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, September 03, 2004
I remember that my aged cousin, Jack Zadikov's wife, I think, was a "reporter-researcher" for Time Magazine. I used her office and some access she had once, for a school report I did, but can't remember anymore about it. "Reporter-researcher" turned out, I think, to be a term like "sales-associate" at Walmart: a way to gussy up menial labor. I think she was a fact-checker. I mentioned her to Richard Clurman, my friend Michael's father, who was then (a?) vice-president of Time-Life (he of the endless telegram), but he didn't seem impressed.


posted by william 4:53 PM
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