Background
McConkey, James Rodney was born on September 2, 1921 in Lakewood, Ohio, United States. Son of Clayton Delano and Grace (Baird) McConkey.
(To the previous books of Court of Memory—Crossroads, The ...)
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
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( "Elegant and deeply personal, McConkey's essays reveal ...)
"Elegant and deeply personal, McConkey's essays reveal a seasoned mind and a soulful spirit."—Publishers Weekly "Like his colleagues Forster and Chekhov, James McConkey combines a sharp eye, a nimble mind and a bottomless generosity. In The Telescope in the Parlor, as in all his fine and intimate essays, he is concerned with the very deepest subjects: time, memory, and what it means to be human. May this new addition to his 'Court of Memory' remind readers how vital and necessary a writer he is."—Stewart O'Nan, author of A Prayer for the Dying In this collection of essays, James McConkey—novelist, professor, and memoirist—writes about the authors and experiences that have meant the most to him. In "Three Autobiographical Essays" and "A Story for a Child," McConkey poignantly recalls events of courting and family life that remain as clear in his inner vision as the day they took place. In "Eight Essays about Literature," he explains why he loves the books he loves and why he responds to the work of A. R. Ammons, Anton Chekhov, and E. M. Forster, among others. With an even greater power than the telescope standing in the corner of his study, McConkey's inner eye observes telling scenes of memory and imagination, which through the magic of his writing become vibrant images in the reader's own imagination. In the title essay, McConkey recalls the vivid moment that led him to become a chronicler of his own experiences, when he "attempted to connect the normal details of daily living to a unity…apprehended only for an instant, and which consciousness itself has since kept from his reach." Watching McConkey make these connections is but one of the delights this book provides. "James McConkey uses his own memory as a tool that unlocks everythinga telescope with a view of the entire universe. I can't think of another writer who uses that tool with as much precision, delicacy, and love."—Anne Fadiman, author of Ex Libris "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 "The genre in which McConkey does his best 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…His books should be famous."—Noel Perrin, USA Today James McConkey is the author of Crossroads, The Tree House Confessions, The Novels of E. M. Forster, and Court of Memory (a continuing biography that appeared serially in various magazines, primarily The New Yorker), and many other books. He is Goldwin Smith Professor of English Literature Emeritus at Cornell University.
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(Like all of James McConkey's writing, this book defies co...)
Like all of James McConkey's writing, this book defies conventional definition. It deals with memory - McConkey's memory - of events and lives, politics and family, people and animals, all reconstructed as interwoven stories that are convincing, poignant, and uniquely insightful. His is a visionary journey, neither totally factual nor completely fictive. Instead, McConkey takes a transparency of the past, lays it upon the present, and creates a newly focused image. In Stories from My Life with the Other Animals, he revisits his intimate history to create a totally credible journey of the soul, a journey that sweeps the reader along by the sincerity and precision of the speaker's language, clarity, and probity. Stories from My Life with the Other Animals forms the final volume in the author's great Court of Memory trilogy a monumental attempt to articulate a message and meaning from his life. Proust wrote, "Those who are haunted by the confused remembrance of truths they have never known are the men who are gifted; but if they never go beyond saying that they can hear a ravishing tune, they convey nothing to others. They are without talent." McConkey, bravely, brilliantly, successfully, grapples with this memory, bringing the truths of his life to light. His is an immense talent.
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( "One of our finest writers."—Annie Dillard "What a ple...)
"One of our finest writers."—Annie Dillard "What a pleasure, and how much there is to learn from this short book!" Denise Levertov "A deeply moving, exquisitely written book."Washington Post Book World "Exceptionally serene prose leveled with sharp observation and subtle wit neither history nor fiction , but rather a kind of reimagining of the past."Michael Dirda, Smithsonian Magazine "We have had many straight biographies of writers in recent years that leave their subjects curiously diminished. Mr. McConkey's achievement is to send the reader back to the Russian master with renewed wonder."Harvey Shapiro, The New York Times In 1890 Anton Chekhovthirty years old and already a famous writerleft his home and family in Moscow to travel 6,500 miles across Russia, over frozen land and sea, by train, ferry, and troika, to visit the island of Sakhalin, a penal colony off the coast of Siberia. What was Chekhov seeking by undertaking such a harrowing journey to that God-forsaken island? Ostensibly, he went in his role of physician, to observe the medical conditions and to collect statistical information (Indeed, Chekhov wrote that during his stay he filled out more than 10,000 census cards based on interviews with prisoners and exiles.) But his motivation, as James McConkey reflects, was more likely escape: escape from the sense of confinement that fame, fortune, and family had broughta search, in other words, for freedom in a place where no one was free. In To a Distant Island, McConkey recreates Chekhov's remarkable journey in all of its complexity, while interweaving a journey of his own. As McConkey guides us through the Russian wilderness and into the soul of this great writer, he uncovers the peculiar and hidden forces that shaped two lives. "The genre in which McConkey does his best writing has no name. He invented it…What McConkey does is to create meaning out of ordinary life. He'll take a tiny incident…and by linking it through memory with a series of past events, he'll create what is not exactly a story but a pattern in time. By then the incident is no longer small; it has become the focus for a revelation…His books should be famous." Noel Perrin, U.S.A. Today James McConkey is the author of Crossroads, The Tree House Confessions, The Novels of E.M. Forster, and Court of Memory (a continuing biography that appeared serially in various magazines, primarily The New Yorker), and many other books. He is Goldwin Smith Professor of English Literature Emeritus at Cornell University. Jay Parini is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College. He is the author of The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year and Robert Frost: A Life and many other works of fiction, criticism, poetry, and biography.
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(These sequential meditations by one of our most skillful ...)
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 vision: "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."
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writer literature and language educator
McConkey, James Rodney was born on September 2, 1921 in Lakewood, Ohio, United States. Son of Clayton Delano and Grace (Baird) McConkey.
Bachelor, Cleveland College, 1943. Master of Arts, Western Reserve University, 1946. Doctor of Philosophy, University Iowa, 1953.
Teaching fellow, instructor, Cleveland College, 1945-1946; teaching assistant, U. Iowa, Iowa City, 1949-1950; assistant professor, Morehead State College, Kentucky, 1950-1954; associate professor, Morehead State College, Kentucky, 1954-1956; assistant professor, Cornell Univercity, Ithaca, New York, 1956-1962; associate professor, Cornell Univercity, Ithaca, New York, 1962-1967; professor, Cornell Univercity, Ithaca, New York, 1967-1987; Goldwin Smith Professor of English literature, Cornell Univercity, Ithaca, New York, 1987-1992; Goldwin Smith professor emeritus, since 1992. Director Morehead Writers Workshop, 1951-1956, Antioch Seminar in Writing and Public, Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1957-1959.
(To the previous books of Court of Memory—Crossroads, The ...)
(These sequential meditations by one of our most skillful ...)
( "Elegant and deeply personal, McConkey's essays reveal ...)
(Like all of James McConkey's writing, this book defies co...)
( "One of our finest writers."—Annie Dillard "What a ple...)
(1st Paul Dry Books E)
Served with United States Army, 1943-1945.
Married Gladys Jean Voorhees, May 6, 1944. Children: Lawrence Clark, John Crispin, James Clayton.