Court of Memory

by James H. McConkey

These sequential meditations by one of our most skillful writers constitute a unique genre-part autobiography, part introspection, part observation, part narrative-in which a life is continually re-examined in the light of experience and time. Taking personal experience as his core, McConkey builds upon it to reveal connections and create an encompassing "court of memory." WE come to know him, his family, his friends, and in the process we recognize elements of our own lives as well. The nexus through which these words pass is the writer's memory. His opening quotation from St. Augustine tells much about both the man an his "All this I do inside me, in the huge court of my memory. There I have by me the sky, the earth, the sea, and all things in them which I have been able to perceive... There too I encounter myself."

Genres: Memoir

338 pages, Hardcover

First published January 21, 1983

About the author

James Henry McConkey (1858- )

Reviews

[Bryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. This book is a collection of essays written from 1960 up through 1982. It's been out of publication for years now. At the time of original publication in 1983, the author was 61, so the perspective--both in terms of the age of the book and the age of its writer--were very interesting to me. McConkey captured a lot of the conundrum--the joy, the fear, the happiness, the purpose, the banality, the futility, etc.--that is life in succinct and powerful ways. In that respect, the book and its authorial voice were timeless. The entire book--and probably McConkey's own life--has something of a somber tone to it, but that is, I think, due to McConkey's grasp of the joy that is our, ultimately fleeting, life. Some of his quotes: "...it was the very endurance of memory which makes life at once so terrible and yet so incredibly precious;" "it was simply that kind of weekend in which the winter seems unendurably long, one's own life doesn't add up to much, and nobody wants to think of tomorrow;" "...as I mowed a field or replaced a section of rotten house siding, would give me the awareness of both the urgency of my task and its ultimate uselessness." I only gave it 4 stars, because it felt a little long at times and some of the essays, especially towards the end, felt repetitive--like he had submitted them to different magazines and had done insufficient editing in combining them to remember what readers of this book already knew. I would be very interested in what the author's contemporaries in history (WWII veteran age) and in time (Baby Boomers) think of this book.

[Mark Klempner · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE this book. Full disclosure: James McConkey is my writing mentor. He is as fantastic a human being as he is a writer and I am endlessly in his debt. Nevertheless, the likes of Annie Dillard, Stewart O'Nan, Diane Ackerman, A. Manette Ansay, Robert Morgan, and Alison Lurie are also his fans, so I strongly urge you to check out his writing. He does something along the lines of memoir, but he goes so much deeper than most memoirists and has this gift of being able to write almost from a dreamlike state in which he makes deep and resonant connections between the disparate experiences of his life, sometimes spanning many decades. If you are interested in memoir, I highly recommend that you imbibe some of his prose.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply one of the best books I have read in a long time.

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

James McConkey, Goldwin Smith Professor of English Literature, emeritus, at Cornell, is the author or editor of fifteen books, among them this moving meditative nonfiction narrative, a work that falls between fiction and memoir, and might be called an autobiographical novel. The great Ray Bradbury has said that McConkey "writes prose the only way it should be written -- which is to say, ecstatically," and Warren Greenwood, who interviewed the writer several years ago, wrote that McConkey's writing "captures the intensity, strangeness, terror and overwhelming beauty of being alive." I couldn't agree more with both!

[Godine Publisher & Black Sparrow Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This is a wonderful book. McConkey makes of his own life... a thoughtful, powerful and vivid work of art."
- Annie Dillard

"James McConkey speaks to the reader with poignant force, illuminating ordinary life... There is no voice like his alive today."
- May Sarton

"Among the most convincing and moving autobiographies ever written."
- Newsday