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

Thursday, May 15, 2003

I remember Dave DeBuschere, whose death was announced today. I remember that he didn't look like what I thought he did from just hearing Marv Albert call the games on my little transistor radio when I was walking the dog. He was younger and slimmer and more graceful than his vaguely French sounding (though I guess maybe in fact it's more Dutch) vaguely arostocratic name made him sound. Now all is changed.

I remember someone else whose death was reported today: Robert Stack who was the star of The Untouchables (with the Walter Winchell narrator). I had sort of thought that the Untouchables were criminals, maybe because we'd learned about the Hindu caste system in Social Studies. I don't think there was much in any particular episode making it clear that the good guys were the Untouchables, and not Frank Nitti and his crew. And I don't think it was absoultely clear to me at the time that Robert Stack was a good guy. Maybe I had more insight than I knew. It was a show I loved, without particularly needing to watch it or feeling deprived if I didn't (as opposed to Star Trek, Batman or Time Tunnel. It was more like gravy. If I was looking for something to watch, and The Untouchables was on....bingo!

posted by william 12:49 PM
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