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

Saturday, November 09, 2002

I remember a photo of Charles Manson when he was on trial, that appeared in Time. His lawyer was making an insanity plea. Manson appeared at trial with half of his head shaved. The other half was covered with a luxurious hair, beard, and even eyebrow. If you put your hand over half his face he looked like a new recruit. If you put your hand over the other half, he looked like a wild and aging hippy. (I remember how thrilling that word was -- "hippy." As thrilling as later "deconstruction" would be for a little while.) Manson's lawyer said that Manson did not want to make an insanity plea, and was trying to convince everyone he was sane by engaging in this transparent attempt to look insane. Wanting to look insane is what a sane person would do in his situation. But it was insane, said the lawyer, to want to look sane, and he was obviously doing that since he was so intent on appearing to want to look insane. I didn't think about it at the time, but the lawyer was making a Catch-22 argument. I was fascinated by the photo, and had no views on whether he was insane or not.

posted by william 6:53 AM
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