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

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

I remember the slight surprise I felt at the arbitrary relation between my friend Freddy Cooper who played softball with us and who was best friends with Peter Obstler, and James Fenimore Cooper. I never quite thought of the latter as a "Cooper," the middle name counting as well, but certainly Cooper was part of his name. I remember also trying repeatedly to read The Spy which was just too boring, despite the prefection promised by the combination of James Fenimore Cooper and a spy novel.

posted by william 12:24 AM
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