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 23, 2003

I remember the beat-up paperback copy of Catcher in the Rye that my parents somehow had. I knew nothing at all about it then -- this must have been when I was in fifth grade or so -- but I was curious about it because it had a somewhat lurid cover (Holden looking panicked, intriguing people behind him looking at him with lascivious curiosity). The back-cover called it an "New York underground classic," or maybe "the underground classic of New York life," or even "the classic story of underground New York life." That made me think it was a spy or science fiction adventure story that took place in the subway system of New York. So I planned to read it, but I didn't, and I don't think I actually found out what it was until ninth grade, when it was assigned.

posted by william 7:01 AM
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