From Word To Word

I have a kind of fascination with what I might call the poetics of the list.  While most lists have little poetry about them, I sometimes do come across one that manages to achieve something that is actually beautiful or ironic or profound.  I first started noticing this in some of the lists in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and I have been finding them ever since, most recently in my friend Dave Humphrey’s post on spring.

This morning I discovered another such list in Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces, a book that was recommended to me by TC in a comment that she left many months ago and that I am now making the time to read.  The list appears in an early section of the book  where Perec is describing how just about every aspect of our culture, even what is most mundane, passes through writing.  He begins to list the ways that these things become inscribed, among which he includes the form of the list itself. In his own words,

“A list of urgently needed supplies (coffee, sugar, cat litter, Baudrillard book, 75-watt bulb, batteries, underwear, etcetera).”

There is something beautiful to me about Baudrillard being listed among Perec’s necessities, but at the same level as cat litter and underwear. This says much about Perec, and it may even say something about Baudrillard. It certainly says something about me, that I am so entertained by it.