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


Friday, February 06, 2004
I remember Bebe Rebozo. I was amazed that Nixon's friendship with him wasn't by itself enough to scotch Nixon's career. I remember a photo of the two of them in a sailboat, both looking disreputable. They were like movie villains! Didn't the voters of this country go to the movies? At least Nixon and Rebozo made it plausible that naifs in movies might not see immediately who the obvious villains were. Scant compensation, that.


posted by william 7:09 AM
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