It’s rare that a book announces its intentions from the beginning, and rarer still for it to deliver on the promises made, but Funny Weather does just that. Laing writes in the foreword, “what drives all these essays is a long-standing interest in how a person can be free, and especially in how to find a freedom that is shareable, and not dependent upon the oppression or exclusion of other people.” Through essays, columns, letters, and interviews, cobbled together from years of her work as a cultural critic, Laing unfolds for readers a sprawling landscape of artists making their best work in the worst times. What she provides is a treasure map of sorts, instructions on where to look and who to find, profiling a litany of visionaries with an eye for how they survived, how they made it possible for others to do the same. But Funny Weather is not interested in heroes. It is not about valor, or the strong keeping on despite their hardship. Funny Weather is a report on life, crisis, and the need for art in both. It grabs readers where they are—living, no doubt, in another new emergency—and tells us to proceed.
