Recenses/Recencies - by Patrick Madden (Paperback)

About the Book

Through a simple conceit, that each essay begin with the phrase "I have just . . .," Patrick Madden examines recent experiences, reaching for unexpected associations to generate linguistically artful and narratively subversive essays.

Book Synopsis

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

"I imagine that to sit in Patrick Madden's mind is to be witness to a kaleidoscopic array of thoughts and ideas and images and influences, this wonderful lyrical and sensorial trip. Madden pays homage to the classical roots of the essay form while infusing modern meanderings. Curiosity arises not only through language but also the visual rhetoric of space, the infusion of image and musical scores, the creative play of the wonderful parentheses. Like the essayist Brian Doyle (whom Madden pays homage to), his work starts as a speck, a seed, and with each passing paragraph, that speck, that seed grows and grows and grows into something beautiful."--Ira Sukrungruang, author of This Jade World

"In each of these witty, searching, irrepressible essays, Patrick Madden makes provision out of the provisional, taking a recent moment and ending up with a smashing new insight. Sheep cheese, passport shenanigans, Uruguayan school uniforms--all provide occasions for epiphany. Madden's essays wonderfully wend their own way and show us that the way out of convention is attention."--Amy Leach, author of The Salt of the Universe

"Patrick Madden continues to reshape the bounds of the essay form. This collection plays with language on the molecular level in fantastic ways. After time spent with Madden's sentences, I look at the world with fresh eyes. His generous way of seeing other humans, with all our flaws and quirks, is refreshing. Love shines through these pages. In today's world, I don't have to tell you, that's a rare thing."--Joni Tevis, author of The World Is on Fire

"Patrick Madden must arise from his bed, commit an essay, shower and break his fast, write an essay, kiss his lovely bride, ponder an essay, hug his many children, conceive an essay, and then sail off to stimulate and educate his admirable students, while scrawling notes for an essay on his dashboard. I do not know of anyone else in America who does more to celebrate, advocate, support, preserve, stimulate, and bang the drum for the essay than Pat Madden. Really and truly, no exaggeration, no hyperbole."--the late Brian Doyle, author of Wonder Is a Lovely Place to Be

"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

"Whether he's listening to a Uruguayan bird or to the English language, Patrick Madden has an ear cocked for music, nuance, surprise, strangeness, connection, and beauty."--Anne Fadiman, author of Frog: And Other Essays

About the Author

Patrick Madden is a professor of English at Brigham Young University. He is the award-winning author of three essay collections: Quotidiana (Nebraska, 2014), Sublime Physick (Nebraska, 2022), and Disparates (Nebraska, 2020) and a coeditor of After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays. His essays have appeared in a variety of periodicals as well as in The Best Creative Nonfiction. Visit Madden's website at quotidiana.org.