The Infinity of Lists: an Illustrated Essay
Third in set
Umberto Eco (Author)
Alastair McEwen (Translator)

Rizzoli
November 17, 2009 / ISBN: 0847832961
Art / History / General
Amazon

Reviewed by Beth E. McKenzie

First, I have to admit up front that I have owned this book for six months and I still haven't read more than 50 pages. And no, I didn't just buy it for the pictures, although that would have been reason enough. I bought it because I was enthralled by the subject matter- lists! Four hundred pages devoted to the beauty, the form, the function, the necessity and even the poetry of lists. I think of the old cash register receipt I regularly use to make sure I meet my daily schedule or don't overspend on groceries and think of the wonder of it all. Someday, in a far distant future could my simple "Bread-Eggs-Cheese-Beef-Cranberries, Go to Bank, Pick up Cleaning" be in the Louvre or Met as an example of a late-twentieth-century housekeeping note before the electronic age?

Lists can be categorized as practical, poetic or both; as well as written or visual. You'll notice that sentence contains 2 lists, and I am going to give you another that is as barbicels on the peacock's feather of the contents:

A fresco from 1st Century Pompeii,
Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup Painting Collection,
Reliquaries with the bones of Saints
Bestiaries
A shop full of tools
Flower arrangements
The "begats" from the Gospel of Matthew
The 18 October, 1969 Cover of The New Yorker Magazine
"The Hill" by Edgar Lee Masters (1916)
And so much more!

You probably want to know why I can love this book enough to make it one of my "Top 10 of 2011" if I haven't read it. It is because I keep getting lost in the chapters. There is always something to look up, to dig into deeper or just figure out. For example there is a quotation that is attributed to Celine that stopped me cold. "Bing! Badabing!" I just sat for a second. Mario Puzo wrote The Godfather, who is this Celine? So I went to what Eco calls the "Mother of all Lists, infinite by definition", the World Wide Web, and found Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) and spent a few hours on his writings. At this rate I doubt that I will ever finish this or the other two books in the set.

Ain't it grand?