In his recent novels--including his award-winning Hopeful
Monsters--Nicholas Mosley has investigated the patterns that govern our
mental and emotional lives and the possibilities that we have for
change, and nowhere has he explored such themes with greater
concentration than in Catastrophe Practice. A unique book whose
characters and concerns are the basis for the other four novels of the
Catastrophe Practice Series - Hopeful Monsters, Imago Bird, Judith, and
Serpent-- Catastrophe Practice is remarkable both in its form (three
plays with prefaces and a novella) and in its ability to convey the
complexities of thought. Drawing upon catastrophe theory to examine the
discontinuities in human personality and our tendency to progress
suddenly rather than smoothly, the six characters of Catastrophe
Practice struggle to disrupt traditional ways of being. These characters
(and the author) feel that conventional ways of interpreting the world
have become destructive--conventional language, conventional feelings,
conventional situations--and try to find a way to realize genuine
experience.