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

Sunday, March 10, 2002

I remember "The Elongated Man." I think he was the B-comic for Green Lantern, though maybe not. I remember that D.C. had a series called Detective Comics (hence the D.C.?), which might have had Batman in a cameo role. I liked Detective Comics, though I barely remember anything else about them. The Elongated Man could stretch like India rubber in all directions. It's where I learned the word "elongated."

I remember other words I learned from the comics: phantom, ultra, dimension (since Mr. Mxtpltx or whatever his vowelless name was came from the Fifth Dimension. Later I loved higher-dimensional geometery, prepped by the comics.) I learned the speed of light from the comics -- since Superman and once or twice Flash would exceed it. I justified them to my mother in the basis of this educational material, but she didn't buy it. I remember Bizarro World in Superman, where everything was backwards. Bizarro Jimmy Olson walks by a sidewalk collapsing and publishes a headline: People Line Up to Put Money in Bank. I was puzzled by the question what some opposites were. What was the opposite of a square? A circle or a triangle? Why not a sphere, which seemed more opposite still than a circle. I remember that bizarro earth was a cube. I didn't get why no one noticed their odd, faceted white faces.

I remember "imaginary stories." Lois Lane would die, or Robin would be killed. In one Batman himself was completely defenseless and about to be shot (but then luckily lightening hit the gun of the criminal). But in general the imaginary stories allowed for playing out a scenario otherwise intolerable -- a possible alternate route. They were framed in cloudly lines, like thought balloons, not the straight orthoganals of the frames of non-imaginary stories. I sort of objected to them, because rules of difficulty -- how will the story get out of this impossible situation -- were suspended.

I remember always disliking the fact that the teaser first page of the comic always contained a scene not in the actual story -- a kind of abstract summing up, that promised the same scene in the story but actually represented the telescoping together of several scenes and relationships. Stills in movies, I was to find out, cheated in the same way, but more subtly.

I remember a Superboy comic that didn'tcheat, where Superboy figures out the summer camp he's attending is populated by aliens. Everyone is kind and pleasant, but in the end he suddenly and shockingly turns against them and arrests them all. Their mistake is that they all have two left hands. I was dubious, but checked each frame, and they did. I now realize that this was an allegory of communist infiltration (like the two left wings on Boris Badenough's plane).

I remember Felix the Cat (the wonderful wonderful cat. Whenever something something --icks, he reaches into his bag of tricks....watching Felix, the wonderful cat.)

I remember that in Spy vs. Spy, the winning spy in the little pair in the (I suppose if you were an art historian you would call it) remarque in the first frame would be the losing spy in the strip as a whole.

I remember hiding my comic collection in the bedding storage area in a convertible couch in my room.

I remember sending away to an ad on the back page of the comics to sell greeting cards and make a quick $100. What a nightmare that turned out to be. All the difficulties of Halloween and none of the pleasure.

I remember canvassing for John Lindsay was equally unrewarding. I was after all supporting a Republican and going against a Jew, Abe Beame. I remember looking for Lindsay headquarters, on both 96th street and 72nd, and not finding them. Jonathan Richmond, a big political junky (who knew Kennedy's inaugural address by heart) told me they were on these streets. I wanted to volunteer. My mother was very upset when she found out I'd gone so far afield.

I remember Lindsay closing the Central Park roadways. My parents and I used to bike through the park weekends and Tueday nights, when it was also closed.

I remember Happenings.

I remember Fun City.

posted by william 10:19 PM
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