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

Thursday, December 17, 2015

I remember that Perry White, editor of The Daily Planet on Superman, would express consternation by crying, "Great Caesar's ghost!" I loved that somehow: as though Caesar and Perry White were similar bosses, similar authorities, making his invocation authoritative as well.

posted by William 9:07 PM
. . . 0 comments

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

I remember Phil Pepe (who just died). He'd be on the back page of The Daily News, or right after the jump, two or three days a week. I read him religiously during the season of the Amazins. And he was all over the World Series victory issue, which I had posted all over the walls of my room. I guess he was for me what it meant to be a fan. He wrote for the fans in both ways: we read him, and he also said what we thought, what we hoped, what we wanted.

posted by William 4:27 PM
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Saturday, December 12, 2015

I remember my father taking me to a Knicks-Bucks playoff game. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar took two foul shots near the nail-biting end of the game. He was a terrible foul-shooter, and even though he'd scored a lot of points he missed them both (I am pretty sure), and the Knicks won!

posted by William 5:26 PM
. . . 0 comments

I remember when there were readers of this blog. Now it's private in public. Like one's past life.

posted by William 5:24 PM
. . . 0 comments

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