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

I remember my father reading me a version of "The Song of Roland." I was surprised, the first time, that Roland died, that he could successfully blow his horn and die, that he could succeed and die, so that success wasn't escape from death. (I wonder what he was reading me -- it was highly literary, at least for my age). I was surprised, as well, that the heroism or audience interest was so divided between Roland and Charlemagne, since I was used to one hero or one team of heroes, as in the Superman comics my father introduced me to one morning in Stormville, when I was seven or younger.

That morning he wanted to show me something, and I still remember the surprise that what I thought was going to be some kind of educational chore -- reading and learning -- turned out to be Superman. He'd gone out to get the Sunday Times, and (as is his habit) had gotten back into his pajamas and into bed, and so he had the papers spread around him, than which nothing could be more boring. But he also had Superman. (He must have bought it at Connie's, with the paper). I still remember the sunny morning, and the drab bedroom in the cottage with its large but plain wood bed and sheets and coverings, and then the spectacularly colored comic books.

"The Song of Roland" must have been later, and wasn't like Superman at all. But it was still stirring -- in some ways more stirring. It was the kind of story or myth that my mother usually read me or told me, and it was (and remains) interesting that my father was the one who presented it, a part of his literary constitution that wasn't a part of hers, like his speaking German when she spoke Italian, but which seemed so much more like that Italian. In a way, it differentiated my parents unexpectedly, like Roland and Charlemagne.

posted by william 7:19 AM
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