixations with how we try to understand other
people, the kind of complexities and limits of intimacy.
My editor for The Empathy Exams once teased me that
my next book would probably be called More Empathy
Exams. But one of the things that is compelling to me
about being alive in general, and writing in particular,
is the ways that, though we might have these abiding
fixations, they are born in the terrain of new subject
matters. There’s a storyline moving across all my
books, but there’s also a feeling of newness because
they’re directing their gaze in different places. So The
Empathy Exams begins in this very autobiographical
place, whereas this book begins looking outward.
Q Why did you decide to start with the general and
move to the personal this time?
A On a basic level, I’m interested in doing something
different with each book. But often, when I’m reading
different works of journalism, I find myself thinking
about what personal investment or life experiences
that particular reporter might be bringing to bear on
what they’re documenting.
And so, I was interested in creating a structure for
the collection that could explore the question: how do
we bring ourselves to meet the world? Which is one
of the primal questions, I think, of being alive. For me,
it feels almost inevitable that I’m going to bring my
analytic mind to my experience. I think everybody
starts to relate to their own life experiences as
narrative, and I don’t mean to suggest that people
inhabit their lives in an inauthentic way, or are
falsifying their lives. I just think narrative is one of the
ways in which we make sense of the world and begin
to create or inhabit a coherent sense of self.
For me, the most compelling way to write or to
investigate questions through writing is to bring
everything I can to bear on those questions, and that
includes my life experience.Q Confessional writing can sometimes feel very
exploitative, but yours doesn’t. How do you find
that line?
A There’s a writer, Philip Lopate, who says: “The
problem with most confessional writing is that it
doesn’t confess enough.” I’ve always liked that. I don’t
take it to mean you have to reveal more and more and
more – more that, without reflection, you’re actually
not really sharing anything. So, my imperative to
myself, and it often happens early in the drafting
and revision process, is to keep digging underneath
the topsoil of what has happened, to find out how
complicated and messy the meanings of that
happening were underneath.Also by Jamison:
The Empathy Exams;
The Recovering –
Jamison's memoir
of her years as a
high-functioning
alcoholic; and her 2 010
novel The Gin Closet.