I Remember

In a book which uniquely captures 1950’s America, Joe Brainard (1942-1994) constructs the story of his life through a series of brief entries, each beginning with the words “I remember”, and continues with observations about family, film stars, lust, and the astonishing New York culture into which he moved to from Tulsa at the age of 18.

Publisher: Daunt Books Publishing

ISBN: 9781917092234

Publication date: 2025

Format: Softcover

«A masterpiece. One by one, the so-called important books of our time will be forgotten, but Joe Brainard’s modest little gem will endure.»
— Paul Auster

«I Remember has something of rock and roll’s appeal, the same shy person’s revenge, dignifying the adolescent-grade flavours of yearning, hope and a willingness to be embarrassed for a higher cause… [A] still effervescent bible of days.»
— Times Literary Supplement 

«Astonishing . . . a relentlessly specific time-capsule of a book, which bizarrely, movingly, seems to slip the confines of time.»
— Daily Telegraph

«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

«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 

«A landmark work for so many memoirists.»
— Adelle Stripe