The Weather in Proust

The Weather in Proust gathers pieces written by the eminent critic and theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in the last decade of her life, as she worked toward a book on Proust. This book takes its title from the first essay, a startlingly original interpretation of Proust. By way of Neoplatonism, Buddhism, and the work of Melanie Klein, Sedgwick establishes the sense of refreshment and surprise that the author of the Recherche affords his readers. Proust also figures in pieces on the poetry of C. P. Cavafy, object relations, affect theory, and Sedgwick’s textile art practices. More explicitly connected to her role as a pioneering queer theorist are an exuberant attack against reactionary refusals of the work of Guy Hocquenghem and talks in which she lays out her central ideas about sexuality and her concerns about the direction of US queer theory. Sedgwick lived for more than a dozen years with a diagnosis of terminal cancer; its implications informed her later writing and thinking, as well as her spiritual and artistic practices. In the book’s final and most personal essay, she reflects on the realization of her impending death. Featuring thirty-seven color images of her art, The Weather in Proust offers a comprehensive view of Sedgwick’s later work, underscoring its diversity and coherence.

“The Weather in Proust is not just a random final collection of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s essays. It is a frank and flowing analysis of the conflict of pleasure and destruction that shapes our attachment to life; it is an account of the deities that artists invent to embody these dramatic life forces; and, perhaps above all, it is what she calls a ‘fantasy book,’ a stimulus to follow out affect beyond the conventions of thought. Like the artists and psychoanalysts whom Sedgwick seeks out, this work provides a ‘calm voice, so contagious and easy to internalize’ that ‘a new mental faculty’ emerges: through crystalline prose, clear-sighted formulations, and an unsurpassed aesthetic patience, Sedgwick’s engagement with sexuality, politics, and reading closely constitute a sublime teaching.”—Lauren Berlant, author of Cruel Optimism