The Persistence of Memory in Now Is Not the Time to Panic: When the Buried Past Demands a Reckoning
The Thematic Claim: Memory as an Unstoppable Force in Now Is Not the Time to Panic
In Now Is Not the Time to Panic, Kevin Wilson constructs a portrait of memory as something that refuses to stay buried. The novel's central claim is that the past—especially a past forged in intense, formative experience—does not simply fade with time. It persists in objects, in phrases, in the body, and in the people we love, until it demands a reckoning. Frances Budge, who spent her teenage years as Frankie, has built a quiet, ordinary adult life precisely to keep her past contained. But when an art critic calls and recites a phrase Frankie wrote when she was sixteen, the buried past erupts into the present, and Frankie must finally confront the memory she has spent decades trying to suppress.
The novel traces this persistence across three distinct movements: the phone call that unearths the past, the summer of 1996 that created the memory, and the adult life that has been shaped—whether Frankie admits it or not—by that single summer. Each movement reveals a different facet of how memory operates: as a sudden intrusion, as a deliberate act of creation, and as an ongoing, often unconscious, force.
The Phone Call That Unearths the Past
The novel opens with a phone call that shatters the careful architecture of Frances Budge's adult life. A woman's voice asks for Frances—a name nobody uses—and then recites the phrase: The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. Frances completes it automatically: We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. The caller, Mazzy Brower, is an art critic writing for the New Yorker about the Coalfield Panic of 1996, and she is nearly certain Frances caused it.
What's striking about this opening is how quickly the memory overwhelms Frances. She describes feeling her whole body being pulled through time. The ordinary details of her life—her daughter Junie banging on homemade drums, her husband Aaron fixing a window latch, a pizza in the oven—continue happening, but Frances understands that nothing will be the same. She admits to Brower that she was responsible, but says it's complicated, implying another person was involved.
This opening establishes the novel's central tension: the past is not a closed chapter. It can be triggered by a single phrase, a single voice, and it can flood back with the force of the original experience. Frances has tried to make herself small, to ensure none of these memories get out, but the memory has found her anyway. The phrase itself becomes the key that unlocks the past—a verbal trigger that bypasses all of Frances's defenses.
The Summer That Wouldn't Stay Buried
The novel then flashes back to the summer of 1996, when Frankie was sixteen and met Zeke, a new boy in Coalfield. Their connection is immediate and intense—both are alone in similar ways, both are creative, both are desperate for something that matters. They decide to make art together, and what they make is a poster: a drawing of children in beds with giant hands reaching toward them, accompanied by the phrase Frankie wrote.
The creation of the poster is itself an act of memory-making. Frankie and Zeke prick their fingers and mix their blood into the ink. They make copies on a Xerox machine in Frankie's garage—first ten, then a hundred, then more. They hang the posters all over Coalfield, marking each location on a map with stars. They bury time capsules with posters inside, planning to dig them up decades later. Frankie thinks, in the moment, that she will trace her whole life back to this moment—and she is right.
What's important here is that the memory is not just something that happens to Frankie; it's something she actively creates and embeds in the world. She wants the poster to multiply, to cover the world. She wants it to be there forever so that when she's older, she can come back and it will still be there. The persistence of memory is not accidental—it's built into the very act of creation.
The poster spreads far beyond Coalfield. The novel catalogs its afterlife: segments on Unsolved Mysteries and Hard Copy, a TV movie, a concept album by the Flaming Lips, clothing lines, a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles, a Wikipedia page, emo bands named after the phrase, a restaurant called Skinny with Hunger, even a political uprising in Eastern Europe where protesters shouted the phrase. The memory has become something much larger than Frankie and Zeke—it has become a cultural phenomenon.
The Adult Who Keeps the Memory Alive
The novel's most powerful evidence of memory's persistence is Frankie's adult behavior. Even as she has built a life as Frances Budge—a wife, a mother, a person with a boring and normal existence—she has kept the original poster, with her blood and Zeke's blood on it. And when she starts to lose a sense of herself, when she starts to drift outside her life, she takes the original poster and makes a copy on her scanner/copier/printer, and she goes somewhere—anywhere in the entire world—and hangs it up.
This is a remarkable detail. Frankie is not just haunted by the past; she actively re-enacts it. The act of copying and hanging the poster is a ritual that connects her present to her past, that proves her life is real. She says there's a line from this moment all the way back to that summer, when she was sixteen, when the whole world opened up and she walked through it. The memory is not something she can escape—it's something she needs.
The persistence of memory also operates at an unconscious level. When Frankie puts Junie to bed, she whispers the phrase to her daughter as a lullaby—without consciously deciding to do so. Junie has known the line for years and asks whether everyone is a fugitive. The memory has passed from one generation to the next, embedded in the most intimate act of care.
The Reckoning
The novel's final movement brings Frankie to a reckoning. After Mazzy Brower's call, Frankie drives to Memphis to find Zeke—now going by Ben, living with his parents, working as a comic-book inker, managing bipolar disorder. He apologizes for hurting her years ago. Frankie explains that a reporter has learned she made the poster and will publish an article. Zeke asks her to keep his involvement secret, and she agrees. He teaches her to draw the poster's image so she can pass it off as her own work, and he draws her an original picture of a cottage surrounded by flames. They say the phrase together, exchange goodbyes, and Frankie drives home.
This meeting is a reckoning in multiple senses. Frankie confronts the person who shared the memory with her, and she must decide what to do with it. She agrees to claim she did it alone—a choice that both protects Zeke and makes the memory more fully hers. She returns home and resolves to speak with Mazzy Brower, to drive back to Coalfield, to show her the places on the map, and to tell a version of the story while keeping the true secret for herself.
The novel ends with Frankie in bed, looking at glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling, repeating the line to herself again and again, unchanged. The memory has not been resolved or erased—it has been acknowledged, and it persists.
Complexity and Contradiction
The persistence of memory in this novel is not a simple matter of nostalgia or regret. It's deeply contradictory. Frankie both wants to forget and cannot stop remembering. She has made herself small to keep the memories from getting out, but she also keeps the original poster and makes copies of it. She tells Mazzy Brower she doesn't want to talk about it, but she also admits she thinks about it a lot.
The memory is also both hers and not hers. The poster spread beyond her control—others claimed it, made their own versions, misinterpreted it. An art professor compared it to Basquiat and Haring; a sheriff said dark forces were at play. Frankie feels both ownership and alienation. She wanted people to care, to notice, but she didn't want them to put their own hands all over it. The memory has been taken from her even as it persists.
There's also a tension between the two creators. Zeke wants to be forgotten—he asks Frankie to keep his involvement secret, and she agrees. But Frankie is forced to confront the memory publicly. The persistence of memory is uneven: it weighs more heavily on some than on others.
Finally, the novel complicates the idea that memory is purely painful. Frankie describes the summer as the happiest she has ever been. The poster was the most important thing in the world to her. The memory is not just a burden—it's also a source of meaning, of identity, of proof that her life is real. The persistence of memory is both a curse and a gift.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does the novel use the phone call from Mazzy Brower to establish the theme of memory's persistence?
The phone call is the novel's inciting incident and its clearest demonstration of how the past can resurface without warning. Frances Budge has built an ordinary adult life, but a single phrase instantly collapses the distance between her present and her past. She completes the phrase automatically, admits responsibility, and feels her body being pulled through time. The call shows that memory is not something she can control or contain; it can be triggered by a stranger's voice and flood back with the force of the original experience.
2. What role does the original poster play in Frankie's adult life, and what does it reveal about her relationship to memory?
The original poster—with her blood and Zeke's blood on it—is the physical embodiment of the memory. Frankie has kept it for decades, and when she feels herself drifting from her life, she makes a copy and hangs it somewhere in the world. This ritual reveals that the memory is not just something she wants to escape; it's something she needs to confirm her own reality. The poster connects her present to her past, proving that her life is real. Memory persists not only because it's forced on her, but because she actively keeps it alive.
3. How does the novel show the memory spreading beyond Frankie and Zeke's control, and what does this suggest about the nature of memory?
The novel catalogs the poster's afterlife in exhaustive detail: TV segments, a movie, a concept album, clothing lines, a Wikipedia page, emo bands, a restaurant, even a political uprising. This spread shows that memory is not a private possession—once it enters the world, it takes on a life of its own. Frankie feels both pride and alienation. She wanted people to care, but she didn't want them to claim it. The persistence of memory is collective as well as personal; it becomes something much larger than the people who created it.
4. What does the scene with Junie reveal about how memory passes between generations?
When Frankie puts Junie to bed, she whispers the phrase to her daughter as a lullaby—without consciously deciding to do so. Junie has known the line for years and asks whether everyone is a fugitive. This scene shows that memory persists not only in conscious acts but in unconscious ones. Frankie has embedded the memory in the most intimate act of care, passing it to her daughter without meaning to. The persistence of memory is intergenerational; it continues even when the person carrying it isn't aware of what they're doing.
5. How does the novel's ending complicate the idea that memory can be resolved or escaped?
The ending does not offer resolution. Frankie resolves to speak with Mazzy Brower and tell a version of the story, but she plans to keep the true secret for herself. She repeats the line to herself again and again, unchanged. The memory has been acknowledged, but it has not been erased or transformed. The novel suggests that the persistence of memory is not something to be overcome—it's something to be lived with. Frankie's reckoning is not a cure; it's an acceptance that the past will continue to shape her present.