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

Saturday, November 10, 2007

I remember splatting Norman Mailer with a jelly donut, the result of a high-spirited accident, when I was visiting colleges and he was giving a talk. This was closing one loop in my life, since I remember my father's big fat copy of The Naked and the Dead sitting on the shelf at eye-level across from me when I sat on his recliner in his study to read.

posted by william 11:16 PM
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