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, 2012

I remembered (when someone expressed surprise that I knew the story of Goldilocks!) my Goldilocks board book, in shades of yellow and brown, a sentence to a page. I remember the illustrations of the beds and the porridge bowls vividly, but can't recall what the characters looked like.

I had another board book on Cinderella that I got later as a birthday present after I had outgrown them. Cinderella's picture was that of a much younger girl than I had imagined or seen in other books. That (slightly yucky) incongruity went together in my mind with being given a book that was too childish for me.

posted by sravana 3:46 PM
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