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

Sunday, January 07, 2007

I remember a scene from the original "Wild, Wild West," one of the Sunday night tv shows that reconciled me to the end of the weekend (it was an hour long, which was something else to look forward to), in which Jeremiah (?) West, the handsome star of the buddy pair of clever and daring thieves and gamblers, has to pretend for that show's caper to be a cultured Easterner to some Frenchman. They're in the dining car of the train, and Chateaubriand is on the menu. West refuses it: "I could never see why one would name a cut of beef after a great writer." His French companion appreciates the mordant superiority and trusts him completely. I liked the literacy of the show, having heard of Chateaubriand, both the dish and the writer, myself (although I was acquainted with neither).

posted by william 8:55 AM
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