Catastrophe Practice by Nicholas Mosley


Catastrophe Practice
Title : Catastrophe Practice
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : -
Language : English
Format Type : Kindle Edition
Number of Pages : 410
Publication : First published January 1, 1979

Catastrophe Practice, in the form of three plays with prefaces and a novella, follows six characters trying to find their way through some catastrophe that is less in the world outside than in their minds. Drawing upon catastrophe theory to examine the discontinuities in human personality and our tendency to progress suddenly rather than smoothly, the six characters struggle to disrupt traditional ways of being. These characters feel that conventional ways of interpreting the world have become destructive –conventional language, conventional feelings, conventional situations – and try to find a way to realise genuine experience.

Catastrophe Practice Reviews

  • MJ Nicholls

    An unusual hodgepodge, an unusual manner in which to kick off a most unusual quintet. Three ‘Plays For Not Acting’, each prefaced with a rambling philosophical essay, comprise the first part. These plays, ‘Skylight’, ‘Landfall’, and ‘Cell’, are hardcore avant-garde affairs, replete with complex stage directions, characters who talk in non sequiturs, bizarre poetic phrases, and never to each other, and babble the sort of pretentious drama-school dialogue once in vogue in the 1970s school of useless arts degrees. The short novel, ‘Cypher’, rounds off the rest of the book, and puts the reader in safer prose territory, however, Mosley at this stage isn’t concerned with the stylistic mastery of his previous works, but advancing his philosophical theories, and this means the infuriating staccato dialogue technique, the tendency for the characters to think and speak in unusual poetic shards and non sequiturs, and the abandonment of any sort of helpful entrypoint for the reader. I found this increasingly painful to read. On the plus side, Hopeful Monsters and Impossible Object are masterpieces. I remember those fondly.

  • Greg

    The kind of book that makes me feel dumb, like I should be getting something more out of it but instead I'm just missing it. Interesting but maybe a little too experimental.

  • Harry Collier IV

    Did not finish.
    I understand that Mosley is very clever and I understand that this book is clever but the first play did nothing for me and I just don't have the will or the time...