exploring lists in all their possibilities
by Martha Rust
Happy November 1st! it’s All Saints’ Day in the Catholic calendar, and thanks to the wondrous, theoretically endless list that gave rise to it, the day might count as a red-letter day in the calendar of lovers of lists as well.[1] Continue reading “All Saints’ Day: Listing in the Service of Infinities”
Carly Cappielli’s award-winning novella Listurbia, a story told in lists, opens with a list of “common cognitive biases” along with their definitions: Pareidolia, The von Restorff effect, The Semmelwies reflex, The Peltzman effect, Parkinson’s law of triviality, Travis Syndrome, and The Zeigarnik effect.[1] Cappielli takes some license with the definition of this final effect, making list writing one of its symptoms:
Continue reading “List Disturbance: An Interview with Carly Cappielli, Author of Listurbia”
In his book Narrative Paths: African Travel in Modern Fiction and Nonfiction (Ohio State University Press, 2015), Professor Kai Mikkonen devotes a whole chapter to a list.[1] Continue reading “An Interview with Kai Mikkonen, Author of Narrative Paths: African Travel in Modern Fiction and Nonfiction”
by Jeremy Gavron
Seven. I know, too, that the list is involved in what I know.
Eight. So we have looked at a poetry list, a memoir list and now I want to look briefly at a fiction list: “An Incomplete Timeline of What We Tried”, by Debbie Urbanski. Here are some lines from the beginning of the story, followed by some lines from the end.
Continue reading “James Joyce’s Refrigerator, or, Thirteen Ways of Looking at Lists (numbers 7-13)”
Lulah Ellender, author of Elisabeth’s Lists: A Life Between the Lines (Granta, 2018), met her grandmother through the lists she left behind. The book reconstructs from lists the life of Lulah’s grandmother Elisabeth, who died when Lulah’s mother was nine years old. Elisabeth started writing her curious book of lists after marrying a diplomat in the 1930s. These lists, which provide glimpses into Elisabeth’s life and mind, offer Lulah a starting point for exploring the life of a grandmother she never met. The following is a conversation between Lulah Ellender and the editors of Listology.
Continue reading “An interview with Lulah Ellender, author of Elisabeth’s Lists: A Life Between the Lines”
by Martha Rust
Today is Labor Day in the United States, a holiday that celebrates laborers and the labor movement on the first Monday in September. As Wikipedia explains in a quotable list, Labor Day honors “the contributions that workers have made to the development, growth, endurance, strength, security, prosperity, productivity, laws, sustainability, persistence, structure, and well-being of the country.”[1] In addition to honoring work generally, Labor Day heralds the beginning of a new school year and the return of students and teachers to the labor of teaching and learning. While the American calendar thus pays tribute to labor annually, the western medieval calendar honored it monthly, observing a wider array of labors than its modern American counterpart. Continue reading “Two Lists of Labors in Honor of Labor Day”
by Kerstin Fest
In the theatre we encounter stories, first and foremost those written by playwrights and acted out on stage. But there are also stories produced behind and beyond the stage. Gaining awareness of these secondary stories and piecing them together helps one study and understand the theatre. Continue reading “The Story of Theatrical Lists”
by Martha Rust
To have read Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind and the Willows (1908) is to know and love the riverside community of Toad, Ratty the Water Rat, Mole, and Badger along with all of their wisdom, foibles, and delicate sensibilities. Continue reading “From Ecstasy to Enchantment: Two Lists in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows”
Listology 