Immediacy and Forgetting

First, an Anecdote

In Récits d’Ellis Island, by Georges Perec and Robert Bober, the first chapter is entitled “L’île des larmes” (The Island of Tears)— the nickname given to Ellis Island at the time of mass immigration. In documentary style, this chapter describes the history of this small island in New York Harbor—a veritable factory producing properly stamped American citizens—until an anecdote replaces the statistical generalities and the linear recounting of events:

An old Russian Jew was advised to choose himself a nice American name that the civil authorities would have no trouble transcribing. He sought advice from a baggage handler, who proposed the name Rockefeller. The old Jew repeated several times Rockefeller, Rockefeller, to be sure not to forget. But several hours later, when the official asked his name, he had already forgotten, and replied in Yiddish, “Schon vergessen” (I have already forgotten) and it was thus that he was inscribed under the very American name of John Ferguson.

(17-18)