The Catastrophe Hour Is A Week Old

Pets are loving it. Many People are, too.

Dorothy digests the material. Courtesy of Adrian Brune.

Note: Several of you have asked about an audio edition. Hopefully it’s coming soon!

My new collection of essays, The Catastrophe Hour, was published last Tuesday. I have a policy of never reading reviews or looking at my Amazon page, but I’m hearing from lots of people that they love it, so that’s gratifying. As I’ve mentioned, the title is not a reference to the recent wildfires – you can’t publish a book that quickly! Instead it refers to a couple of different events and ideas, including the, uh . . seven years I spent trying to build a house from the ground up on a hillside in Los Angeles. (You read that right. And you can read all about it in the title essay, which comes toward the end of the book.) It also refers to something more abstract, which I describe in the opening paragraph of the book’s introduction

For the last five or six years, on many afternoons around 4 or 5 p.m., I’ve been overcome by the feeling that my life is effectively over. This is not a sense that the world is ending, which has been in vogue for quite some time now, and maybe for good reason. It’s a personal foreboding, a distinct feeling of being at the end of my days. My time, while technically not ‘up’, is disappearing in the rearview mirror. The fact that this feeling of ambient doom tends to coincide with the blue-tinged, pre-gloaming light of the late afternoon lends the whole thing a cosmic beauty, as devastating as it is awe-inspiring. As such, I’ve dubbed this the catastrophe hour.

That all sounds rather dramatic given the actual catastrophe I and many others experienced in January. But personal essayists are nothing if not tireless stewards of the molehill-to-mountain pipeline. If I can publish an entire book about the metaphorical catastrophes that accompany the passage of time (aging, death, not being able to listen to music anymore because it makes you so sad, etcetera) just wait until you see whatever I end up writing about my house burning down. Not that I’ve written anything yet. I’m too busy doing livestreams (the lord’s work) and calling FEMA twice a week asking why my application is still pending.

By the way, though I’m grateful for media coverage, I do not believe collections of essays (unless they are all totally original to the book, as was the case with The Unspeakable) should actually be reviewed. That said, here is a very nice article in AirMail, which is not a review but an overview of my work over several decades. It’s paywalled but I think they let you read one free article a month if you’re not a paying subscriber. (Which you really should be, etcetera.)

Finally, I’m collecting photos of pets (and people) reading, or at least pawing, The Catastrophe Hour. If you have such a photo and you wouldn’t mind me posting on the socials, attach it in a comment below or message me.

You can buy the book here or wherever books are sold. Including, you know, here.

Housekeeping

Join me LIVE every Tuesday and Thursday at 3pm ET/12pm PT. Livestream events are open to all. Video recordings will be released the next day for paying subscribers.

📖 Order my new book The Catastrophe Hour: Selected Essays on Amazon or directly from the publisher here.

New York Times, Jan 31, 2025: The L.A. Fires Taught Me To Accept Help

Recent solo episodes :

• January 9: The First 24 Hours

• January 16: The Immaterial World

• January 27: Housing Wars

• February 5: Remembrance Of Things Past

• February 13: What Is A "Catastrophe?"

• March 2: A Mental Infection

• March 31: Dignity Is Out Of Style

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