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

Monday, September 22, 2003

I remember The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris (I think). It was a work of popular anthropology. It contained the first vivid verbal description of sex that I'd ever read, and I found it very stimulating. Unfortunately there wasn't much more in it than the one extended description of heterosexual courtship, foreplay, and copulation (plus a couple of other brief moments). But it was a lot better than Boys and Sex (which was better than Girls and Sex) which I read looking for the same kind of writing (see entry for September 14, 2003).

posted by william 3:06 PM
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