In a book which uniquely captures 1950's America, Brainard 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.

I Remember

Brainard, Joe

Biographies & Memoirs

Penguin??Books

Joe Brainard's I Remember is a cult classic, envied and admired by writers from Frank O'Hara to John Ashbery and Edmund White. 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'. Fifty-two years after its original US publication in 1970, this is the first UK edition. 'In simple, forthright, declarative sentences, he charts the map of the human soul and permanently alters the way we look at the world. I Remember is both uproariously funny and deeply moving. It is also one of the few totally original books I have ever read.' 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

I remember

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Full Court Press

Joe Brainard's I Remember is a cult classic, envied and admired by writers from Frank O'Hara to John Ashbery and Edmund White. 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'. Fifty-two years after its original US publication in 1970, this is the first UK edition. 'In simple, forthright, declarative sentences, he charts the map of the human soul and permanently alters the way we look at the world. I Remember is both uproariously funny and deeply moving. It is also one of the few totally original books I have ever read.' 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

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

Small Pr Distribution

New Condition. Bamberger Books, Flint, MI, 1992. First trade edition. Paperback. 4to. Unpaginated. A retrospective of comics created over a 25-year span by artist Joe Brainard and poet Kenward Elmslie.

Pay Dirt

Elmslie, Kenward

Comics & Graphic Novels

Bamberger Books

Known during his life primarily as an artist associated with the New York School of poets, Joe Brainard (1942–1994) was also a wonderful writer whose one-of-a-kind autobiographical work I Remember (“a completely original book”—Edmund White) has had a wide and growing influence. It is joined in this major new retrospective with many other works that for the first time allow the full range of Brainard’s writing to be savored in all its deadpan wit, nonstop goofy inventiveness, self-revealing frankness, and generosity of spirit. Collected Writings gathers journals, jottings, letters, stories, one-liners, comic books, mini-essays, and playlets, much of which exist in print only in expensive rarities, if at all, to create “one of the most dazzlingly minute autobiographies ever written” (Harper’s Magazine). “Brainard disarms us with the seemingly tossed-off, spontaneous nature of his writing and his stubborn refusal to accede to the pieties of self-importance,” writes Paul Auster in his introduction to this collection. Assembled by the author’s longtime friend and biographer Ron Padgett and including fourteen never-before published works, here is a fresh and affordable way to rediscover a unique American artist.

The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard: A Library of America Special Publication

Library of America

This anthology presents material selected from the collection of Angel Hair magazine and books edited by Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh between 1966 and 1978. Included are substantial sections of writing--in some cases entire books--from an impressive range of poets including Clark Coolidge, Alice Notley, Hannah Weiner, Robert Creeley, Bernadette Mayer, Kenward Elmslie, Tom Clark, Joanne Kyger, Bill Berkson, Ted Greenwald, Lorenzo Thomas, John Wieners, Joe Brainard, Ron Padgett, as well as Waldman and Warsh, among many others. From the nascent St. Mark's Poetry Project on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to Bolinas and Boulder, Angel Hair published an idiosyncratic cross-section of innovative writing in distinctive format, becoming one of the longest-lived and most influential publishers on the small press scene. The anthology of literary writings is supplemented with brief memoirs by more than twenty writers, and the book also includes an annotated checklist by Aaron Fischer and Steven Clay that comprises a citation and photograph of each of the approximately eighty books, magazines, broadsides and catalogues issued by the Press.

Angel Hair Sleeps with a Boy in My Head: The Angel Hair Anthology

Coolidge, Clark

CLARK, Tom

Notley, Alice

Mayer, Bernadette

Warsh, Lewis

Weiner, Hannah

Kyger, Joanne

WIENERS, John

Thomas, Lorenzo

CREELEY, Robert

Greenwald, Tom

United States

Granary Books

Edited by Anne Waldman, Lewis Warsh, Contributors include Bill Berkson, Joe Brainard, Tom Clark, Clark Coolidge, Robert Creeley, Kenward Elmslie, Tom Greenwald, Joanne Kyger, Bernadette Mayer, Alice Notley, Ron Padgett, Amber Phillips, Lorenzo Thomas, Ann

Hejinian, Lyn

Clark, Emilie

Arts & Literature

Notting Hill Editions

Alex Katz celebrates an old friendship, illustrating Brainard’s 1970s journals with charcoal flower drawings 
In this tender posthumous collaboration initiated by Alex Katz (born 1927), the artist embellishes journal entries by his old friend Joe Brainard (1941–94) with a new series of exquisite charcoal drawings of flowers (a popular motif in Brainard’s own art). Katz and Brainard often collaborated with poets―particularly those of the New York School, such as Ted Berrigan, Anne Waldman and Ron Padgett―on artists' books, poetry publications, book covers, writings and paintings. Brainard’s journal entries in this volume, written between 1971 and 1972, express this milieu, with accounts of conversations and expeditions with Waldman and Padgett as well as frequent mention of his appreciation for Katz’s work: “How Alex has remained so pure all these years is beyond me,” he notes in one entry, enumerating his favorite Katz works. Katz’s charcoal drawings are simple and clear in execution, matching the serene clarity that famously characterizes Brainard’s prose.

Alex Katz & Joe Brainard: Flowers Journals

Karma Books, New York

I remember (Je me souviens)

Chaix, Marie

Genre Fiction

Actes-sud

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