Description:
How often are we told that time will provide the emotional distance we need to comprehend what has happened to us? How often do we encounter the claim that as the weeks, months, and years pass we will achieve greater clarity?
In this searching, playful collection, Patrick Madden gives the lie to such easy consolations. Through a simple conceit, that each essay begins with the phrase "I have just . . .," Madden examines recent experiences, reaching for unexpected associations to generate linguistically artful and narratively subversive essays. A comment overheard in a parking lot, a near-tragic incident off the coast of Uruguay, a jaunty whistle sung by an unseen bird--each of these "recenses," as Madden calls them, reveals how we use language to contain, refract, elide, and re-create, and how we are constantly revising and rewriting the past. Through this journey into how we construct our personal histories, Madden reveals the surprising pleasure, and occasional painful truth, of never really knowing.
Review Quotes:
"True to the Montaignean tradition in which he practices, Patrick Madden tackles topics not with points to make; rather, he probes topics until points emerge. In this way, his essays evoke a sense of adventure, of discovery, of intrigue--one never gets the impression, in other words, that Madden knows precisely where he's headed, but there is always a feeling of inevitability once he arrives. To read Recenses/Recencies is to take a thrill ride through a brilliant mind, and you'll wish it not to end. I love this book."--Jerald Walker, author of Magically Black and Other Essays