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I recently finished Lisa Halliday’s book Asymmetry (pub’d 2018) and I just wanted to take a moment to share my admiration for how she expressed ideas about the power and limitations of empathy.
But first! A summary with spoilers: Asymmetry consists of three parts. “Folly” shares the third-person story of Mary-Alice Dodge, a young, white editorial assistant and aspiring writer who becomes romantically involved with world-famous author Ezra Blazer, who is much older than her and on the verge of winning a Nobel. Mary-Alice worries whether she has anything new to say if Ezra has already said it all, and Ezra encourages her to write about her own life. “Madness” shares the first-person narrative of Amar Ala Jaafari, an economist and the son of Iraqi Kurdish immigrants to the United States; he is detained in Heathrow Airport on his way to Iraq to find his kidnapped brother. The third and final section is a transcribed radio interview with Ezra, in which we learn that “Madness” was in fact written by Mary-Alice in her attempt to see the world through someone else. The novel deals in asymmetries of power: young/old, mentor/mentee, sickness/health, immigrant/non-immigrant, peace/war, man/woman.
“Folly” and “Madness” are about the same length, so I was a bit surprised to see so many book reviewers spending the bulk of their reviews on the first part. The author had a romantic relationship with Philip Roth (literary gossip here), so I’m sure that, like general readers, book reviewers can’t help but wonder what is true? (One particularly descriptive line from one of the novel’s sex scenes is quoted readily in the reviews.) And Halliday certainly allows Roth to come through Ezra, an intimidatingly successful mentor.
Nonetheless, I was really blown away by how totally the author dives into the mind of an Iraqi-American while also using the structure of the novel to expose her privilege and the limitations she has as an observer. She’s conscious that readers may even spot the seams in Amar’s narrative. From Amar’s section:
“[E]ven someone who imagines for a living is forever bound by the ultimate constraint: she can hold her mirror up to whatever subject she chooses, at whatever angle she likes–she can even hold it such that she herself remains outside its frame, the better to de-narcissize the view–but there’s no getting around the fact that she’s always the one holding the mirror. And just because you can’t see yourself in a reflection doesn’t mean no one can.”
Asymmetry, p. 225
I heard a terrific interview with Halliday on The Guardian podcast that covers autofiction, cultural appropriation, sensitivity readers, and the challenge of trying to write while living in New York City. I particularly liked how she phrased her thoughts on (1) the fiction writer’s mandate to write fiction (not, as readers often assume, thinly veiled fact) and (2) the power and limitations of writing about someone outside yourself.
“The problem is it [the misconception that writers merely transcribe their own lives] seems to underestimate how much work really has gone into it, to create the details that make a scene vivid and the narrative trajectory that keeps you turning the pages. That [misconception is] what rubs writers the wrong way.”
Lisa Halliday, The Guardian podcast, April 2018
“I also wanted to write about about something very, very different as a way of learning and as a way of experimenting with how imagination breeds empathy–if it does.”
Lisa Halliday, The Guardian podcast, April 2018
I just want to bold that: if it does.
Empathy may indeed have a limit. Mary-Alice’s novel does not have an ending; although it’s implied what happened to Amar’s brother, we don’t see a resolution, as if perhaps that is as far as Mary-Alice’s gaze can take her. The novel also points at a deep anxiety about writing literature today–even if novels can change readers’ minds, what’s the point? Here’s Ezra, tipping his hand about why he only writes close to his own life:
“Lulled by years of relative peace and prosperity we settle into micromanaging our lives… We trust that someone else is looking after the civil liberties shop, so we don’t have to. Our military might is unmatched and in any case the madness is at least an ocean away. And then all of a sudden we look up from ordering paper towels online to find ourselves delivered right into the madness. And we wonder: How did this happen? What was I doing when this was in the works? Is it too late to think about it now? Anyway, what good will it do, the willful and belated broadening of my imagination?”
Asymmetry, pp. 260-1
At the novel’s close, Ezra gets the last word and it’s both awful and perfect. Over the course of his interview, he adds nuance to what we’ve read up until now and sheds light on Mary-Alice’s project. Yet this section is also problematic for having Ezra speak in place of Mary-Alice, who has had to “speak” through Amar (and doesn’t even get her own author interview!). Ezra’s (and the novel’s) last words are a pick-up line for his presumably young, lovely radio interviewer. It’s just so ridiculous.
So at the heart of the novel is a war spanning decades; at the end is a man trying to get laid. A perfectly modern, cruel asymmetry.
Additional Reads
“‘Asymmetry’ Is A Guide To Being Bigger Than Yourself,” NPR, 2018
Reviewer Annalisa Quinn: “To what extent can we inhabit each other? What can we know about each other? How do we think about the suffering of others, and where do we put the blame? Can Alice inhabit Kurdistan, and Amar inhabit Alice? Asymmetry is a novel not only about the creation of that novel, but about the borders of empathy.”
“What the Job of a Sensitivity Reader Is Really Like,” Vulture, 2018
(Save your sanity and don’t read the comments.)
Interview with Dhonielle Clayton: “The fact is that sensitivity reading is a band-aid over a hemorrhaging problem in our industry. That’s what we should really be talking about–that’s what real censorship looks like. The systematic erasure and blockage of people of color from the publishing industry.”