With a new foreword by Olivia Laing alongside Paul Auster’s original introduction.
An enduring gem, Joe Brainard’s I Remember is a literary and artistic cult classic. As autobiography, Brainard’s method was brilliantly simple: to set down specific memories as they rose to the surface of his consciousness, each prefaced by the refrain ‘I remember’: ‘I remember that little jerk you give just before you fall asleep. Like falling.’
Recollections – jokes, confessions, daydreams and memories – were carefully, lovingly structured together. They were of family and friends; of movie stars; of early heterosexual fumblings and later gay life. The clean, economical prose dodged both self-pity and judgement of others yet was written with an ear for musical cadence, and an extraordinary painter’s eye. The result is witty, incantatory, profound and wholly captivating.
‘In simple, forthright, declarative sentences, he charts the map of the human soul . . . I Remember is both uproariously funny and deeply moving.’ Paul Auster
‘I would make a case for I Remember as one of the twenty or so most important American autobiographies, important for its air of unimportance and for its mingling of cultural bric-a-brac with sexual frankness and self-revelation.’ New Yorker
‘Completely original.’ Edmund White
‘Buy it, for everyone you know . . . I can’t think of a more original or lovely book.’ Olivia Laing
‘Joe Brainard discovered a memory machine.’ Siri Hustvedt
‘It’s a great work that will last and last – in other words, it is literature.’ James Shuyler