Preface

Sarah Schulman’s Empathy is a strange, funny, and disquieting book. Said to be lesbian literature’s first foray into postmodernism, it is intentionally structured to be suffering from its own identity crisis. With wit and sophistication, Schulman toys with style in Empathy. Traditional narration and development of both plot and characters are rejected outright by the author, just as she rejects Freud’s most dubious and regrettable theories. But even this rejection of Freud takes place within psychoanalytic sessions - one sweet irony among many. It is a calculated, but ultimately humane book, and Schulman’s fierce intelligence crackles on every page. The critic Sally R. Munt once described the lesbian identity in Empathy as “a traveling implosion,” which may be the simplest summation of this wonderful book.

 

Sarah Schulman is a tremendously gifted author whose books deserve regular revisiting, and we are pleased and honored to add Empathy to the Little Sister’s Classics series. This edition includes an insightful and personal introduction by the writer Kevin Killian and in a new afterword, Schulman herself reflects on the impact of Empathy and the changes that have occurred since its release. Also included is a thematically related short story by the author and further complementary writings.

 

- Mark Macdonald, 2006