Our lives are full of lists—from the grocery list to the Ten Commandments to that list of pros and cons you made back when you were twenty-three and trying to decide whether to break up with your boyfriend or marry him. Consider Rob Fleming’s Top-Five lists in Nick Hornby’s clever High Fidelity (a book that definitely makes one of my top fives) and you’ll have an idea of how pervasive our list culture is.

And then there was the meme that was making the rounds a few years ago (twenty-five random things about me, me, me), which is actually a good place to start a discussion of lists as a narrative device.

It isn’t a new concept, really. Flavorwire (“covers cultural events, art, books, music, and world news”) recently published this collection of literary lists, which starts simply with Joan Didion’s packing list from The White Album but leads up to an entire memoir in lists of memories (Joe Brainard’s I Remember, published in 1970: “I remember the only time I ever saw my mother cry. I was eating apricot pie.”).

The Irishman will tell you I can write a heckuva list. But we’re talking about lists that tell a story here. Narrative lists. Essayist Phillip Lopate included the narrative list as a creative nonfiction form in his brilliant book To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction, and as noted, it’s nothing new—see The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, which dates from the year 1002, for just one example.

My friend Beth, who is working on an MFA, brought all this to my attention recently when she started sending me her lists. The idea felt fresh. Exciting. Like something completely new. (Although it should not have; I’d seen such things before without thinking of them as anything special and separate or bookish.) Yet lists are all the rage in the literary magazines right now (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency has a whole category for lists and you could spend all day there). And just look at what can be conveyed in a great narrative list:

• In “That’s what she said …” a high school teacher gives an assignment: “1. Write an essay consisting of five paragraphs. 2. Staple this handout to the back of your paper before submitting it. 3. Your essay is due at the end of class.” Hilarity ensues.

• I love the “About” page at a blog I follow called Fluid Pudding. This, my friends, is a list.

• In “Fifty Ways of Looking at Tornadoes,” a writer says, “For nine months now, I have been trying to write my way out of disaster. I thought it would be easier. Yet no matter how many times I report on that April afternoon in Tuscaloosa—when my wife, dog and I hid in the bathtub—still, the storm will not leave us.” Emotional. Informative.

• And imagine my surprise (and delight) when I begin reading Jon McGregor’s Man Booker longlisted novel So Many Ways to Begin … and discovered it is written as a narrative list.

Beth’s had more than one narrative list published (“5 P Words You Should Know” and “Feed or Flush” are just two I happen to like) but her most beautiful piece, “Preparation for Departure,” recently lost its online home when a small journal closed down. She’s published it now on her own website. Here’s a taste:

Two months before you leave, fly to Denver for your youngest child’s wedding. In the dim light of your hotel room, look her in the eye and assure her that if anything should happen to you, her mother will be fine, financially. Sound nonchalant.

The day before the wedding, treat the groom, groomsmen, and your sons to lunch at the Best-of-Denver barbecue joint. Offer to buy them all sweaters from Brooks Brothers on your walk back to the hotel.

At the reception in the penthouse ballroom of the Denver Petroleum Club, take your little girl into your arms for the father-of-the-bride dance. With a jazz trio playing “Unforgettable,” ask, “Are you happy?” Just to finish that business. This will be your last dance, so speak tenderly, and make it a good one.

Read the rest here. Try not to weep.

UPDATE: There’s more on this subject here and here.

Tweet: Narrative lists—another kind of creative writing.
Tweet: There are all sorts of stories that can be conveyed in a narrative list.

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