Make It Scream, Make It Burn: Essays - Hardcover

Jamison, Leslie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316259632 ISBN 13: 9780316259637

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2019

Synopsis

From the "astounding" (Entertainment Weekly), "spectacularly evocative" (The Atlantic), and "brilliant" (Los Angeles Times) author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes a return to the essay form in this expansive new book.

ONE OF THE FALL'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS: Time, Entertainment Weekly, O, Oprah Magazine, Boston Globe, Newsweek, Esquire, Seattle Times, Baltimore Sun, BuzzFeed, BookPage, The Millions, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Lit Hub, Women's Day, AV Club, Nylon, Bustle, Goop, Goodreads, Book Riot, Yahoo! Lifestyle, Pacific Standard, The Week, and Romper.

With the virtuosic synthesis of memoir, criticism, and journalism for which Leslie Jamison has been so widely acclaimed, the fourteen essays in Make It Scream, Make It Burn explore the oceanic depths of longing and the reverberations of obsession.
Among Jamison's subjects are 52 Blue, deemed "the loneliest whale in the world"; the eerie past-life memories of children; the devoted citizens of an online world called Second Life; the haunted landscape of the Sri Lankan Civil War; and an entire museum dedicated to the relics of broken relationships. Jamison follows these examinations to more personal reckonings -- with elusive men and ruptured romances, with marriage and maternity -- in essays about eloping in Las Vegas, becoming a stepmother, and giving birth.
Often compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, and widely considered one of the defining voices of her generation, Jamison interrogates her own life with the same nuance and rigor she brings to her subjects. The result is a provocative reminder of the joy and sustenance that can be found in the unlikeliest of circumstances.

About this title

About the Author

Leslie Jamison is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams, and the novel The Gin Closet. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and her work has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, Harper's, the New York Times Book Review, the Oxford American, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She directs the graduate nonfiction program at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Review

"Jamison has emerged as a definitive chronicler of human connection and the beauty of mundanity...She's been compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag...Make It Scream, Make It Burn proves those comparisons were no fluke. Here, Jamison reports on unusual obsessions before finding the essential humanity within them...The reader is skeptical, enlightened, and moved right along with her...With this brilliant new collection that rigorously interrogates the human condition, Leslie Jamison affirms why she's the essayist of the moment."―David Canfield, Entertainment Weekly

"Leslie Jamison's astonishingly formidable, restless intellect has gifted us two monumental works of nonfiction: 2014's The Empathy Exams, and last year's The Recovering. Here, she turns her exacting eye on subjects such as the loneliest whale in the world and a Croatian museum filled with the effluvia of failed relationships."―O, The Oprah Magazine

"The acclaimed essayist returns to her signature cocktail of memoir, journalism, and cultural criticism in this dazzling collection about the outer reaches of human connection...Acute in her analysis and nourishing in her observations, Jamison is at the height of her powers here as she investigates what we owe one another."―Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire

"Illuminating and ruminative...Jamison is positively brilliant when penetrating a subject and unraveling its layers of meaning...Fans of the author's unique brand of perceptiveness will be delighted."―Publishers Weekly

"Richly diverse . . . The pieces in Make It Scream, Make It Burn are all written with care and intricacy, drawing readers in and making us care . . . Jamison's observational skills, genuine empathy, and lack of sentimentality create an intelligent blending of journalism, scholarship, and memoir."―Pam Kingsbury, Library Journal

"Insightful...The essays in the collection (which can easily be torn through, though should really be savored) contain observations on an eclectic array of subjects...Like the glass in a kaleidoscope, Jamison's fine-tuned attention seems capable of refracting whatever subject it touches. When I finally looked up from the page it was with a renewed sense of wonder."―Cornelia Channing, The Paris Review

"Leslie Jamison is a master of blending memoir, criticism and journalism...[her] characteristic fusion of the intellectual and emotional is in full force here, cementing comparisons of her work to that of Joan Didion and Susan Sontag."―Christy Lynch, Bookpage

"Even as she documents the experiences of others--Sri Lankan soldiers, Second Life superusers, eminent writers and photographers--Jamison is keenly aware of how her personal experiences shape the way she reports their stories. It's this knowledge that propels the collection, along with her rejection of cynicism in favor of being open to new ideas and experiences, no matter how foreign they may seem."―Maris Kreizman, Pacific Standard

"Jamison has emerged as a giant in the world of creative nonfiction. She returns with a beautifully compiled collection of essays reflecting on obsession and longing."―Entertainment Weekly

"These perceptive essays demonstrate that the best-selling author of The Empathy Exams continues to explore the limits of human connections."―Elle

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0316259632
• ISBN 13: 9780316259637
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272