The List of the Mohicans: 1. Chingachgook 2. Porthos? 3. Uncas

WHEN I SIT down and make up a list of the things I will do today, I never ‘do any of them. That is not to say I don’t do anything. I may compose an operetta. But I don’t do any of the things on the list.

And what am I going to do with an operetta? I don’t know any violinists. Violinists may not be the first thing that springs to mind in connection with an operetta, but someone has to think of them at some point. Now that I have an operetta, I’ve got to sit down and make a list:

1. See about staging of operetta

a.Union difficulties?

b.Real horses?

(1) Check legality

Lists generate sublists. And now that I have a l.b.(l), I have to have a 1.b.(2). I learned this in school. I may not need a 1.b.(2), but I have to have one. I also have to have a 2. Now who is in charge, me or the list?

That is the question. When 1 am making a list, I feel dynamic, goal-oriented, ahead of the game. When the list is finished and I am looking at it, the power has shifted. I have to do what the list says.

But even while making the list, I am subject to certain laws:

1. Plurality

a. You can’t have a list that says just “1. Be Thyself”

b. You have to have a list that says (1) For instance, “1. Be Thyself”

(2) And something else, like “2. Think About It”

c.And then you are in trouble (1) Because how can you be being something—thyself, a ground squirrel, it doesn’t matter what—while you are thinking about being it?

(2) And how can you not think about it when you see—inevitably, your eyes steal ahead—that

the next item is “Think About It”?

2. Impersonality

a. You’ve got problems if you start using personal pronouns

b. Should it be

(1) “Be Thyself,” or

(2) “Be Myself”

(a) If (1), then who is speaking?

(b) If (2), then here I am, a grown man, saying “Be Myself” to myself. It’s embarrassing

III. Roman Numerals

A. Come to think of it, it is a good idea to start off with Roman numerals. Otherwise, before you know it you are down to l.a.(l)(a)

1. Which is scraping bottom

2. Whereas LA.l.a. leaves room for two more levels

a. I.A.1.a.(1)

b. I.A.1.a.(1)(a)

B. On the other hand, no one has ever been able to follow a list of items headed by Roman numerals

1. It goes back to the Ten Commandments

2. And as soon as you see “I,” even when it means “Roman numeral one,” you tend to think about yourself. The “I.” And what a stiange remove it is, that takes us to this notion of “the ‘I.’ ” It is bad enough when someone named, say, Billy, goes around referring to himself as “Billy.” If he should start talking about “the ‘Billy’”—well, here we go down the rabbit hole. It’s like those insurance companies now that will sell you a policy to cover (supposedly) your legal expenses in the event that you have to sue your insurance company for not paying off. Did you know that after a big high-rise luxury resort casino-hotel burns down and hundreds die, the hotel can insure itself retroactively? You or I couldn’t, but a big outfit like that can. Somehow the hotel people and the insurance people all make out

IV. Everything has to be parallel

“Oh, you’re getting way off into outlining,” some may say. “Lists, kept in their place, are a servant to man.” Uhm-hm. It is always a mistake to condescend to a list. You look at a list and say, “Well, now, this is a handy little prioritizational device. I should be able to knock all these items off bing bing bing.” The list goes through a moment of quiet fusion and says, “Okay. Come on.” Then try striking anything off it.

You never take the first item first, obviously. That would be like accepting the Russians’ first offer in a disarmament talk: “Let me see if I have this straight. We transfer to you all of our military might except the generals and admirals, whom we get to keep, and you commit yourselves to an unspecified period of‘all due restraint.’ Okay, what the hell.”

But even the second item is not something you want to be drawn into precipitously. You look up and down the list and feel as though you are standing on one side of a stream, trying to decide which rock to put your foot on first. None of them look good.

I. It may very well be that a given item is not right for you when you come to it on a list

II. It may very well be that in a free society, a given item is by definition not right for you when you come to it on a list

Now it is time for lunch. As a rule, I have stopped drinking at lunch. It isn’t fashionable to drink at lunch these days. But it used to be. I remember, years ago, when I first got a job in New York City. An old hand took me to lunch at a Chinese restaurant, treated himself to eight martinis, and fell—in stages, as if by peristalsis—all the way down a circular staircase that was ornamented to look like a dragon.

I. Some good non-alcoholic lunch beverages

A. Iced tea

B. Alka-Seltzer

C. Bireley’s Chocolate Drink

1. If lunch is a peanut-butter log

2. And not many places today have peanut-butter logs

3. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I saw

a. A peanut-butter log

b. A Bireley’s Chocolate Drink II. Some bad non-alcoholic lunch beverages

A. Virgin margarita

B. Herbal old-fashioned

C. Bireley’s Chocolate Drink

1. Now that I think about it

2. When I was a kid it was good, though

a. So was Nehi strawberry

b. And Nugrape

(1) I don’t think anything has ever struck me as prettiercolored than Nugrape foam back then

(2) Of course I was a child, and my tastes were unformed

(3) But in college English, when I came upon “the blushful Hippocrene,/ With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,/ And purplestained mouth,” it brought Nugrape back

Even when I don’t drink, however, for a couple of hours after lunch I feel listless. Before long it is nearly time to relax and look back over the events of the day; and there haven’t been any yet.

I scan the list for a vulnerable spot. Sure, I could tack on something easy, like “Memorize new apartment number.” But when you’ve seen as many digits come and go as I have, what’s so easy about that? Anyway, if I tacked it onto a list, I wouldn’t do it.

While I was not doing any of the things on my list for today, I came across, in some of my papers, the following list, “Gifts to Get for People,” which dates back to December, 1981:

1. The Book of Lists-Vaughn

2. The Book of Lists II—Beryl

3. The Hook of Sports Lists—Artie

4. The Hook of Fish Lists—Carl and Dot

5. Listlust—Hope

6. Lost Lists of the Incas—Oola

7. The List Hook Booklist—Franz

I’ll tell you something. That list did not give one iota. Hey, Christmas is not a line-item affair. Christmas should be cornucopious. Higgledy-piggledy down in the stocking and under the tree. You wouldn’t want to buy your turkey by the inch, would you? You want partridges in pear trees untold.

I remember when a cold-drink machine was a big, rusting, red-metal box with a slide-open door in the top. You’d reach down into that well of melting ice and variously shaped cold bottles randomly heaped, and you’d swush around heavily for a while and come up with a Nugrape. A Grapette. A Sundrop. An Orange Crush, with its pebbly, thickwalled bottle the color of iodine. A Bireley’s Chocolate Drink. Bireley’s put out an orange, too. A Nehi black cherry. Or it might be something entirely new, which you’d never encountered before. Back then, TV marketing strategy was less advanced, so if there was a new soft drink out, you might not have seen a representation of it before you actually pulled one up out of the ice and cold rivulets and ice flecks ran down it onto your pulse and forearm.

Today a cold-drink machine is a list of buttons. Push one, and a can comes down a chute.

Remember back even further—frankly, to the womb? How your day developed? It was all very structured, very symmetrical, but none of this by-thenumbers. You’d be reflecting, “Hmmmmn,” and “I’ve got a heartheat,” and “I’m not going to be a fish.” But it wasn’t

1. “Hmmmmn”

2. “I’ve got a heartheat”

3. “I’m not going to be a fish”

It was dawnings overlapping. You didn’t know what you were going to be. Even if you had known, it wasn’t anything you’d ever seen.

But you could sense the thread. And it wasn’t linear. It was more like the thread on a screw, only pre-industrial; something that turned to go forward. I’m holding out for a helical list. With a bubbling, grape-colored head. □