Everything Is an Emergency: An OCD Story in Words & Pictures

By Jason Adam Katzenstein

New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

“A brilliant, honest, necessary book that exposes the intricacies of the human brain while showing us the way creativity and friendship can anchor us. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered if they see the world a little differently.” –Ada Limón

A New Yorker cartoonist illustrates his lifelong struggle with OCD in cartoon vignettes frank and funny

Jason Adam Katzenstein is just trying to live his life, but he keeps getting sidetracked by his over-active, anxious brain. Mundane events like shaking hands or sharing a drink snowball into absolute catastrophes. Jason has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a mental illness that compels him to perform rituals in order to protect himself from dangers that don’t really exist. He checks, washes, over-thinks, rinse, repeat. 

He does his best to hide his embarrassing compulsions, and sometimes this even works. He grows up, worries about his first kiss, falls in love with making cartoons, moves to New York City — which is magical and gross, etc. All the while, half his energy goes into living his life, while the other half is devoted to the increasingly ridiculous rituals he’s decided to maintain to keep himself from fully short-circuiting, 

Then, he fully short-circuits. 

At his absolute lowest, Jason finally decides to do the things he’s always been told to do to get better: exposure therapy and medication. These are the things that have always freaked him out, and they continue to freak him out. Also, they help him recover. 

Everything is an Emergency is a comic about all the self-destructive stories someone tells himself, over and over, until they start to seem true. In images surreal, witty, and confessional, Jason shows us that OCD can be funny, even when it feels like it’s ruining your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jun 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9780062950093

Jason Adam Katzenstein

JASON ADAM KATZENSTEIN is a cartoonist and writer for print and television. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times and MAD Magazine, and on Cartoon Network. He is the illustrator of The White Man's Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon and the graphic novel Camp Midnight. He is also a visiting professor at Wesleyan University. 

Book preview

Dedication

This comic was written, drawn, rewritten

and redrawn, shared, agonized over, and given life

at the MacDowell Colony. My love and gratitude

to this wonderful place and everyone in it.

Epigraph

In surrealism, as in dreams and cartoons,

things turn into other things without any preamble.

—David Salle

What, me worry?

—Alfred E. Neuman

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Everything Is an Emergency

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

The first thing I’m ever afraid of is this statue in my grandparents’ house.

I’ve always been creative with my fears.

Whenever we visit, I take a quick glance into the living room to confirm that the statue that terrifies me is in its proper place.

She always is.

Until, one day, my parents figure out I’ve been hiding from her.

The next time we go to my grandparents’:

I know she’s still under there, but for now she’s neutralized.

And for now that’s enough.

Another early fear is Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

My nightmares are original stories my subconscious writes about the Man with Red Eyes, eerie fan fiction.

My dad teaches me that if you have a nightmare, you wake up and turn your pillow over, and when you go back to sleep you’ll have a different dream.

This comforts me.

As an extra precaution, when I go back to sleep I hide myself completely under the comforter. That way nothing and nobody will find me.

In the morning my dad tapes a piece of brown paper over the cover of A Wrinkle in Time.

Then he hides it and doesn’t tell me where.

I’m safe again for now.

When my parents go out, I stay awake in bed imagining every terrible way they could die.

I can’t fall asleep until I hear the sound of the garage door opening.

I tell my mom that when I close my eyes I see pictures in my head.

Reviews for Everything Is an Emergency

[publishedmusings · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I identified so much with this book. It was hilarious and clever. Plus I learned some new techniques and had some realizations. Thank you for discussing the uncomfortable and making it approachable and of course hilarious.

[villemezbrown · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A couple people in my life suffer from OCD, so this pretty familiar territory for me. Katzenstein does a good job of outlining his lifelong struggles with plenty of candor and humor, but breezes along a bit too quickly and stays so much in his own head that the other people in his life are mentioned almost in passing. (Ironically and hopefully intentionally, one of his illustrations in the book meant to to criticize movies has an artist monologuing about his tortured existence, while his model off to the side smiles, stares off into space and declares, "I have no inner life of my own.")