The Complete Court of Memory - Paperback

by James McConkey (Author)

To the previous books of Court of Memory-Crossroads, The Stranger at the Crossroads, and Stories from My Life with the Other Animals-The Complete Court of Memory adds A Song of One's Own, composed of narratives created from memory that have appeared in magazines but not collected until now. From reviews of Court of Memory: "The genre in which McConkey does his writing has no name. He invented it. What McConkey does is to create meaning out of ordinary life...he'll create what is not exactly a story but a pattern in time." NOEL PERRIN, USA Today "The beauty and exceptional worth...of Court of Memory, an assemblage of...autobiographical meditations by a novelist and short story writer...is that it never ducks and runs. James McConkey is aware that any moment of pure and authentic feeling is an opportunity, provided it's held in custody a while for questioning...A book that's consistently challenging...Court of Memory should be marked must read." BENJAMIN DE MOTT, The New York Times Book Review "Each chapter is a first-person narrative that deals with a moment of particular importance in the life of writer and college teacher James McConkey...tiny fragments of facts that combine to create a rich and shimmering mosaic of emotion.... This is a remarkable book, rich, quiet, dense and honest, a rare combination." The Philadelphia Inquirer "Part memoir, part essay, part story, it takes up a scene in the present and illuminates it with moments from the past, often the smaller moments that other writers tend to overlook.... One can pay no greater compliment to this book than to say it almost makes palpable a moment of revelation that McConkey felt on a snowy evening some 20 years ago." DAVID GUY, The Washington Post "McConkey's mother, over the lifetime-span of this book, evolves from heartbroken young wife to a peaceful woman approaching 100, 'a small and white-haired child' who has given up believing in Heaven ever since the astronauts found nothing up there, but approaches her Nirvana all the same. The divine recurs and recurs here, even in its absence. To escape is to belong, to belong finally is to escape: children, furniture, the stars, a life, all combine here, brilliantly." CAROLYN SEE, Los Angeles Times "Court of Memory is among the most convincing and moving autobiographies ever written because it reproduces the rhythms of the way we really think about our lives." Newsday "Every page of Mr. McConkey's book has a fresh observation about the challenges and satisfaction of being human and humanistic.... Court of Memory is the most intrinsically American and one of the two or three best books I've read since Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It." HOWARD FRANK MOSHER "This is a wonderful book. McConkey makes of his own life...a powerful, thoughtful, and vivid work of art." ANNIE DILLARD "McConkey is one of our best writers; the gracefulness of his prose, the depth of his perceptions are often profoundly moving.... He invests commonplace events and artifacts with harmony and meaning.... The deceptively simple stories are built around the relationships between parents and children, between marriage partners, between good friends.... It is a spiritual odyssey conveyed with rare sensitivity and eloquence." Publishers Weekly "In Court of Memory, McConkey...encounters himself in 23 essays that are ruminative, humane and winning.... The book becomes a celebration of the enduring qualities of the human spirit.... Delightful reading." PATRICIA CLARK, The Houston Post

Author Biography

James McConkey was born on Labor Day in 1921. He is Goldwin Smith Professor of English Literature, emeritus, at Cornell University, and has written or edited 14 books. Among them are two books about writers who have influenced him. The Novels of E.M. Forster is a critical study; To a Distant Island concerns the greatest adventure of Anton Chekhov's life, his more than 6500-mile journey from Moscow across Siberia to Sakhalin Island to interview the convicts imprisoned there. To a Distant Island has been reprinted by Paul Dry Books, in Philadelphia.