Lists
Posted on: August 1, 2010
Leo likes to write Lists. I too write lists, but delight in reading them more. When an author has incorporated a paragraph of lists into his or her novel, I experience a frisson of alertness, my brain twinkles with recognition. A list creates a visual landscape with words. A list on the page slows down our reading, we can picture each object without the distraction of indefinite articles, or the author’s descriptions.
A lot of people found Georges Perec’s massive book Life A User’s Manual, hard-going; but to me the pages of lists were mesmerising. For example, Chapter 33, Basement 1, covers two and a half pages of the contents of a cellar. ‘A place for every thing, and every thing in its place, nothing has been left out: …’ Then comes the list of provisions stacked on the shelves … bliss!
Jane O’Brien writing an online article for BBC News [March 2010] about an exhibition in Washington on the art of list-making, considers the psychological aspect of those artists who were obsessive list-makers. The accompanying catalogue To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Archives of American Art is available from Amazon. Even the title is a feast on which to gorge.
Do these list-makers need control of their lives? O’Brien asks what lists tell us about the personality of the list-maker, and says that the exhibition ‘reveals the obsessive and controlling sides’ of some of the world’s greatest artists and architects with their idiosyncratic designs. In chapter one I mention that Leo does a few doodles on the paper before composing a list; I wish I’d asked Val to recreate Leo’s artwork!
I love my Collins Thesaurus in A-Z Form. A book of Lists! A book of words!
Moheard's Blog 
August 20, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Its interesting about lists…. they can be for all sorts of things other than organisation. A way of getting what is inside out! Often when I just want to clarify something I turn it into a list.