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, June 28, 2003

I remember Topper. Not the Cary Grant-Constance Bennett movie, which I only saw later, but the TV show I'd watch when home from school, starring Leo G. Carroll as Topper. I don't know who played the debonaire ghosts. He was perfect (the show was so much better than the later TV version of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir although I liked that too). The role was something of a generic one: the banker in the Beverly Hillbillies, the desk-bound Captain in McHale's Navy, Tim, Wilbur, the car owner in My Mother the Car -- the straight man who has to deal with more charismatic, smarter, more anxiety-inducing people (or Martians or horses or cars) whom he just can't quite understand. But Leo G. Carroll was a figure of stern and dignified intelligence, and his injured aplomb never lost its authority. He was often put into ridiculous situations, but never seemed ridiculous. I was surprised to find him in North by Northwest as the intelligence agency director, where his calm demeanor made for a strangely chilling thoughtfulness. I think it's a tribute to him that the later role in Topper detracted not at all from his force in North by Northwest. Thinking about it now, I see that the young ghosts were parental figures to Topper, the old child (the senex puer). How wonderful to have these beautiful, young parents (I guess they were about my parents' age at the time), ebulliently able to survive their own death and become even more effervescently magical and mischievious. It was as though Topper was everything stuffy about your parents, and the ghosts everything in touch with your own youth. But Topper retained his parental authority too: he wasn't ridiculous. Rather in the show he was the adult, but the child-ghosts were father (and mother) to the man, and understood and participated in all your own youthful perspectives and pleasures. I'd love to watch Topper again, every day.

posted by william 7:49 AM
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