What I've learned about Leslie Jamison from this collection: she does love a beautiful turn of phrase, she's politically left wing, and she sometimes thinks that shock value and edginess are to be valued se ipse.
Sadly for the 'Best American Science and Nature Writing' (which was execrable this year), the best science essay of the year is in this volume, about the study of cosmogony and the Big Bang. There were other great essays, though they were sometimes hard to read: "White Horse" about rape, and "Adventures in Pornland" which describe casual brutality against women as eroticized. "H" about the seemingly unwinnable war against heroin, was another timely and touching essay. And there's a quite interesting one on the cinematic uses and misuses of the black sexual organ. (not sure if Amazon is prudish about the p-word!)
A Freudian might begin to ponder odd things about Jamison at this point.
However, they are gems in a swamp of stuff that is trying too damn hard. I would like to ban any essayist, from henceforth, from titling their *essay* as "The Book of the Dead". It's pretentious and worse, unoriginal. And almost always promises incredibly tedious, mordant reading.
Several other entries had some flashes of interest, possibilities, but really needed a skilled editor to whip them into shape. This is not some old, unwoke idea on this reviewer's part, that all essays must fit a formal shape or proffer some generally cliche 'meaning'--rather, the writer seemed not to have discovered their own topic, yet. It was like reading drafts. I do that for a living, thank you very much. I'd rather not do that for my entertainment.
The worst entry, by far, the one that was so bad I thought it surely, surely, must have been parody, was the 'Smoker's Manifesto'. No one, I thought, is that devoid of critical thought that they honestly relate someone who chooses to smoke with someone who got in a car that got into a tragic accident--painting both as equally complicit in their health situations. I'm an EMT and I've seen many MVAs and that comparison, cheeky or not, offends me at every possible level. But one never learns if one doesn't challenge oneself, so I persisted in the essay, thinking to myself, 'oh, I know. This is some sort of clever parody, just poorly written, in the vein of Swift's 'Modest Proposal'.' Alas, dear readers, I was mistaken. Though Ms Thunderstorm's blurb at the end of the book is hilariously contradictory (down with patriarchy and capitalism, but send me money so I can dismantle it), it is also the worst kind of tryhard, a woman flinging the f-word around as though she hasn't yet realized that cursing is really just a white flag of surrender--one curses because one has no other weapon in one's intellectual arsenal.
All in all, this has been a disappointing year for the Best series: honestly, next year I'm going to wait a while and see if it's worth it. I'm tired of pretentious celeb hip it-girl editors trying to signal their wokeness.
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An affirmative, empowering story about embracing your identity and finding your voice, inspired in part by debut author Korey Watari’s experiences growing up Asian American, and illustrated by her husband, Mike Wu, Pixar artist and creator of the Ellie series.| Learn more
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