The work of psychologist Silvan Tomkins may finally earn reappraisal, thanks to this collection. Editors Sedgwick and Frank have chosen wisely from Tomkins' four-volume investigation of affect, Affect,Imagery, and Consciousness, presenting in this collection an overview of Tomkins'groundbreaking work.

Silvan Tomkins outlines a way of thinking about affect that is part-science, part-poetry; his work on shame, in particular, offers insights not just for psychologists but for anyone interested in the mysterious and pervasive mechanisms of shame in social and intimate life. The brilliant introduction, "Shame in the Cybernetic Fold," relocates Tomkins' work for a contemporary and interdisciplinary audience. Fans of editor Sedgwick will be fascinated, I think, by her explorations in unfamiliar territory; equally, the introduction excites interest in newcomer Frank. I found this book enthralling, leading me straight to Tomkins' own collections.

Let me begin by expressing sorrow for Sedgwick's illness and admiration for her contributions to queer theory (which are real). Having said that, I nonetheless thought this book somewhat of an embarrassment and surely it only has been published because of Sedgwick's currency as a hot scholar. Her insights are no more remarkable than those gained by just about everyone I know who goes into therapy and she exhibits a predictable grandiosity and delusion when she muses on the fact that she must be brighter than her therapist and that she must be his most interesting patient: who among has not had that--it's called transference! Similarly, I am less put off by her sexual fantasies than bored by them. Hers seems to me to have been a very ordinary and predictable therapy--nothing wrong with that, obviously--it just doesn't warrant this kind of narcissistic public attention. And it does make me wonder what real insights Sedgwick does have about lived human existence, outside her well-maintained ivory tower. She speaks of those she "loves"--but her account is so self-centered that it seems hard to think of her actually experiencing "love" as most of us mere mortals (who have not deconstructed it) have. Perhaps most revealing is her obssession with masturbation--that and thinking about sex/sexuality seem to have been substitutes for much real human sexual interaction. Is this a new genre--the sessions and fantasies of great academics? At least Diane Middlebrook's analytically-based biography of Anne Sexton had some real sense of that patient's passions--for life, love, and, inevitably, death.

Sedgwick, the doyenne of the queer studies movement in literary studies, avoids the sentimentality and sensational voyeurism that mar many recountings of psychotherapy. Her intimate narrative-written during therapy after cancer treatment-provides a moving and honest account of what it means to discuss with a stranger one's deepest anxieties about illness, mortality, dependence, and vulnerability. Sedgwick's aim is to capture the transformative possibilities of seemingly banal interactions with a paid companion.

The book uses the literary forms of Platonic dialogue and haibun, a 17th-Century Japanese prose-and-haiku travel narrative. The interlocutors are Sedgwick and her therapist; the dialogue consists of Sedgwick's retelling of therapeutic interactions, excerpts from her therapist's notes, and numerous mediating haiku glosses. Although some poems fall flat, Sedgwick's use of haibun produces an intricate map of the frustrations, ambivalences, and paradoxes that marked her therapeutic journey. These nuances make compelling her portrait of the life-changing potential of good therapy.

Although they dominate the narrative, the specific issues of Sedgwick's therapy-her attraction to death, masochistic fantasies of coerced consent, and uncertain sexual identity-stand only as particular examples for her universalist vision of the good in therapy. Sedgwick avoids the shallowness of both abstract clinical case studies and of uncritical gushes from the contemporary 'culture of therapy'. What results is appealing indeed: a deeply personal account of psychoanalysis that conveys genuine emotional depth.

This may be one of those rare occasions where the publisher's blurbs are actually accurate, reflecting (as do the author's comments above) the simple but profound pleasures to be found here. Sedgwick is famous (or infamous, depending on your politics) for her ground-breaking work in literary and cultural theory, especially her role in forging the vital and influential field of Queer Studies. The merits of this book, however, should transcend the expectations of anyone who comes to it looking for "more of the same". Sedgwick makes no claims about her "specialness" or the inherent titillation of her personal fantasy life in the book. What she does is share with her reader the insights into life, death, and the day-to-day struggles and pleasures of a person who is at the same time very special and quite ordinary, realized through a marvelously rich collaborative dialogue with a therapist who comes to learn as much about himself as about his patient in this process. For anyone who thinks or feels deeply, this should be a moving and valuable reading experience--one which we can be grateful did not stay in the author's closet.

This book is an essential antecedent to contemporary queer theory, arguing that the development of the public sphere depended upon a sublimated yet necessarily erotic "male homosocial desire." Once we have finished encountered that stunning and revolutionary idea, this is a work of literary criticism that will be of little interest to non-scholars. Sedgwick has proven herself more than adequate to the task of adapting her ideas to a larger academic and educated general audience; indeed, she is one of the most provocative cultural critics of our generation. But not here. I suggest some of Sedgwick's later work, especially "The Epistemology of the Closet" and "Tendencies."

After establishing a brilliant theoretical framework Sedgwick provides utterly unconvincing and tediously reductive readings of literary works by Shakespeare, Wycherley, Dickens, and others. Read the introduction and then skip the rest.

Sedgwick brilliantly transformed gay and lesbian studies with this book, a text whose import has not diminished with the transition of gay and lesbian studies from the margins of academia to (at least closer to) the mainstream. While she uses as her framework here English literature, this framework does not bound her theories conceptually. Look, for example, at ch. 1, "Gender Asymmetry and Erotic Triangles". Consider the triangulation of rapist, victim and spectator in representations of rape, such as in Kaplan's film "The Accused" - while she does not explicitly deal with contemporary media and textuality, it can certainly be applied. Certainly, the text could now be updated - there are literally thousands of contemporary examples which could apply, and which could, perhaps make for more accessible reading. However, such a rewriting would not substantially change Sedgwick's ideas, and the challenge of reading and absorbing SEdgwick is something which I have come to enjoy time and time again.

Long long ago, when I was a young faglet wandering the halls of my college pursuing truth, beauty, and a lang & lit degree, I ended up in a class with Professor Peters, my favourite teacher in history and a fabulous gay guy. It came time for us to write an essay - I forget whether it was the one about Blanche duBois as a drag portrayal of the author in "A Streetcar Named Desire" or the one about Hyde being the queer half of Jekyll, but at any rate I asked Prof. Peters for help and he directed me to this book. Trusting his judgment, I sat down to read.

Well. I'm sure this book contains many fascinating and provocative things to say, but unfortunately they are buried under prose so thick that one has the sensation of wading through molasses. Note to Dr. Sedgwick: ideas do nobody any good if they are expressed so poorly that nobody can understand them.

"Any book not written for the majority - in number and intelligence - is a stupid book." - Charles Baudelaire

This scholarly text is the second academic publication by Sedgwick, who has made a name for herself by becoming one of the prominent researchers of 'queer theory'. Sedgwick is a professor of English at Duke University. In this book, she elaborates her focus on the study of male homosexuality in Western texts, and so reads between the lines, as it were, of mainly canonical works by authors such as Melville, Wilde, James and Proust for signs of obscure queer themes and subtexts.

Sedgwick's main argument is as follows: she believes that homosexuality - male and lesbian - tends to be represented in both society and in literature as though it were an unstable, even deviant or perverse alternative to the fixed norm of heterosexuality. Homosexuality is all too often a thing of 'the closet'; it is a secret waiting to come out; it is the 'love that dare not speak its name'. In Sedgwick's preface to this book, she introduces a note of urgent contemporaneity to her writing that continually resurfaces later on. Clearly, Sedgwick perceives an urgent topicality in her subject matter.

This argument is sound. The execution is mostly fine. Occasionally Sedgwick seems to truncate her examination of works as soon as she has provided us with the bare outlines of their queer subtexts. For instance, she tells us that Claggart in Melville's 'Billy Budd' is gay, and that his testimony against the short story's title character contains an array of important, yet pervasively subtle, sexual connotations. Sometimes this approach borders dangerously on dispensing cheap thrills as Sedgwick proceeds to list terms that constitute sexual innuendo. Having done this, she does not try to link other themes in 'Billy Budd' - issues of legality, of social hierarchies and of mutiny - with the theme of homosexuality. Thus she doesn't always carry her analysis far enough. Why is Claggart gay, but not Billy Budd himself, or any of the other sailors aboard the Bellipotent for that matter? Why does Sedgwick make this seemingly petty distinction when the text itself is, as she rightly argues, deliberately secretive to the extent that it is refuses to make such details explicit? Still, this is an admirable and well-intentioned effort to create a foundation for further studies of queer theory. At the same time Sedgwick tries to emphasize the broader social relevance of her concerns. But here's the final catch: her style of writing is so densely compacted, so obfuscatory, so Jamesian in its complex morass of never-ending clauses that it's bound to marginalize a potentially much larger audience than the one it has now. And so this text, which is relevant in one sense, is esoteric in another. Moreover, Sedgwick likes to combine eloquence with banal profanities as freely as she mixes readings of Proust with Willie Nelson. For those who are phased by such language games, this set of reviews is where your intimacy with Sedgwick ends. For those remaining, Sedgwick's writing is a rare treat.

According to the writer Avital Ronell, in his youth Kant wanted to be a poet. Fortunately for us, perhaps, he turned to philosophy instead. Through this turn Kant ended up setting the standard towards which most academics currently strive: a zero-degree style (which Lyotard both attempts to mime and identifies as naive in the preface to The Differend). What this does, essentially, is provide the rather stupid (and perpetually misrecognized) effect that an author is objective, sound, and important. Most of the time, authors are none of these.

People may disagree with me, but I find Sedgwick's style gorgeous and memorable. This may make the book difficult to read, but it also can make it quite a pleasure, and what else could one want from a well-informed, well-argued, politically necessary academic intervention?

For people deterred by Sedgwick's prose, I suggest you go pick up something more simple-minded. Whoever thought that reading a book shouldn't be a challenge? Who actually believes that one shouldn't struggle with difficult and new ideas?

The Epistemology of the Closet is a necessary book. Sedgwick's thoughts on ignorance and power (in response to Foucault's coupling of knowledge/power) are incredible. Her readings of Bowers v. Hardwick, the homosexual panic defense, and figurations of homosexuality are more than insightful: they are powerful critiques and exposes of the way that homophobia operates and is legitimated in contemporary American culture. Please please read this book. Read it twice or three times. Try it again and again. Each time you return, I promise you, you'll be startled by the ideas that come out, and hopefully, they'll mobilize you to do something more with them.

Take it to the next level and keep reading.

Gary Fisher was a graduate student, fledgling writer, and Black gay man living in the Bay Area before his death in the mid-1990s. This book consists of two parts: a sample of short stories and poems and an autobiographical sketch based upon his diaries.

I don't know whether to thank the author, editor, and publishing company for challenging me and most other readers or to throw this book into an incinerator. One reviewer in the gay press called this writing "outre" and I wholeheartedly agree. I am thoroughly surprised that this book is available at non-pornographic outlets. Rafael Campo, Don Belton, and Eve Sedgwick all have raved about Fisher or helped this book come into fruition. I admire all three of those writers and enjoy their work, so I have no idea what they were thinking here. E. Lynn Harris' fans would roll over and die if they read this book! It's one thing for art to push the envelope, but an actual Black gay man made all the poor and crazy choices that Gary Fisher made. I had to work hard to keep my eyes in their sockets trying to get through this book.

While the fiction and poetry demonstrate the potential Fisher had, they are worthless. Things don't really get started until the autobiographical portion begins. This book invokes every "disrespectable" aspect of some gay people's lives; the Far Right could have a field day with this text. The shock value and goriness is very reminiscent of David Wojnarowicz's "Postcards from America" and Eve Sedgwick, the editor, basically admits as much in her conclusion. Adding racial matters into the mix only intensifies the uncomfort I felt. Issues such as dangerously unsafe sex practices, size-queeniness, Uncle Tom-ism, coprofilia, anonymous and public sex all come up and readers will be thoroughly shocked at how. The action in this book comes out of nowhere. Fisher never clearly states when he started to identify as gay, when he decided to practice masochism, when he tested positive for HIV, or when he met Eve Sedgwick. They all kinda just happen. Furthermore, he is a closeted gay and a black self-loather. He never once challenges homophobia or racism.

Eve Sedgwick praises Fisher's feelings on race as "complicated." Ha! Fisher makes very clear that he hated being black. Throughout his life he hardly associates with other blacks. He lets white gay men do all kinds of degrading things to him. While he listens to black music, you hardly hear anything about black literature, heroes, or friends. He does have sex with some black men, but he places white men on a pedestal and even enjoys when he is called racist epithets. Not only will straight Black readers be appalled, but gay Blacks will be both appalled and embarrassed. If bell hooks hated "Paris Is Burning," you can just imagine how she and others would trash this book. He is very race-conscious, but this guy didn't have an ounce of Black pride. Additionally, Fisher thinks in strictly black-white terms though he moved to California, a state with many Latinos and Asians. Sedgwick makes clear that Fisher wanted the book's title, but it nevertheless underlines all the ugly issues that his life brings up.

Possibly due to Sedgwick's editing and institutional connections, this book has the format, height, and font of many gay studies texts from Duke University Press. This is odd to see in a non-academic book. Some of the autobiographical part is ramblings of his fiction. I understand that characters sometimes speak to writers when they are creating art, but this made the book even more confusing, capricious, and repetitive. Fisher asks many rhetorical questions that need question marks, yet Sedgwick fails to edit them in. Fisher obviously read much yet music seems to have moved his life far more than literature did.

I do love the fact that Fisher was attracted to heavy guys. There is a lot of prejudice against fat men in the gay community and this one aspect of Fisher was a breath of fresh air. At a time when many coming-out stories are being produced by gay men, few are done by gay Blacks and SM-practitioners. Also, Fisher is an "Army brat" and not enough has been written about their lives. This book adds to the collection of AIDS writings which is formidable. The reader does get to observe how AIDS has robbed us of someone who had talent. And it is provocative in a way.

STILL, LET ME WARN ALL READERS THAT THEY BETTER HAVE A STRONG STOMACH, NO POLITICALLY CORRECT LEANINGS, AND AN INCREDIBLY THICK SKIN IF THEY ARE GOING TO READ THIS BOOK. YOU HAVE BEEN ADVISED!