“We Fly Forgotten as a Dream”

Abstract Via an analysis of Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead , Fatima Farheen Mirza’s A Place for Us , and Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men , I argue that the spiritual nature of memory is a defining feature of contemporary postsecular American literature. I also point out a few key differences between European and American memory, largely by reference to work by Willa Cather and Italo Calvino, to help strengthen my case that American memory specifically is a spiritual and postsecular phenomenon.