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, October 18, 2003
I remember "Man alive! Four out of five...like Yoo Hoo (chocolate drink)!" Yoo Hoo and Bosco were competitors. I followed Hugh Cramer in liking Bosco better. I guess if you mixed Bosco and milk you got something like Yoo Hoo. I thought "Man alive" was a version of the ubiquitous "man" (as in "Oh, man, what are you talking about?") but it seems to predate it: I just saw the phrase in a book from 1946.


posted by william 11:10 PM
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