His Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 (HarperCollins) was old-fashioned military history, shamefully readable and spiced up with jibes at the defence policy of Blair and Brown.
Banished because of his catastrophe from the normalcy of American life, Eggers is forced to wander the globe, propelled by a mission and purpose seldom associated with Generation X, but with a seemingly paradoxical sense of absolute freedom.
His mother and stepfather were Jews but professed atheism; Kitaj, too, grew up an atheist, but from the time he was at the Royal College and followed reports of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, his Jewishness became increasingly central to his life and work - and to his personal catastrophe.
In his book The Catastrophe, his first-hand account of the events of 1917, Alexander Kerensky, one of the leaders of the February revolution, who was later forced into exile, writes: "We have seen other tyrants bathing in blood, tyrants more revolting because they come from the people".
He comes at his own catastrophe sidelong, alluding to it as another poet might to Stevens or Pound.
In December 2015, I reviewed Jared Hess's Don Verdean and, after suffering through it and his previous catastrophe, Gentlemen Broncos, I vowed I would never see one of Hess's movies again.
Atkinson is the notoriously incompetent agent Johnny English, who for years has been living in a Tibetan monastery, achieving comedy transcendental enlightenment and zen acceptance of his career catastrophe since messing up a job in Mozambique.
But while this was an inspiration for Ennis and Farah and Rutherford, it just seemed to be another layer of pressure on the man who was traumatised by his near catastrophe in the semi-final when he qualified only as one of the fastest losers.
The summit and the speech to Congress were just part of the essential process of softening up the public for the long, contentious chore of fixing entitlements and the tax system.It was also an opportunity for Mr Obama to counter the pervasive economic gloom that he himself engendered with his warnings of "catastrophe" if his stimulus plan was not passed.
After weeks of unwashed silence he's finally dismantled his crisis-beard and returned his woollen catastrophe-hat to the BBC's Break In Case Of Homelessness box.
Then came his near-catastrophe Monday in Rockville.
