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, November 08, 2011

I remember that I was in the New Yorker bookstore the morning before the first Frazier-Ali fight. I was so glad that Ali was able to fight again, after his principled refusal to go to Vietnam and the grief he took for it. I loved Ali. And I was sure that Frazier, a humorless tank, would beat him. In the bookstore that morning, where people were getting their copy of the Daily News, with a banner headline about the fight that night, I heard two crusty old people talking: one said, "Who do you think will win?" and the other, holding a paper cup of coffee, said, "I want Frazier but I'm afraid Ali will beat him." I couldn't believe that anyone real, anyone I was in the personal presence of, could be rooting for Frazier. I recognized the white right silent majority in this guy, and lost some Confucian respect for my elders. But I was also happy that my own pessimism about Ali's winning wasn't shared: this guy was pessimistic about Frazier. Still, I wasn't surprised when Frazier won, but it did seem unfair to me that Ali missed all that time as world champion.

Later, when he beat Frazier twice it didn't quite make up for the ignominious loss, though I was happy. And later still, I remember a photo of Frazier with a lot of bling leading a funk band he'd put together after retirement. I liked that about him, but still loved Ali more.

posted by William 9:28 AM
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