Joe Brainard | I Remember

9781917092234

03/07/25

PB

An enduring gem, Joe Brainard’s I Remember is a literary and artistic cult classic.

With a new introduction by Olivia Laing, alongside Paul Auster’s original.

An enduring gem, Joe Brainard’s I Remember is a literary and artistic cult classic.

Brainard’s method was brilliantly simple: to set down specific memories as they rose to the surface of his consciousness, each beginning with 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 woven together.

They were of family and friends; of movie stars; of early heterosexual fumblings and later gay life. Brainard’s pared-back prose dodged both self-pity and judgement of others, and was written with an ear for musical cadence and an extraordinary painter’s eye.

The result is witty, incantatory, profound and wholly captivating.

‘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

‘Elegiac and sly, sad and sexy, simple yet deeply affecting, I Remember is a work of true singularity and a book impossible to forget’ – Stuart Evers