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 17, 2002

I remember "Is it true blondes have more fun?" And the song, "Be a Lady Clairol Blonde and be a shinging blonde." Can this be right? Anyhow, when I later came to read Empson's "It is the pain, the pain endures," and Bishop's "Love's the boy stood on the burning deck," I had somehow been prepared for the mildly Irish syntax of those poems (It is the pain [that] endures; Love's the boy [who] stood on tbe burning deck) by the hidden mildly salacious pun: both Is it true that blondes have more fun? and Is it true blondes who have more fun? I don't know how I knew this from the start, even without knowing it.

posted by william 2:57 PM
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