Joe Brainard: I Remember

Product Information

Perché, dopo la meraviglia di questa scoperta così semplice e facile (tanto che viene subito la voglia di cominciare a scrivere il proprio personale ‘I Remember’), c’è la meraviglia di come Brainard snocciola i suoi ricordi: chiaro, diretto, franco, generoso, intimo, divertente, spiritoso, intelligente, brillante, toccante, profondo, originale, disarmante… En esta obra, Brainard, parte la naranja y la desgaja a mansalva. Se siente debajo de la superficie de las páginas, cierta orquestación, cierto murmullo de aguas que corre veladamente debajo de la tierra que pisamos en sus palabras.

As humorous as Homer’s speech is, it’s also useful in the classroom because of the contrast it provides with these previous examples. The delight we derive from Homer’s vision of “explor[ing] the world” stems from the fact that it is so very pedestrian and myopic: watching TV somewhere new, visiting new malls (which, by definition, are like the old malls), trading one sandwich for another. His narrow worldview highlights the expansiveness and inclusiveness of these other speeches.Me acuerdo de algunas experiencias sexuales precoces y de las rodillas desolladas. Estoy convencido de que el sexo ahora es mucho mejor que antes, pero echo de menos las rodillas desolladas.” Recordaba ese recuerdo y lo guardaba celosamente. No se lo platicaba a nadie, hasta que un una buena peda, decidí sacarlo a la luz. Una peda de aquellas cuando papá aún podía beber en serio.

In the early 1970s, New York poet and artist Joe Brainard wrote a letter to a friend. "I am way, way up these days over a piece I am still writing called I Remember. I feel very much like God writing the Bible. I mean, I feel I am not really writing it but that it is because of me that it is being written. I also feel that it is about everybody else as much as it is about me. And that pleases me." At once intensely personal and strikingly universal, Brainard's I Remember has remained a cult classic ever since (though this magnificent yolk-yellow edition is the first UK publication). It's an assemblage of memories, a collage pieced together from snippets and stray thoughts, each of which begins with the incantation "I remember". "I remember butter and sugar sandwiches," he writes. "I remember tight white T-shirts and the gather of wrinkles from under the arms… I remember regretting things I didn't do… I remember when 'beehives' really got out of hand." For my intermediate students, I eschew the more listlike anaphora poems and provide a poem to imitate that uses anaphora more sparingly, such as “ Hospital parking lot, April” by Laura Kasischke: I remember how disappointing going to bed with one of the most beautiful boys I have ever seen was. … I remember a little boy who said it was more fun to pee together than alone, and so we did, and so it was. … Mean, awkward, fond, gentle, equable, comforting: this seems the right, modest register to use in talking about nice art. What’s remarkable, then, is how, when you’re in the right mood, Brainard’s writing can seem to give you all you need. His Collected Writings closes with a paragraph found in his papers after he died. Brainard titled it “January 13th,” and it ends this way:

More episodes

I remember raking leaves but I don’t remember burning leaves. I don’t remember what we ‘did’ with them. Me parece que hay que ser muy valiente o nada pudoroso o indiferente a la mirada ajena para escribir muchos de estos recuerdos. Su obsesión por las pollas en general y su tamaño en particular es un buen ejemplo de ello. Updates, 2020 and 2021: Here are others I’ve subsequently written (also see some more by others in the comments): I Remember the Library, I Remember York, I Remember Bobbie Louise Hawkins. I’ve also added further links, including those for books by Perec and Abirached, and altered the opening quotation to give a fuller illustration of the workings of Joe’s text. If you know of other examples, please add in a comment below. In 1970, Perec met Harry Mathews; Mathews introduced Perec to ideas then circulating in the New York art scene, including Brainard’s “serial autobiography,” which was then on the cusp of publication. The French writer likely never saw Brainard’s book, but tale of its concept—each sentence beginning with the phrase “I remember”—was enough to inspire him. Next month, the fruits of Perec ’s efforts, also titled I Remember , will be published in English for the first time, by David R. Godine.

I remember beard tennis: you counted the number of beards you spotted in the street: 15 for the first, 30 for the second, 40 for the third, and “game” for the fourth. I remember sexual fantasies of seducing young country boys. (But old enough) Pale and blond and eager. Me acuerdo de querer dormir en el patio de atrás y de que se riesen de mí diciendo que no iba a aguantar la noche entera y de, al final, dormir fuera y no aguantar la noche entera.” I remember when, in high school if you wore green and yellow on Thursday it meant that you were queer.I Remember is Brainard's best-known work. Paul Auster said the memoir was "one of the few totally original books I have ever read." [2]

Brainard, στα οποία θα επιστρέψω στο μέλλον, υπάρχει και ένα δεκασελιδο εισαγωγικό σημείωμα του Paul Auster, καλογραμμένο και κατατοπιστικό, από το οποίο θα παραθέσω τα παρακάτω λόγια με τα οποία συμφωνώ μέχρι τελείας. I remember that in Merrily We Live, there are two dogs, one called “Get out of it,” the other “You too.” I remember catching myself with an expression on my face that doesn’t relate to what’s going on anymore. Lauterbach, Ann. (2008). Joe Brainard & Nancy. In The Nancy Book (pp. 7–24). Los Angeles: Siglio Press. The repetition of “I saw” transforms the speaker into a witness, both to the difficulties facing South Carolina (crumbling schools, shuttered mills, homes for sale) and to the potential of those South Carolinians and, by extension, America. In this way, the speaker becomes not just a witness but an oracle, seeing what America is and what it could be.It is when a remark such as “I remember the murder of Sharon Tate” appears that the reader feels something to latch onto. Words and suggestions appear that a reader may understand in part but may not put into the correct context. Within the specificity of memory, there are also moments where Perec allows for the limitations of memory and the idiosyncrasies of personal reflection to take forefront of the text, recalling the ways memory can be shaped and reshaped, to admit to the absence at hand. “I remember the radio programs ( Comme il vous plaira) presented by Jean-Pierre Morphée and ?” (76). The work concludes with an invitation to the reader to create their own list of “I Remembers” inspired by Perec’s example. Although his visual art belongs to the permanent collections of various museums—MoMA, the Met, the Whitney—he’s now best known for his book I Remember, a loose-limbed volume of memories. Brainard had the idea for the book one day while sunbathing in Vermont. “I wrote a bit on a new thing I am writing called ‘I Remember,’” he told his friend, the poet James Schuyler. “It’s just a collection of things I remember.” Brainard would write each day and show his work to Schuyler at night. “He would tell me how terrific it was, which was all I needed for the next day,” he later remarked in an interview (with Tim Dlugos, included in The Collected Writings). Reading the book, you can feel that it was written within friendship’s deep shelter, where the most important questions have already been answered, and everything is of interest. He doesn’t expect his readers to be mean, and so we aren’t. Sembra un gioco da bambini, sembra banale, ma Joe Brainard è stato il primo (Georges Perec gli ha poi dedicato ‘Je me souviens’). I can only imagine the extent to which Brainard’s I Remember has influenced writers since he penned his flowing juxtapositions forty-four years ago. I had long thought Édouard Levé’s Autoportrait the most obvious example—a seemingly endless sequence of declarative sentences that coolly relate both trivialities and intimacies. But I’ve now discovered that Georges Perec got there first. Hoy papá dijo: Brainard es un Rulfo. O algo así. Y sí, es cierto. Brainard vuelve a la tierra llena de fantasmas que es su memoria, y la reconstruye a su antojo, a sus ganas, aceptando unas cosas, negando otras y pasando por alto muchas más.