list

Anyone already aware of this is probably familiar with Keats’s manifest of delicacies from “The Eve of St. Agnes”; Edgar Allan Poe’s catalog of books, suggestive of a diseased mind, in Roderick Usher’s library; Rupert Brooke’s itemization of things he loves in “The Great Lover”; Nabokov’s account of the scenic spots visited by Humbert Humbert and his fetching companion during their interstate wanderings; Cole Porter’s anthem of highs and lows in “You’re the Top” (Mahatma Gandhi, Napol...

Indeed, before Copernicus and Kepler stretched the sidereal canvas, lists were the logical means of representing the analogical, immutable and hierarchical universe.

In contrast to Spufford, Belknap and Eco, who are too welcoming of any and all sequential material, I believe a list should aspire to “listhood.”

Readers, for example, who don’t care enough to tell the forest from the trees may find themselves stymied by Edmund Spenser’s arboreal assemblage in “The Faerie Queene.”

Chaucer adduced the power of love in “The Franklin’s Tale” by considering all the women who killed themselves rather than submit to lechery.

Readers, for example, who don’t care enough to tell the forest from the trees may find themselves stymied by Edmund Spenser’s arboreal assemblage in “The Faerie Queene.”

You've got to hand it to writers who have the hubris to stick a list in your face.

The fact is, if you broaden the word’s meaning, just about everything is a list: the binary numbers that program a computer; the DNA that programs our temperament; even the words I’m writing here.

What we get instead is Rimbaud’s oddly stocked mind, in which disparate elements jostle one another collage-like on the page.

And so we now also have Umberto Eco’s beautifully illustrated survey, “The Infinity of Lists” (2009), which views lists as philosophically charged artifacts, and Liza Kirwin’s “Lists: To-Dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations” (2010), which reproduces bits of art-world ephemera.

Give me instead the loud, unabashed shouter-outers of lists: Swift’s reckoning of scoundrels absent from the land of the Houyhnhnms, or Henry Reed’s decisive dismantling of a rifle in “Naming of Parts.”

Unlike most compilers of literary lists, I’m something of a purist when it comes to their composition.

What we get instead is Rimbaud’s oddly stocked mind, in which disparate elements jostle one another collage-like on the page.

Nature, after all, was once a series of graded entities from the lowest (grubs) to the highest (God), and a list — whether of elements or angels — automatically conveyed the Aristotelian notion of a place for everything and everything in its place.

And so we now also have Umberto Eco’s beautifully illustrated survey, “The Infinity of Lists” (2009), which views lists as philosophically charged artifacts, and Liza Kirwin’s “Lists: To-Dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations” (2010), which reproduces bits of art-world ephemera.

The first modern list could very well be Arthur Rimbaud’s recitation of favorite things in “A Season in Hell” (1873): “absurd paintings, door panels, stage sets, backdrops for acrobats, sign boards, . . . outdated literature, Church Latin, misspelled erotic books, novels of grandmothers.

There you are happily reading along in a poem or a novel and suddenly a Catalogue, an Inventory, a Phalanx of Facts appears on the page.

Luckily, others have done the job for me, and if you take the time to peruse their books you’ll see that many writers, despite my misgivings, can make a list practically shimmy off the page.

“List,” borrowed from the French word liste, first turns up, in the modern sense, in “Hamlet,” when Horatio reports that Fortinbras has “sharked up a list of landless resolutes” — i.e., indiscriminately put together a makeshift army.

Indeed, before Copernicus and Kepler stretched the sidereal canvas, lists were the logical means of representing the analogical, immutable and hierarchical universe.

I’m not suggesting that every list needs an interior logic (the glue may simply be the author’s mind), but a true list, whether pragmatic, ornamental or downright silly, ought to at least look like a list.

Anyone already aware of this is probably familiar with Keats’s manifest of delicacies from “The Eve of St. Agnes”; Edgar Allan Poe’s catalog of books, suggestive of a diseased mind, in Roderick Usher’s library; Rupert Brooke’s itemization of things he loves in “The Great Lover”; Nabokov’s account of the scenic spots visited by Humbert Humbert and his fetching companion during their interstate wanderings; Cole Porter’s anthem of highs and lows in “You’re the Top” (Mahatma Gandhi, Napoleon Bra...

And Benjamin Franklin, in a 1745 letter, adduced eight reasons for conducting a liaison with older women: “When women cease to be handsome, they study to be good,” “The sin is less,” “They are so grateful!!” (his exclamation points, by the way).

Nature, after all, was once a series of graded entities from the lowest (grubs) to the highest (God), and a list — whether of elements or angels — automatically conveyed the Aristotelian notion of a place for everything and everything in its place.

Consider one of the most famous aggregates in literature.

Readers, for example, who don’t care enough to tell the forest from the trees may find themselves stymied by Edmund Spenser’s arboreal assemblage in “The Faerie Queene.”

Lady novelists, incidentally, may wish to hear no more of the Executioner’s song.

So we catalog as we go, itemizing things seen and unseen, as we move inexorably forward, listing toward oblivion.

Luckily, others have done the job for me, and if you take the time to peruse their books you’ll see that many writers, despite my misgivings, can make a list practically shimmy off the page.

” No underlying order here or columnar progression.

Give me instead the loud, unabashed shouter-outers of lists: Swift’s reckoning of scoundrels absent from the land of the Houyhnhnms, or Henry Reed’s decisive dismantling of a rifle in “Naming of Parts.”

And let’s be honest, would it matter if there were two or three fewer names on the list of guests who attended Gatsby’s lavish parties?

Apparently, these volumes were not enough to satisfy the public yearning for a longer list of books about lists.

The fact is, if you broaden the word’s meaning, just about everything is a list: the binary numbers that program a computer; the DNA that programs our temperament; even the words I’m writing here.

Nor do lists have to be of elephantine length to confound us.

Nature, after all, was once a series of graded entities from the lowest (grubs) to the highest (God), and a list — whether of elements or angels — automatically conveyed the Aristotelian notion of a place for everything and everything in its place.

After decrying his inability to name all the Greek chieftains who voyaged to Troy (“not if I had 10 tongues and 10 mouths”), Homer still manages to cite in the “Iliad,” according to my count, 265 lines’ worth.

Indeed, before Copernicus and Kepler stretched the sidereal canvas, lists were the logical means of representing the analogical, immutable and hierarchical universe.

The first modern list could very well be Arthur Rimbaud’s recitation of favorite things in “A Season in Hell” (1873): “absurd paintings, door panels, stage sets, backdrops for acrobats, sign boards, . . . outdated literature, Church Latin, misspelled erotic books, novels of grandmothers.

Isn’t every list in reality a ceremonial flourish against amnesia and chaos?

No descriptive rendering of a great warrior’s shield for me, or “the types and symbols of eternity” metered out in Wordsworth’s “Prelude.”

And Benjamin Franklin, in a 1745 letter, adduced eight reasons for conducting a liaison with older women: “When women cease to be handsome, they study to be good,” “The sin is less,” “They are so grateful!!” (his exclamation points, by the way).