Hopeful Monsters (51 page)

The 'Catastrophe Practice' Series of Novels

Humans can learn through catastrophe. Evolution can take a step forwards. We can't change things by efforts of will; what we can do is 'practise' a state of mind that may be able to deal with catastrophe when it comes.

1. Hopeful Monsters (U.K. 1990; U.S. 1991): Max and Eleanor are students growing up in the 1920s in Cambridge and Berlin. They have to come to terms with the rise of Communism and Naziism, the crack-up of old ways of thinking in science and philosophy, the self-destructiveness of the Spanish Civil War, the making of the Bomb. What they learn can be passed on, eventually, to the protagonists of the books that follow.

2. Imago Bird (U.K. 1980; U.S. 1989): Bert is a student in the 1970s. Through his family he finds himself involved with Establishment politics; through his girlfriend with the revolutionary Trotskyites. He is helped to make his way through this crazy social and political maze by a psychotherapist, Dr Anders— Eleanor from Hopeful Monsters.

3. Serpent (U.K. 1981; U.S. 1990): Jason is a scriptwriter. He is writing (in the 1970s) a script for a film about the Roman/Jewish war in A.D. 70. He is married to Lilia, Bert's sister, who was previously living with Max. The film people, bored, hatch a plot to break up Lilia and Jason's successful marriage. This is paralleled by the destructiveness/self-destructiveness mocked by Jason in his script. Jason and Lilia have learned to survive— and their child.

4. Judith (U.K. 1986; U.S. 1991): Judith is an aspiring young actress in the 1970s. She goes into some sort of crack-up with promiscuity and drugs. She is rescued by Professor Ackerman—Max of Hopeful Monsters —who gets her to a healing ashram in India. Later, all the protagonists of these stories come together at an

anti-nuclear demonstration outside an American airbase, where there is an explosion. They have all had a hand in the survival of the child; the child now has a hand in their survival.

5. Catastrophe Practice (U.K. 1979; U.S. 1989): This was the first book written of the series—it was the 'seed' of the other books—now it is more clearly seen at the end. (This was the book that earned the 'experimental' tag; the other books are not conventionally experimental.) Catastrophe Practice is in the form of four essays, three plays, and a short novel. It was trying to say—what is important about any 'act' is likely to be that which is going on offstage; it is by watching and listening for this that one might be ready for catastrophe—and something new might be born, and survive.

—Nicholas Mosley

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