Catastrophe Practice

Catastrophe Practice is a novel in the form of three plays with prefaces and a novella, in which six characters, or actors, try to find their ways through some catastrophe that is less in the world outside than in their minds. They feel that conventional ways of seeing things have become disastrous and instead try to put catastrophe theory into practice in order to break through to something different.

Mosley draws upon catastrophe theory to investigate the discontinuities in human personality and our tendency to progress suddenly rather than smoothly. That we do progress underlines the basic optimism of the book. In Catastrophe Practice characters (and author) try to move away from the tragic or comic models hitherto provided by literature into categories more suited to growth and life.

First published in England in 1979, this edition contains an introduction by John Banks, the leading authority on Mosley's fiction, as well as a new postscript by the author, who has made numerous revisions throughout.