Fly Melon

One of my Type-A personality characteristics is an inclination to make lists.  Like books to read, books I haven’t read, books I should read, books I’m able to pretend I’ve read.  Yes, I did read Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read.  Though he certainly proves there’s a tradition and a practice of talking about books one hasn’t read, the idea still makes me uncomfortable.  The Glass Bead Game (full disclosure: have only partially read it) is premised on a super-cerebral community of intellectuals who play at making elaborate patterns with the whole span of human knowledge.  One establishes ownership of an intellectual work by demonstrating familiarity with a few common points of reference.  Like constellations—here are three shining points all in a line, and now we must say we see Orion standing there in the sky.  We lose our sense of vastness because we’re meant to be familiar with everything.  Each piece of the sky is taken up with a certain shape that we all must pretend to see.  My lists are a crutch for these interactions—this territory is safe, that isn’t, this can be approached by must be circumvented.