Michael Chabon & the Tyranny of Comforters

Usually we think of empathy as a generous emotion; a gift of love. Just as often, though, it can be a crabbed, demanding, jealous thing—an insistence that others act like, think like, and even be one.

Michael Chabon is a writer of literary fiction, which means that in many ways, even more than a politician, he is a professional empathizer. Last week he was plying his trade as a guest-blogger for Ta-Nehisi Coates. As a matter of course, he wrote about the Tucson shooting, and specifically about President Obama’s speech.

His post on the subject was mostly about the distance he felt from the speech, the audience, and indeed, from the nation. He began by declaring, “I've been thinking about the president's speech all night and this morning, how something about it left me feeling left out.”  He acknowledges that he was moved by Obama’s vulnerability and his exhortation to live up to the memories of the victims, “And yet…”, he says: