Court of Memory — James 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 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."