I remember / je me souviens

I remember / je me souviens

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For those limbic bursts of nostalgia, invented by Proust, miniaturized by Nicholson Baker, and freeze-dried by Joe Brainard in his I remember and by Georges Perec in his Je me souviens.

But there are no fractions, the world is an integer
Like us, and like us it can neither stand wholly apart nor disappear.
When one is young it seems like a very strange and safe place,
But now that I have changed it feels merely odd, cold
And full of interest.
--John Ashbery, "A Wave"

Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
--Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

Tuesday, February 12, 2002

I remember old Best-of Superman books, in which the older comics showed Superman with a lantern jaw. I hated that Superman and much preferred the contemporary round-jawed forelocked version. They both had blue hair though, which I never quite got.

I remember feeling self-conscious and an outsider when my friends (especially Hugh Kramer and Dickie Fliescher) jeered at me for liking DC comics. They had graduated to Marvel (which I didn't know about and which didn't have the seal of approval): Spiderman, X-men, Fantastic Four. But I still liked Superman and Batman, and rooted for DC. It was like rooting for New York over Pittsburgh -- my friend Tommy Hoge was a Pirates fan and New York was so big and familiar and clunky. But I still rooted for New York.

I remember that this was like liking the Empire State Building. But the Empire State Building also reminded me a little of the old, rock jawed Superman. And I associated D.C. comics with the Empire State Building, I think because my grandfather worked there and my friend Marc Bilgray's father was an entertainment lawyer and through connections Marc got a free subscription to Superman, and I claimed that my grandfather worked for D.C. and got me a free subscription as well, but I actually paid for it. Marc didn't believe me, but one day he was over at my house and saw the comic come in the mail, and then he did.

I remember the thrill when the comic came, a week before it hit the newsstands. It was folded lengthways in a thin brown sleeve, and it made the mail happy that day.

I remember being amazed that my father would throw out junk mail without looking at it.

I remember The New Yorker also came in a brown sleeve, but not folded, and how hard it was to put The New Yorker back into its sleeve, so that my father could read it in the pristine and unread state that he demanded. Once I made a joke about the four horseman on the apocalypse -- Death, Plague, Famine and Butterfingers -- and later that day got into trouble when my father opened the New Yorker and saw the cartoon that I had gotten it from (a football cartoon).

I remember Jimmy Qualls breaking up Tommy Seaver's perfect game with one out in the ninth. The ball fell between Tommy Agee and Cleon Jones, and I couldn't believe they didn't dive for it. The next day the newspaper said that Agee just shook his head at Jones -- they couldn't get it. The Mets won 4-0.

I remember that Tommy Seaver pitched three perfect innings against the cubs a week later, but came nowhere near a perfect game, dashing my hopes. I think the Mets won that game 1-0.

I remember that TV-Guide said that Flipper was on, but when I turned on the TV it was a Yankees game. I couldn't believe it. How could TV-Guide be wrong?

I remember feeling the same way when the Shuttle Exploded. Or when the New York Times the next day had its single headline: THE SHUTTLE EXPLODES. They couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe that they would be so wrong up until that point that they would have to print THIS, and not the news they were scheduled to print.

I remember Windows on the World.

I remember hoping that Bugs Bunny would burst through the Warner Brothers logo. Loonie Tunes usually came on without the logo, but sometimes the logo would cut to the Loonie Tunes title, and I was always disappointed. But very occasionally, Bugs Bunny would appear in a Loonie Tunes cartoon.

I remember Officer Joe and Sandy Becker and Hambone. Marc Bilgray once got to be in the audience of the Sonny Fox show (his fathers' contacts, again).

I remember that I thought "All the news that's fit to print" meant they printed all the news that they could fit in. And then one day I realized it couldn't mean that.

I remember when the New York Times had eight columns.

I remember "Special to the New York Times." And that I thought this meant it was a story particularly special to them. I would always read those first. I was glad that they thought sports victories for the New York teams were special.

posted by william 11:59 AM
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