The Catastrophe Hour
Selected Essays
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the New York Times–bestselling author of The Unspeakable and The Problem with Everything comes a new collection of unputdownable essays.
“For the last five or six years, on many afternoons around 4 or 5 p.m., I’ve been overcome with the sensation that my life is effectively over. Note the personal touch here. This is not a sensation of the world ending, which has been in vogue for quite some time now, and maybe for good reason. It’s 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 to the whole thing a cosmic beauty, as devastating as it is awe-inspiring. As such, I’ve dubbed this the catastrophe hour.”
Written between 2016 and 2023, these essays are classic Daum, showcasing the author’s wit, her intellect, and her uncanny ability to throw new light on even the most ubiquitous of subjects. Delving into divorce, dating, music, friendship, beauty, aging, death and money, Daum’s unflinching honesty and exacting observations secure her reputation as one of our most important and enduring essayists.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In these forthright pieces, The Unspeakable podcaster Daum (The Problem with Everything) meditates on the vagaries of midlife. Across several entries, she reflects on divorcing her husband of seven years while in her mid 40s over "petty" annoyances and on making peace with her life as a childless woman in her 50s after realizing that she values independence more than the lifelong romantic relationship she obsessed over attaining as a young woman. Contemplating how age has changed her relationship to pop culture, Daum describes how she came to prefer podcasts over music because her favorite songs remind her either of painful memories or naive notions of youthful possibility. She imbues the selections with wry humor, especially in "Independent Creator," which probes the indignities of eking out a living from her podcast revenue and Substack subscriptions. Unfortunately, the condescending "What I Have in Common with Trans Activists" sticks out like a sore thumb. The essay is built around the dubious suggestion that Daum's seeking out of narratives about unhappy mothers to affirm her decision to forgo having kids mirrors how trans people are allegedly deluded into changing their gender identity by ensconcing themselves in like-minded corners of Reddit and Tumblr, but Daum doesn't provide even a shred of evidence to support this "social contagion" theory. It's a glaring blight on an otherwise serviceable collection.
