Freelance illustrator Gary Simpson began writing a zombie-themed cookbook called Dead Eats in 2009. In the summer of 2010, he took his idea to Kickstarter, hoping to raise enough money to create a few prototypes of the book to send to literary agents and publishers. After 60 days, Gary had received pledges for only $745 of his $1000 goal. Here he talks about the experience and shares a recipe from the book.

L.V. Anderson: How did you get the idea for a zombie cookbook?

Gary Simpson: Well, the actual day that I had the idea, I was at the bookstore. I live in a small town in northern California, and they have one bookstore, and there was an entire wall devoted to cookbooks. I was picking up books left and right, checking them out, and there was an essential theme going on to them; each one started getting into a genre, almost. There was a bacon cookbook; there was one for vegetarians, vegans; how to cook like a restaurant chef and stuff like that. But they’re all still a little obscure. Looking at the ingredient list, it was like, you need this pickled pear and you need this type of white peppercorn, which you might not normally have in your pantry.

And there was one particular cookbook that really struck me, and it was a children’s cookbook; it was a Star Wars cookbook. It had these awesome pictures of cupcakes and cookies, and they had these little Star Wars figurines next to them. And the whole Star Wars theme was really detached from the actual food, but they gave them really clever names, like a Wookiee Cookie. These quirky little things that would interest a kid and possibly their parent to cook with them, and as I was going through it, I thought, “Nobody’s made a zombie cookbook.” Which, at the time, we were getting more and more saturated with zombies.

Did you intend this to be in any way an ironic commentary on the zombie phenomenon?

You know, I actually loved horror movies growing up, and it was kind of one of those—not so much counterculture, but not everybody was into it. And it is ironic, the fact that everybody seems to love zombies now. So yeah, the whole thing is wrapped up in a tongue-in-cheek presentation, like, well, if you’re interested in food and you’re interested in zombies, then there’s a zombie cookbook.

Did you write the whole cookbook before you did your Kickstarter?

I actually did. A lot of these recipes I knew in the back of my mind anyway. ‘Cause my dad worked for a hotel chain, and he was a restaurant manager, and he had all these recipes that he passed on to me. And my grandmother was a big farm cook, always making these huge portions for everybody. She taught me a lot of things. And there was a point where right out of high school when I had to decide whether I wanted to do illustration and fine arts, or if I wanted to become a chef. I enjoy cooking on a personal level; I like being able to see people’s face when they’re eating it. So I decided not to be a chef. Since then, I’ve always been an experimental kind of cook, like, let’s try this ingredient with this and give it to friends and family and see how they react. I actually had a large database of food, recipes I had acquired. So yeah, I actually did write the entire thing first.

How would you describe the way that you cook?

A lot of these would now be considered comfort food. Now the Food Network’s basically telling us there are all these different types of cuisine, and a really big thing now is comfort food and slightly Southern cooking, and if anything it’s all in line with that. When I studied, it was underneath a French chef and later an Italian chef, so those traditional ways of making food carried over into making things like steaks, burgers, cornbread. You know, simple things that people would make at home, but in a kind of fancy way.

So tell me about some of the names of your recipes that evoke zombie-ness.

Well, there’s a Brain Stroganoff, which is similar to beef stroganoff, but in the actual appearance of it, in the end it actually looks like a brain on noodles.

How do you do that? How do you make it look like a brain?

Well, you take loose meat, which is basically any kind of ground meat. And you combine it with panko or bread crumbs, and cottage cheese or goat cheese.

Okay. That sounds disgusting. I mean, it sounds delicious, but it sounds like it looks disgusting.

Well, some of these things are supposed to be over the top, like you’d almost make it on a dare. Like you would with haggis, Scotch egg, something that’s like, “I can’t believe I just ate one of those,” or “I’m never going to touch that.” There are actually a number of people that it appeals to.

Tell me about the people that it appeals to. What kind of enthusiastic responses did you get? Or, on the other side, was anyone grossed out by this idea?

The gross-out factor was more that there was a couple of vegans that said, “Can you substitute something for this?” or whatever. But for most people, it was more the curiosity: What this is going to end up looking like, and what does it taste like? It changed people’s expectations. Everybody I talked to in person about it loved it. Like they wanted to see something from it. Which is great, which is kind of the whole point of it. Talking to people online, same thing. I contacted about thirty different literary agents, and within the first day, I got ten responses.

And there seemed like there was a lot of steam building up, and one of the literary agents told me that I should sit on it for about a year, because sales are down. The reason why you saw so many at the bookstores is the recession; people were trying to unload them. So at that point, after reaching out to see what literary agents might think of it, that’s when I got involved with Kickstarter to see what other people think about it.

What specifically were you trying to raise the money for? Was it to put together a more polished version of the cookbook?

Yeah. It was basically the final part in making a project. Something needs to be tangible. You can pitch an idea; you can give an elevator pitch or whatever, but people need to have something tangible in front of them before they can truly get 100% behind it. So the money was just going to get a finished product, print out a couple hundred of them, and send them off.

And so once you decided to start a Kickstarter, what kind of promotional stuff did you do?

Really, I didn’t do anything. I’d never tried Kickstarter before, and at the time it was still a young platform, so the very first month that I went into it, I really didn't do that much to push it. I only put in a couple updates, I offered some stuff, but it was a pretty cold start, because I didn’t know what Kickstarter was going to do, if there was a platform to launch off of, or if Kickstarter internally would do stuff. I wanted to see where it would go.

What did you decide to do after your Kickstarter campaign was over?

I went back to the cookbook; I revisited it; I edited the hell out of it. It’s got three more coats of polish on it. And I still have it.

Do you have a literary agent now?

Not one signed on, no. I have a number of people interested, but I’m not ready to move forward.

Why not? Are you still waiting for the right moment?

In a sense, yeah. As far as marketing or promoting it, you do need to devote a portion of time to it, which unfortunately my work schedule right now doesn’t permit. I don’t have that much personal time anymore. And the zombie cookbook, I know that if I was going to devote time to it, I’d have to devote a lot. I just don’t have the time for it yet.

How do you envision it? If it’s something that comes to fruition someday, do you envision it being a full-color cookbook with photographs, or do you think that since you’re an illustrator you would draw illustrations for it?

The basic outlook of it would be a very kitschy Betty Crocker book, something from 1950s or ‘60s, but re-visioned in a zombie apocalypse kind of way. There would be pictures, of course, just because I know personally people want to see that kind of stuff.

So true, yes.

But there’d be a lot of—people love information graphics, so it’d be like what part of a human body equates to what part of a chicken, like taste-wise. So there’d be information graphics detailing that, and we’ll take a cow and a pig. And there’s still a lot of introduction to it. I know being in the kitchen a lot, you shorthand things. Like what’s the difference between a pot and a pan? Or what’s a spatula? Surprisingly, a lot of people don’t know what these things are.

So you want it really to be a very educational, basic source.

Yeah. Like somebody who’s taking home economics in high school or middle school could even do this stuff.

Do you think cooking is something that people should do more?

I think cooking is very inspiring. It’s such a basic thing to want to make something, almost in a craft-like way. On a day-to-day basis, creatively, I have to do XYZ for a client, but I’m still inspired because I cook every day. Putting peanut butter on a hamburger; in some strange way that's fulfilling and it's refreshing, and I think that should appeal to a lot of people. They should want to learn how to cook. We gloss over these things when we’re growing up, like how to write a check, how to open up a bank account, how to cook, how to save money. Just odd things that seem like they should be fundamental.

Do you have any concern that the zombie moment is going to end before this cookbook gets produced?

Not particularly. It’s pretty much an industry at this point. It’s like saying there won’t be anymore vampire-slash-werewolf movies. They already found an audience; same for zombies. It’s not so much a genre anymore, it’s an actual industry. There are zombie snack foods now and zombie shampoo. It’s weird, but it’s an industry now.

A RECIPE FROM DEAD EATS

SKULLCAPS

4 large Portobello mushrooms, stems removed
½ lb "sausage"
4 strips of "bacon"
4 oz. cream cheese
4 drops hot sauce
4 tsp salsa
4 slices Provolone or Swiss cheese
2 tbsp Graveyard Herb

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F/220°C. Spray a baking sheet with nonstick spray.

2. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat and when hot, add bacon and cook on both sides till crisp. Remove bacon strips, and then crumble sausage into heated skillet, reducing heat to medium. Cook sausage for 10-12 minutes or till all pink is gone. Chop and crumble bacon strips into bacon bits into a mixing bowl. Add sausage, cream cheese, hot sauce, and Graveyard Herb until blended.

3. Place the mushrooms on the baking sheet, filling each cavity with the sausage mixture, mounding it slightly. Add a teaspoon of salsa to each mound and place in heated oven. Bake for 22-24 minutes.

4. Stack slices of cheese one on top of each other on a cutting board, with a sharp knife cut a skull shape into the cheese. Separate the cheese slices and place one skull-shaped cheese slice onto each mushroom. Cook mushrooms an additional minute in the oven. Serve hot.

GRAVEYARD HERB

Makes 16 tsp (the size of a normal bottle of seasoning).

2 tsp thyme
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp savory
2 tsp paprika (smoked preferred)
2 tsp celery salt
2 tsp basil (sweet preferred)
2 tsp sage
2 tsp rosemary

Previously: The Unfunded Art Project Inspired By Victorian Human Skulls and The Connie Converse Album That Never Got Crowd-Funded


Was your Kickstarter unsuccessful? Want to talk about it? Send us an email with a link to your Kickstarter page at kickstarted@theawl.com.

L. V. Anderson lives in Brooklyn and works at Slate. Images and recipes are copyright Gary Simpson.

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You could easily choose a Mediterranean wine for Valentine’s Day and fantasize an escape to the Riviera. But I for one prefer fireplace coziness while the wind blusters (and it just so happens that I have a half a case of bubbly left over from New Year’s Eve). We all know that going out on Valentine's Day is a prix fixe nightmare, so here's a delicious, fun, romantic, easy weeknight Valentine’s meal that you can make at home—with champagne as a main ingredient.

CHAMPAGNE VS. OTHER SPARKLING WINES
Cava and Prosecco are great replacements for Champagne as a festive aperitif, but they are not interchangeable with Champagne, especially in cooking, even though some Cavas and Proseccos are made in a way that intentionally duplicates Champagne. By contrast with the Spanish and Italian options, a great many of our domestic sparklers are made in the Champagne style and with the same varietals. As many of you know from experience (regret), the least expensive of these wines can tend toward the very sweet (and hangover-inducing), so that’s the thing to watch out for—make sure you get something that is dry and expresses the vinicultural and oenological values desired. I like Gruet from Albequerque, even though this completely sinks my Champagne-is-romantically-gloomy narrative. This wine is very authentic in its expression of Champagne wine making. It is produced by a Champenoise family with many generations of experience, and the New Mexico climate—cool but arid and thus discouraging rot—in some ways allows Gruet to reflect the Champagne character in an almost Platonic form. Drink enough of it and perhaps you could mistake the Rio Grande for the Marne.

                         You go to my head
                        And you linger like a haunting refrain

                        And I find you spinning 'round in my brain

                        Like the bubbles in a glass of champagne

The Gruet Brut NV is in my opinion (among others) a go-to wine both for drinking and cooking. The bottle costs $15, and it has exactly the characteristics you want. It's dry without being chalky, fruity but not sour, and sufficiently yeasty to serve for breakfast as suitably as a brioche.

There's an enormous amount to know about Champagne and its impersonators, but the one thing I want to radically oversimplify for you here is the style classification you’re most likely to see on the label: Brut, Blanc de Blancs, Blanc de Noirs, or Sec/Demi-Sec. Champagne is traditionally (by European law, in fact) made from some combination of Pinot noir, Pinot meunier, and Chardonnay. “Brut” means generally that the wine is dry and that the Pinot noir and Chardonnay are present in almost equal amounts, with the Pinot meunier playing a supporting role. “Blanc de Blancs” means the wine is entirely or almost entirely Chardonnay. And “Blanc de Noirs” means the wine is entirely or almost entirely Pinot noir. “Sec” or “Demi-Sec” means the wine is sweet—fine for dessert or in cocktails. (FYI, Demi-Sec is sweeter than Sec, even though sec is French for dry. The word dry appears on many cheap wine labels meaning, oddly, oh so very sweet.) For cooking, I recommend using a Brut, which best encapsulates what the imagination might file under the category “Champagne.”

You may want to use the Gruet Brut NV for cooking, but choose a more special Champagne to drink. The big producers like Moët and Veuve may delight your palate and carry fond associations. However, a certain kind of snob (me) might point out that these productions aim for highly standardized products and maximum margins, so they are not necessarily great values. For less corporate consolidation and more idiosyncratic character, you can look for an unfamiliar label with the letters RM printed very finely on it, standing for récoltant-manipulant, meaning the wine is estate bottled—and then ask your wine merchant for specific pairing advice.

LOVE ALONE CAN'T MAKE TUESDAY INTO SATURDAY
A Valentine’s Day supper faces many constraints and challenges, particularly if it is to be a surprise. This year, we are looking at a Tuesday night, so preparation time should be kept low, and the amount of time left for, ahem, other pursuits should be maximized. The meal should be flavorful and satisfying but must not cause sleepiness, indigestion, gas, bloat or bad breath. It should be sensual, even carnal, but not carnivorous—you don’t want lamb sinew stuck between your teeth. Finally, you want to dirty the minimum amount of kitchenware so you don’t waste precious sexytimes cleaning the dishes.

Champagne pairs with a wonderfully wide range of ingredients. It's discreet but also effectively scrubs the palate and tames stronger flavors. It's terrific with smoky, unctuous, creamy and spicy food. It cuts through the oil of fried food, though you probably don’t want to do a lot of frying in Valentine’s Day.

I think a living-room “picnic” dinner for two at the coffee table, seated on pillows amid the glow of votives is suitably charming if corny. Play it up with an enormous bunch of pink carnations. The perfect menu should have a few small dishes that can be eaten with little silverware or risk of mess.

POP CORK, POP CORN
While you cook, have your sweetheart put on some music. Maybe you have a few prepared playlists ready to choose from? That was so thoughtful of you.

Pour a flute of Champagne for your companion to sip while snacking on a bowl of buttered popcorn with Parmesan grated over it. Popcorn made the traditional way on the stovetop (instructions will be found on the container) gives your home a very appetizing smell. I also read somewhere that microwave popcorn contains hideous chemicals, and even if that’s not true, it still produces an atrocious odor and a lot of unnecessary garbage. Making classic popcorn in the pan involves hot oil and steam—this is the mood we want.

A SILKY SAUCE FOR A SUGGESTIVE SHELLFISH
Oysters are justifiably associated with romantic meals. Eating a few can be filling without overstuffing. Eating them raw can cause certain scandalous sounds. They are bivalves, and this fact is somehow somewhat pornographic—go with it, just for tonight. A traditional condiment for raw oysters is mignonette, which consists of minced shallot (not enough to endanger your breath), coarsely ground white pepper, and Champagne vinegar or Champagne dosed with white wine vinegar or reduced Champagne (i.e., a cup simmered over medium heat until reduced by half.)

For a more sensual, less bitter, and showier alternative to mignonette, you could make a very simple Champagne sabayon. A sabayon is a simple custard. To dress up to a dozen oysters, use two egg yolks and two ounces of Champagne. Combine everything in a glass bowl with a hefty pinch of sea salt, and arrange this in a double boiler. Keep the water at a simmer, and stir the mixture determinedly for 15 minutes. You want it to get foamy and hot. Mmhmm, I went there. Serve this over raw oysters with a little caviar. (Whatever you can afford—I like flying fish.) Omitting the caviar, you could use this sabayon over raw, grilled, or roasted oysters topped with crispy lardons and tarragon leaves. (Vegetarian? Replace the oysters with roasted shiitake mushrooms.)

If you decide to make the Champagne sabayon, consider doubling the batch and reserving the egg whites. Once it's cooked, remove half the finished sabayon for the oysters. Sweeten the remaining half with 1/4 cup of sugar or honey, and continue cooking over a simmer until everything is dissolved together. Remove that from the heat and set aside. Whip the egg whites with another 1/4 cup of sugar to soft peaks (or make a Swiss meringue or whip two cups of heavy cream with two tablespoons of sugar). Combine the sweet sabayon with the egg whites or whipped cream, and you have a mousse! You can perfect this dessert by garnishing with some dark chocolate shavings.

BREAKFAST SERVED 24 HOURS
If oysters aren’t your “thing” (and I don’t want to hear your reasons because the word texture is a language peeve of mine), then how about serving “breakfast before bed?” The very height of romance! Champagne is a delicious companion to omelets, and you can make a fairly easy herbed Champagne cream sauce to pour over them. The sauce is a basic béchamel (remember how we do that?) that you flavor with an essence made by adding four tablespoons of chopped tarragon to a cup of Champagne and then reducing that mixture by 3/4 over medium heat. (Strain the cooked herbs from the liquid before adding it to the béchamel, then add an extra pinch of minced fresh herbs for color.) You can fill your omelets with something like asparagus, any shellfish (langoustine seems appropriately fancy), or duxelles (minced mushroom and shallot softened in butter).

Have we discussed omelets before? Everybody has a method, and I don’t want to discourage you from using your signature technique. If you want some advice, though, here’s how I do it:

• Pre-cook all fillings. An omelet takes a minute to cook, but asparagus needs five minutes. You can’t cook anything once it’s inside an omelet.

• Beat two eggs in a mixing bowl with a whisk. (For Valentine’s Day, you can simplify your work by making a four-egg omelet and sharing it—how cute is that?!) I don’t use any milk or cream.

• On a high flame, heat a small, lightweight frying pan and add a big spoonful of butter. Melt, foam, subside . . . you know the drill.

• Pour the eggs into the pan and lower the burner to medium. Let the eggs stand for 20 seconds or so while they begin to set up. Add salt and pepper.

• If you know how to flip an omelet, now is the time. Use two hands and be confident! If you don’t want to flip it, use a spatula to let the uncooked egg run around and underneath the already-cooked part. The main thing is to keep it moving, so that the results is delicate and yellow, not browned and chewy.

• Before it becomes overcooked—even while you’re still not sure the omelet is finished—remove it from the heat. Fill it along the center line, then fold the omelet over the filling. Put a lid on the pan, and let it rest for a minute or two to finish cooking the egg (and warming the filling) with just the heat from the pan.

Sticking with my too-clever “breakfast before bed” menu, how about doing French toast for dessert? It certainly works deliciously with Champagne, and you may already know how to make it: simply slice a baguette thick and on the bias; soak in a mixture of four eggs, a cup of cream, and two tablespoons sugar for about a minute, and then fry in a hot buttered pan. For a Champagne sauce, you could make a Crème Anglaise, which is relatively easy considering the delicious result, though you need an electric mixer. I use a simple, flawless Julia Child recipe:

• Put 1-3/4 cup of whole milk in a glass measurer or bowl into the microwave. It will need to come to a boil, which generally takes around four minutes on full power.

• Put four egg yolks in the mixing bowl with 1/2 cup of sugar. Beat it on high speed until it is very thick—almost like warm taffy—and nearly white.

• Reduce the speed to low, and add the boiling milk very, very slowly. If the eggs get cooked too fast they will not form a nice sauce.

• Transfer the mixing bowl to a sauce pan and heat it over low heat for 15 minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. You can definitely do this while skilletting the French toast simultaneously. The sauce will get a bit thicker but not very thick—expect the consistency of cream. It’s cooked when it coats the spoon.

• Remove the sauce from the heat and give it a good beating with a wire whisk for two minutes while it cools. As you do so, add one teaspoon of vanilla and—for Valentine’s Day—a tablespoon of Champagne. I also tested this over the weekend with an inch of fresh ginger grated finely and added to the sauce, then I placed a slice of caramelized pineapple on top.

FOR THOSE NOT YET SATISFIED
If you want a meatier course, you could make miniature chicken or tuna “satays.” Do this by marinating strips of meat with ground cumin in peanut oil—place them in the refrigerator before leaving for work in the morning. Cook them by grilling or sautéing, and spear them on toothpicks. Make a sauce by using about a dozen dried apricots finely chopped, add a shot of Goldschlager (or a tablespoon of ground cinnamon), and cover them in a saucepan with Champagne. Simmer for at least 10 minutes until the apricots are nice and soft.

I did have one more outlandish idea over last weekend, and you’re welcome to try it if your disdain for “modernist cooking” is, like mine, masking a real envy. I made a blood orange mimosa jelly (1/3 cup Champagne; 2/3 cup blood orange juice, boiled; one packet of Knox unflavored gelatin; follow instructions on the package) and cut it into nigiri-sized rectangles upon which I placed slices of smoked salmon, then garnished with crème fraiche. Aside from preparing the jelly, which you’ll have to do in advance, this is a great surprise-dinner recipe because it depends not on technique but on gourmet groceries, including citrus at the peak of its season. The flavors balance very nicely, boosting and highlighting the Champagne’s latent tartness. Eating it with your fingers also feels rather naughty.

An appropriate Valentine’s Day gift might be a new pair of sunglasses to help your lover look intriguing and rakish rather than merely hung-over on Wednesday morning!

Previously: Cooking With Rum, Cooking With Tequila and Cooking With Bourbon


Related: How to Cook The Ideal Fourth Date Meal


K. Emerson Beyer, environmentalist and gadabout, lives in Durham, N.C. and tweets as @patebrisee. Photos by the author and Martin Solem.

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A couple years ago, the store started offering DJ lessons, and so, on a recent Saturday, I shuffled in for a lesson. After years of sports (hand-eye coordination) and guitar (ear), I thought I'd have a good shot at picking up the necessary skills. But I was wrong. As my instructor, DJ DP One told me, “Nowadays, everyone’s a DJ. But it takes practice and passion, and it’s not as easy as just pressing a button, though that’s what many people think.” In this democratized media environment, where the playing field has only gotten larger because of easy access to music, separating yourself from other DJs is hard work.

Like a lot of Rock and Soul fans, DJ DP One has been orbiting the store for decades. He told me he started shopping here when he was a kid (he's 34 now) and feels like he grew up here. "Being able to teach here is so cool."

The lesson felt not unlike one you'd take in guitar or piano at your local music store, with the same parallel from theory to practice. First DJ DP One explained the fundamentals, then demonstrated how these techniques are applied. Place your hand here, move your fingers there, because you don’t want to pop the needle off the groove or accidentally hit the on/off button. I had a few flashbacks of sitting in my college dorm room learning how to hold the guitar. Fondling the fader switch was like learning to hold a pick; counting bars between songs and figuring out when to add the other track was like switching chords or modulating notes. And just as with the guitar, I had to learn a new vocabulary: scratch, baby scratch, the ah, chirping, forwards, release headphones, release volume. And this was before even learning about the equipment: two turntables, the mixer, the computer and all the computer programs.

Just like any other instrument, in order to get better, you have to practice, practice, practice. “I practice at least two hours a day,” DJ DP One told me. “I’m still practicing basics because a lot of new techniques come from foundational techniques.”

During our two hours together, the lesson ranged across everything from technique (“Make your hand into a ‘v’ and place it in the left pocket of the record.”) to where not to practice (“I don’t recommend practicing in front of a crowd because everyone hears your mistakes if your timing and selection is off.”).

He also doled out advice on playing gigs: “Every place has a different energy and vibe that can dictate song selection and strategies. For example, if the crowd is chill, let the song go. If it’s a party, play bits of songs to keep people on their toes. No two crowds are the same, so you gotta feel the crowd. Also, take notes as you’re spinning: how do the songs flow, how can I make this mix better.”

Before my own lesson, I observed DJ DP One in another one-on-one session with a student. During it, he described the steps that any working musician must pass through, no matter his or her genre. Besides the requisite practicing and honing your craft, you also need to hustle. You need to connect with promoters and club owners; you need to apprentice with better DJs and learn from them; you need to take advantage of every little opportunity you get, like when a DJ-friend needs to take a 15 minute break between sets, ask to take the turntables for a spin; open up for more well-known DJs; play at shitty clubs for, literally, beer and peanuts. And then do it again the next day. Talk to any big time band and I guarantee you they will tell you stories about the time they played this little bar, opening up for some other band, only to get screwed out of money. Paying your dues is the great equalizer.

This is one of the advantages of visiting Rock and Soul if you’re a DJ. A steady stream of professional DJs stop by there, and a young and hungry DJ can network with some of the best. Several of them give back to the store by giving these DJ lessons, as they know what it’s like to be in the young’uns kicks.

“I’ve been coming through here since the late 80s,” DJ Mell Starr, who also gives lessons (and was recently on BET’s Master of the Mix DJ/reality competition), told me. “The people that work here—I’ve known them for so long. I used to come here and not buy, just to say hello. It’s a home place.”

After just one lesson, it was clear that my body is not as fluid as my mind thinks it is. Trying to spin with my left hand while moving the fader with my right, and then reversing to spin with my right and adjust the volume with my left proved much harder than running a major seventh arpeggio up and down the neck of a guitar. I also learned that, as with other areas of life, having a good teacher makes all the difference. DJ DP One could have easily brushed off my dumb questions—Do I really have to wear headphones? I have a huge monitor blasting beats right in front of me!—but didn’t, and had answers to all of them. The earphones, by the way, are so that you can queue up songs and know when to switch decks.

Hanging out at the store you hear a lot of great stories, like the time Harrison Ford came in with his DJ son or when Q-Tip got kicked out for taking the plastic off a vinyl. That’s what happens when you’re in the same midtown spot for three-and-a-half decades. But my favorite story is this one:

In the mid-1990’s, Wyclef Jean walked into Rock and Soul not too long after the release of his album, The Carnival. Posters featuring a picture of him were up all over the store. He walked to the register and began to pay with a credit card when one of the store's owners, Shirley Bechor, asked him for his ID. Jean didn't carry ID, so he grabbed a copy of his album matched it to his face with a huge smile. Shirley laughed and rang him up.


Related: When Did The Remix Become A Requirement and Playing Tennis At Grand Central

Josh Sternberg is a writer based in Brooklyn. You can follow him on Twitter or Tumblr or his blog. Photos by the author and Josh Wolff.

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Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth
In the beginning of The Phantom Tollbooth, listless youngster Milo wakes up one morning to find a tollbooth has appeared in his room. He also finds a letter that includes “[o]ne (1) map, up to date and carefully drawn by master cartographers, depicting natural and man-made features.” The “master cartographers” here is, actually, the book's illustrator, cartoonist Jules Feiffer (with some author assist). Feiffer's involvement with Phantom Tollbooth came about incidentally—he and Norton Juster were neighbors in a Brooklyn Heights apartment bulding. Soon they became close friends,roommates and collaborators. As Feiffer remembers it, he would illustrate passages as Juster read them aloud. But the map was a bit of a sticking point. Feiffer hated to draw two things, horses and maps, and The Phantom Tollbooth included both. Juster sketched out the map's basic dimensions, which Feiffer then traced and made over into his signature style. If Juster made him draw a map (and at least a few horses), Feiffer was able to sneak in a jab in return: the Whether Man’s appearance, a bald doughball in a toga, is based on Juster. In the 50th-anniversary edition of the book, the author jokes, “This was quite unfair, since everyone knows I never wear a toga.”

As a map: It's a perfect example of where hand-drawn aesthetics work best in maps—across a small area mapped specifically for visitors, as the exaggerated landmarks are given weight over exacting spatial accuracy. In this way the unfamiliar can be easily spotted and identified. It’s a style commonly seen in attraction maps, like Anika Mottershaw’s Map of London or theme-park maps, like this one of Walt Disney World.

A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh
The map of the Hundred Acre Wood appears in the first Winnie-the-Pooh book entitled, wait for it, Winnie-the-Pooh. Created by E.H. Shepard (who also illustrated The Wind in The Willows), the map is meant to appear drawn by Christropher Robin, with “Drawn by me and Mr Shepard helpd” written at the bottom and the cardinal directions on the compass marked as P-O-O-H. The storybook woods are based on the actual Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest, near Milne’s country home in Sussex. The original sketch for the map was owned, curiously enough, for a long time by Pat McInally, known in some circles for having the only perfect Wonderlic Test score and also being the first Harvard grad to play in the Super Bowl, which he did for the Cincinnati Bengals in 1981 (zing at you, Ryan Fitzpatick). McInally’s collection, including that preparatory sketch, is currently up for sale at Peter Harrington’s rare book shop in London, yours if you happen to have a spare £115,000—that’s $182,241.73—to burn.

As a map: The key difference between a map like this one and the one from The Phantom Tollbooth is purpose. While Feiffer’s map is intended for exploration, Christopher Robin-E.H. Shepard’s map is a documentation of a known land. In an imaginary world, what's beyond the borders doesn't matter so much. Here the only indication of the world beyond is the "To North Pole" note, an obvious sort of landmark for a child's map. With its focus on the "here" and elision of the "there," a map of an imaginary world is not unlike early maps, such Hecataeus’ map of the world, drawn in approximately 500 BC, with its amorphous borders of "ocean.” Both Hecataeus and Christopher Robin are making the same point—sure there’s probably other stuff, but this is what’s important.

William Goldman's The Princess Bride
The Floren and Guilder kingdoms described in The Princess Bride are located “between where Germany and Sweden are today.” For any other geographic particulars about the countries, the reader has to consult the map found in the endpapers (in some editions, a fold-out map in the center), drawn by William Goldman (if other illustrators made the map, I haven't been able to find a reference to them). The map is a doozy—jammed full of details, landmarks, labels, and with no perspective whatsoever. I mean, the Sun is on this map. The trees are the same size as the ships.

As a map: The map is deliberately evoking the feel of a Medieval illuminated manuscript, as this is an exaggerated version of how many maps looked around the times of princesses and feudal castles. Though examples of these kingdom-level maps are abundant and accessible, I’d like to particularly draw your attention to collection of sixteenth-century maps of Jerusalem, made available by The Jewish National University Library. The gallery beautifully illustrates the diversity to be found in this type of region-specific map. While none of them include the Sun, like Goldman's map, they often use multiple perspectives to show the mapped lands.

L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz
All told, Baum drew forty individual maps of Oz to accompany his novel. This is the major one, though, showing the entirety of the land and its surrounding areas. The Emerald City, in the center, is surrounded by four distinct countries. The countries are bordered by deserts (Great Sandy Waste is the obvious winner here and a great potential new name for the litterbox). Beyond the deserts like a number of intriguing countries that make at best a passing appearance in the story, such as Merryland and the Country of Gargoyles. "Kansas" of course appears nowhere.

As a map: A straightforward map if ever there was. One thing to note, though: the compass is reversed, East and West are switched. This is an L. Frank Baum original error! The first copy of this map was on a glass slide, when Baum went to make a paper copy he traced it backwards. It's a great example of a political map—it's easy to imagine it as a pulldown over the chalkboards of Oz classrooms. I'd direct you to a political map to look at for comparison, but we all know what those look like. Instead, let's take a peek at the map drawn for Gregory Maguire’s Wicked. First of all, while there's no North arrow, the cardinal directions have been corrected from Baum’s original. This map gives a more nuanced view of Oz, complete with a legend and some topographical definition. If the first map was a classroom pulldown, this is the map on the quiz at the end of the chapter on which you have to label all the features.

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit
Like The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit contains many, many maps. Most of them were drawn by Tolkien’s son, Christopher, but Thror’s Map was drawn by Tolkien himself. In the story, Gandalf gives this map to Bilbo at the beginning of the story, the impetus for our hero’s “unexpected journey” to recover the dwarves’ treasure from Smaug, the dragon of Erebor.

As a map: Drawn more or less to scale, Tolkien’s map shows locations in relation to each other with only sparse detail—only what you absolutely need to know to get where you’re going, no hints of what else is out there. A modern example would be something like this charming map called "Getting Drunk on Passyunk." Only the information you require, all of the in-betweens omitted. It’s the sort of map you might draw on a napkin for a friend from out of town who isn’t sure where she's going. “Oh, sure, once you leave my house, you take a left. When you get to the donut shop make another left, then veer right at the house with the spaceship mailbox. If you get to the traffic circle, you’ve gone too far. Presto: you’re at Erebor!”

Ellen Raskin's The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel)
Okay, so this one isn’t a map of an imaginary land—the United States wasn't conjured out of Raskin's imagination—but it is a lovely chapter title page. I include it here because a) Ellen Raskin is the bee's knees and b) this was one of my favorite books as a young girl (I borrowed it from the library so often that the librarians finally just gave it to me one day). In this case, the map serves as a symbol of what’s happening in the book: Protagonist Mrs. Caroline Fish Carillon’s search for her missing husband is centered on her only clue, a half-heard phrase from a drowning man, "Noel(glub) see (blub) all... I (glub) new...". The power of words, right? Anyway: she takes the final word as an indicator of location and crisscrosses the country to check every town that starts with “New.”

As a map: This typographic style of map has become incredibly popular over the past few years, particularly as a way to show a city by its neighborhoods. But a map made completely of words is nothing new. Edwin Morgan's Chaffinch Map of Scotland, a poem published in 1965, uses the regional variations of names for a common songbird to create a map of his country. Howard Horowitz’s poem "Manhattan," reproduced here, appeared in The New York Times in 1997. Flickr user amapple has created a small but impressive set of maps focusing on such linear features as the Mississippi River and the Silk Road. Typographic mapping makes an impact even when the words aren’t locations. National Geographic included a type map of US surnames in its February 2011 issue, and an an interactive viewer is available on their website. My last name is everywhere.

On a final note, I'll point out a notable map omission from recent literature: I couldn’t believe The Hunger Games didn’t include a map of Panem!!! This is exactly what I meant when I said that books should have as much supplementary information as possible. But evidently, there are a lot of us spatial types out there, and an assortment of reader-drawn maps have popped up. My favorite belongs to Livejournal user “aimmyarrowshigh,” who describes the process she used to determine national borders and each district's location. The result is a spectacular map that would make any cartographer proud.


Previously: Blame It On Volcanoes and Pictures Of You From Space


Victoria Johnson is The Awl's resident cartographer. Hobbit and The Princess Bride maps via Woodge.

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A Ron Paul rally is an experience every cynical, bedraggled, politics-reporting cur should take in at least once in a career. Plus, in the GOP 2012 field, Ron Paul supporters easily hold the title of most bangable.

The event was set to begin at 7:00 p.m. The first "End the Fed!" chant started at 7:03 p.m.

When Gingrich, Santorum and Romney voters are all dead of old age, and when the current Tea Party's core has moved to a senility where the only bailout that concerns them is the one in their pants, Ron Paul supporters will still be, like, 43. The Tea Party desperately needs to recruit younger, fresher members. This realization was certainly why the first pre-Paul speaker is Walter Hudson, chair of Minnesota's North Star Tea Party Patriots.

The current mainstream of self-identifying Tea Partiers loathes Ron Paul because he's the guy who shows up with Jack Daniels to a party of 12-year-olds who are pretending to be drunk on O'Doul's. Paul's very presence makes a mockery of every Sarah Palin Tea Party "liberty" t-shirt, every Eric Cantor "freedom" bumper sticker and every bedazzled bald eagle. Paul's events expose the mainstream Tea Party for the fundamentally Christian conservative organization it really is—the kind of "party of the Constitution" that nonetheless wants to legislate bedrooms and can pretzel its reasoning into supporting the likes of Gingrich and Santorum, who are exactly those career political tumors of the D.C. system that the movement claims to despise.

Not that the religious right was absent at Paul's event. One man discreetly passed out business cards advertising "Live Christian Talk Radio" from the Liberty Broadcasting Network: "Can you handle the truth?"

But Paul didn't evoke the Lord at any time during the address. He didn't once mention "faith." Paul's rally speeches are unique not in what they mention, but in what they skip.

A Ron Paul for President rally is unlike rallies for other GOP presidential hopefuls in that, surprisingly, it is about the candidate himself. Bachmann. Gingrich. Those attending their rallies are often anti-Obama, not pro-candidate. Mitt Romney's very existence is a testament to this. There is almost no such thing as a truly pro-Romney conservative. Romney's the Rumsfeld candidate: you go to the election with the candidate you have, not the candidate you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Paul's full address only mentioned Obama's name once. Once! And that was a passing slam of "Obamacare" as a big government program. One breath later and Paul was back to landing blows on "both parties" and how "we need to clean house."

"It all comes down to the next 24 hours!" said Ron Paul's Minnesota chair, just before Paul came on. The campaign knows Minnesota's February 7th caucus could be its biggest day ever. Paul is out-fundraising the other candidates in Minnesota, and the Texas congressman must be giddy that polling during Nevada's Saturday primary demonstrated that those looking for the "conservative alternative" to Romney had passed over Santorum and Gingrich for Paul. What's more, Minnesota's wear-your-neighbors-down caucus system is the perfect composter for the vocal vim and vigor of Paul's supporters.

This is certainly why Paul's state chair passed up idealist talk of liberty or the Constitution in favor for a simple point a first-grader could understand. She even rammed it home by talking about "my favorite Youtube," which, it turns out, is Pacino's "inch by inch" speech from Any Given Sunday. (A damn good speech.) The crowd was charged.

Her only message was to make all present promise to, immediately after leaving, call one other person and convince that person to caucus tomorrow. Just one. Call one person, make him or her go with you. Got that, stupid? One person. One person to the caucus. All cheered. I bet every one of the thousand or so were determined to make that call.

I would have expected to see more doctor puns at a Ron Paul event.

There are 19 medical doctors in Congress (three senators); that's an increase from 15 in 2009. (Trivia: Five doctors were among the 56 people who signed the Declaration of Independence.)

Five of the 19 are Obstetrician-Gynecologists, and two of them are from Texas. They are Tom Coburn (R-OK), Phil Gingrey (R-GA) Michael Burgess (R-TX), Phil Roe (R-TN), and, of course, Dr. Paul (R-Atlas Shrugged). For some reason, Republican obstetricians abound. (My daughter was delivered by Grand Forks, North Dakota mayor and Ob-Gyn, Mike Brown—a Republican.) In fact, all but one of the 19 doctors in Congress are Republicans. The lone Democrat is Jim McDermott (D-WA)—and of all of the Congressional medical professionals, McDermott is the only psychiatrist.

One Ob-Gyn offered me a theory on this breakdown, in two parts. First, doctors are really just small businesspeople in a heavily regulated industry. As such, they are especially vulnerable to government meddling and the kind of mandates born of drop-ceilinged conference rooms, campaign donations and ideology, not blood-on-the-Danskos experience. This small-business ideology also ties into a hate for taxes. While most doctors make a good living and some make a wildly good living, often doctors make that income sweet-spot that's high enough to attract the worst rates, but not so high as to allow for fuck-you money. Guess who often makes just over that $250,000-a-year mark Democrats like to use in talk of raising taxes on the wealthy? Your doctor.

Second, the Ob-Gyn suspects that the specialty—unlike, say, orthopedic surgery—is most exposed to the vile parts of the nation's entrenched social welfare system, where many Randians see the proverbial bootstraps sold for cash to buy drugs. It's hard, the doctor argues, to not get just a little bit Ayn-Randy when facing a spirit-crushing daily grind of the tragedy that happens when pregnancy meets deep poverty. The doctor added that these are the Ob-Gyns that see abortion used repeatedly as a birth control measure—and then become activists about it.

Paul is very anti-abortion. But as an Ob-Gyn he's also characteristically "in limbo" about it. Grilled about performing abortions even in the case of rape, Paul's answer to Piers Morgan was one many Ob-Gyns who work without the luxury of it being a theoretical argument would agree with: "It is absolutely in limbo. Because an hour after intercourse or a day afterwards… there is no legal or medical problem. If you talk about somebody coming in and they say, I was raped and I'm seven months pregnant and I don't want to have anything to do with it.... It's a little bit different story."

But Paul's pro-life bona fides were not on display at the rally. Unlike the t-shirts and bumpers at many other conservative candidate events, there were no "If You're Pregnant, It's a Baby," "Abortion: Be Glad Your Parents Chose Differently," "Choose life. Your Mother Did," or "Kill the Rapist, Not the Baby."

Then there is tort reform. Outside abortion, nothing makes a physician want to go into politics more than having been needlessly sued two, three or ten times.

Here are the things, in order from least to most, that got the loudest boos during a Ron Paul rally:

4) Rick Perry
3) The National Defense Authorization Act
2) The "War on Drugs"
1) The Patriot Act

In a way, the worst enemy of a Ron Paul rally is Ron Paul. Paul had been speaking for somewhere around a half hour and the crowd was whipped into a Liberty lather, all ready to rush out into the unbelievably warm Minneapolis winter night and do exactly what Paul needs more than anything: GOTV (Get Out The Vote).

Instead, Grampa Ron continued talking for another 25 minutes or so. It's like a TED talk about the Constitution, after which a person just kind of wants to go watch some goddamn "Jersey Shore," because, Jesus, can you stop lecturing for, like, ten minutes? That Paul isn't the GOP field's multiple-divorcée is maybe the most surprising story of the 2012 primary. Maybe Mrs. Paul is deaf. [Editor's Note: Carol Wells Paul, Ron Paul's wife since 1957, is not deaf.]

So all of the momentum the event had going for the first half hour was then sponged up by Paul droning on about 9/11, the conspiracy of the Iraq War, SOPA and every other recent affront to Constitutional freedom and personal liberty.

Maybe Ron Paul just isn't used to being in a position to actually win a state. Maybe the Congressman's message has sat under the heat-lamp for so long even he doesn't really believe it's going anywhere in his lifetime.

Still, at the end, the crowd went bonkers again. Paul waved a bit but scurried offstage immediately. For an indie rock act determined to maintain an aura of anti-fame cool, this might be a good approach. But this is politics, where painfully begging adoration and support is pretty much the name of the game.

On his way off stage, Paul was glitter-bombed by a man desperate to prove that even the politically progressive can be miserably uninformed assholes.

Leaving the convention center was a little like leaving a mall movie theatre after the stores were all closed.

Young men and women signed clipboards, took photos together and grabbed complimentary copies of the Ron Paul Family Cookbook. It's a merry group that, despite Paul's final desperate attempts to rob them of their crazed energy, just might caucus the Congressman into the national conversation today. From down the hall, one of a foursome yelled, "Come on, let's go spread some liberty."

Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

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Eco also published a lavish and philosophical coffee-table book under the same title. In doing so, he added to the growing field of list literature. This genre boasts in its ranks everything from academic studies to journals that invite the reader to list her way to self-discovery, to 100 Facts about Pandas.

In the U.S., we often laud things by naming months after them. December might then be proclaimed “Lists Month.” At that cold, reflective time, year-end best-of’s inundate us like blizzarding clumps of snow. How do we navigate our way through them? Why do we love them so much?

Dictionary.com includes one “glazomania: a passion for listmaking.” Merriam-Webster doesn’t have a similar entry… yet.

What, exactly, is the list doing to—or for—us?

***

8 Tricks for Putting Off a Haircut. 12 Globe-Shaped Foods. Top 10 Famous Buses. 40 Culturally Relevant Birds. 13 High-Tech Steampunk USB Flash Drives. The 10 Most Phallic Cars. Top 10 Evil Sports. 5 Insane Celebrity Conspiracy Theories (That Make Sense). Top 10 Weirdest Twin-Crime Stories. Top 10 Strange and Bizarre Dead Bodies. The 10 Hottest Women on the Texas Sex Offenders List. 25 Sexy Chests to Be Thankful For. 9 Surprising Things Men Look for in a Wife. Top 10 Ways to Piss Off Your Wedding Planner. The 4 Worst Times to Be on the Internet. Ways I Am Prematurely Mature. Inconsistencies Between Original Star Wars Trilogy and Prequels. Things I Would Do to Fix the Mets. Indian Film Songs in Kharahara Priya Ragam. Top Excuses Women Give Not to Have Sex. Random Things I’m into Lately. Expensive Things I Need to Buy Someday. Cool Hoodies for Hackers. 100 Things in the World I Love. Lists to Make. Indicators that You Might Need to Focus More…

***

1. “The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order—not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries.”
—Umberto Eco, interview with Der Spiegel

2. “Lists help us manage the chaos of our lives—to impose order, if only for a moment. Writing a list clears the mind. … Once everything is written down, it’s easier to see which tasks are important and in what order to tackle them. Tasks that seem overwhelming look easier when reduced to mere lines on paper.”
—Sasha Cagen, To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us)

3. “To my mind, the difference would be where lists support your quality of life or where they begin to impede your quality of life—where having your list perfected gets in the way of your functioning, or having too many lists. It’s a matter of how you use them. They can give you control in a certain way, but you don’t want them to be the only thing you do to gain control.”
—Dr. Cynthia Green, clinical psychologist and brain health/memory specialist, interview with the author

***

According to Robert Belknap in his book The List: The Uses and Pleasures of Cataloguing—a study of literary lists, particularly in the work of four American Renaissance authors—lists of sequential signs appeared as early as 3,200 B.C.E. Used as a means of accounting and record keeping, they signified an early form of communication that would evolve into written language. If this is true, then Eco is right: the list is the origin of culture.

In his own book, Eco goes back to ancient history to find examples of literary lists. Homer, in The Iliad, spends 350 verses naming generals and ships in the Greek army. Eco gives us lists contained in the works of Virgil and Dante, the Bible, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and on through the centuries.

***

The bestseller list, though not quite so old, has deeper roots than we might expect. Harry Thurston Peck compiled and published the first one in February 1895, in The Bookman magazine. Publishers Weekly caught on and inaugurated its own bestseller list in 1912. The ranking-by-sales trend spread to other industries. Billboard began releasing music charts in the 1930s and inaugurated the Hot 100 in 1958.

It’s easy to see how critics might regard these types of lists with indifference bordering on disdain. They’re a useful tool for publishers, distributors, and everyone on that side of an industry, but they’re a real downer for critical authority. Who cares what people are actually reading—we want to tell you what you should be reading! We’ll keep it simple, though; we’ll give you lists, too.

One wonders which critic penned the first top 10, and when. What magazine or newspaper was it for?

“Pauline once called me a ‘list queen’ to my face,” wrote film critic Andrew Sarris in 2001, after the death of his critical rival, Pauline Kael. “…[I]t started me thinking. To my knowledge, Pauline was the only critic never to compile a 10-best list. Her admirers might say that Pauline was above such trivial journalistic diversions. But with a 10-best list, a critic puts his or her tastes on the line, and makes an easier target than one would get, for example, by plowing through Pauline’s stream-of-consciousness prose.”

***

If the list is the origin of culture, then all culture springs from the compulsion to order. In other words, the to-do list I make as a private individual is an unlikely sibling of the “Top 10 Exhibitions of This Year” list I write as a critic: both reflect me trying to manage the chaos of the world. The grocery list I jot down when I decide to bake brownies is, I would venture, a cousin. (Trying to manage the chaos of the supermarket.) What do we make of this?

Another question: What happens when so many lists vie for supremacy? The Publishers Weekly bestseller list dukes it out with the New York Times bestseller list; the New York Times bestseller list takes on the Time critic’s top picks list; the Time critic’s list faces off against the Entertainment Weekly critic’s list; the Entertainment Weekly critic’s list goes blow-for-blow with an Amazon user’s Listmania list. And then there’s your friend with the blog you like—you know, that one. He’s got his own lists of books you should read, too.

***

To mark the tenth anniversary of September 11, New York magazine created an encyclopedia of 9/11, an alphabetical ordering of phrases and symbols: “Irony, The End of” preceded “Islam,” which led to “Jumpers.” It was, the editors wrote, a reaction to the overwhelmingness of the event, an attempt “not to shrink from its scale but to embrace it.”

The encyclopedia builds on our usual method of collective remembrance for tragedy: listing the names of people who died. The etched walls of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the reading of the names on Holocaust Remembrance Day—these are attempts at comprehension in lieu of comprehensiveness. Listing as an imposition of form on a mess of history and memories.

***

The list is omnipresent, and in that sense, it’s a bit like God: existing all around us, capable of assuming many different forms, a way to structure our lives. “Thirteen are the ways that God is good,” goes the song that Jews sing on Passover. The whole song is, in fact, a list—from one through thirteen, each number represents a different tenet of Judaism. “Eight are the days before a bris,” and so on. As a kid, I bellowed those words in a gymnasium filled with hundreds of other Jewish kids dressed awkwardly in their holiday best. We would stand on the laminated benches of the cafeteria folding tables and yell-sing the number corresponding to our grade—“FOUR ARE THE MOTHERS!!” We did that for eight years (we didn’t have a high school; I don’t remember who filled in numbers nine through thirteen in the song), always trying to be louder than the other grades.

***

Let’s talk about the Internet.

The Internet has been to lists what it was to home videos and amateur porn: the great enabler. In his book Belknap calls it “the apotheosis of the list.” There are simply more lists on the Web than could ever possibly be useful, or enjoyable. Wading through it all—publications that offer them both earnestly and ironically, user-based sites that let you generate and vote on them, various tools and apps for making and managing them—it’s hard not to feel the water rising around your waist.

Even the way we navigate the Internet and get information—by typing a query into a search engine—results in a stack of links. If you use Google, you’ll get anywhere from one to three more lists on the left side of the page, representing ways to edit and refine your search. At the bottom, a two-column list of related searches will appear, and below that a horizontal list of more pages. You are boxed in. The list is inescapable. It is helpful, but it is also confining, organized yet overwhelming. On the Internet, the consummate mechanism for controlling chaos struggles not to become a form of chaos itself.

***

Contrary to popular belief and much critical ire, the Internet did not beget the listicle (a portmanteau of “list” and “article”). Magazines did. But the Internet offered a garden in which this hybrid journalistic form could grow and spread its seed. Not only that, but because the listicle and its fellow species, the slide show, could be broken up into multiple pages and thus induce people to click through, slide by slide, some people believe this genus provides part of the answer to the nagging question, how can websites make money?

Though I can’t do the precise math, the model looks something like this:
More slides=more pages=more page views=more ads=more money.

Among other places, listicles and slide shows have found a home at the cultural commentary website Flavorwire. Its editors have perfected the art of turning any given topic into a list or slide show. Speaking with me about a recent post that could have run as an essay but was instead broken into a top-10 slide show, managing editor Caroline Stanley said: “I think couching it like that makes it more accessible. Slide shows are obviously generating page views, but I always try to think of myself as the reader first. Breaking 3,000 words into something that’s less intimidating to look at is important; it helps people move through something. … I think there’s nothing, for the Web, worse than looking at this page where it’s a few thousand words to get through.”

Maybe Nicholas Carr is right—maybe we are deep in The Shallows, and the Internet has changed the way we read and think. Shorter attention spans. More pages. Less writing per page. Pictures! LISTS!

***

I recently met the culture editor at an esteemed magazine that produces a lot of lists. When asked about them, she replied that she finds something incredibly satisfying about the process of clicking through a slide show.

This comment bounced off my brain like a rubber ball. I despise clicking through slide shows. I’m not sure what this says about me. Either I represent the past, when we used to read articles all on one page, or maybe two or three pages, but certainly not ten (unless it was in The New Yorker); or I represent the future, a world in which our attention spans are too short even for slide shows and all we want are clean, simple lists.

***

I write a lot of lists. These days I probably make a to-do list a day, in addition to the others I keep floating around: story ideas, exhibitions I want to see, people I’ve slept with. But I don’t want to share them with you. Do you want to read them? I doubt it. And I’m not sure I want to see yours.

The Internet has this funny tendency, though: it turns us inside out and makes us into narcissists. On the Internet, we suddenly think most of what we have to say is interesting and worth sharing with the world. Enter listography.com.

The website was founded by Lisa Nola and her partner, Adam Marks, in 2006 (they’ve also published an accompanying series of fill-in-the-blank, diary-like journals). It provides a platform for users to create lists of any kind; people use it for everything from daily to-dos to television episodes (yes, episodes, not shows) watched in a given year, to places they want to travel. Each listographer gets a page, for which he or she chooses a background theme. The lists are laid out on top of it, like pieces of paper arranged neatly on a desktop.

On the site, Nola and Marks bill the project as autobiography through list making: “A listography is a perpetual work in progress, a time capsule, and a map of your life for friends and family.” Fair enough—except that traditionally, personal lists are more like diaries than autobiographies. In fact, they often go in diaries. Do we really want to read the private musings of strangers? I had thought that kind of interest extended only to people we love or dead celebrities.

But I was wrong! Not since the coming of Live Journal and Blogger and MySpace and Facebook do we only care about the quotidian existences of those we know (or think we know). We are equal-opportunity snoopers now.

“When we were building the site, it was a time when social networking was really popular,” Nola told me. “A lot of this became a question of, would people want to share their lists publicly, and would that be the majority? We had to figure out what the overall picture would be.” In the end, as with so much of the Internet, the overall picture was public sharing.

***

Possible reasons we make and share lists:

1. Maybe it’s about helping ourselves.
Psychologist Dr. Green: “The bulk of information we come across that really matters to our functioning is information that we need to remember for a short time but that we don’t, over the long run, need to commit to memory. Those are the things we keep in a calendar or on a list. Lists and other organizational techniques play a very important role in keeping track of that information and helping us function well. I think we feel better when we’re organized. It feels good to get things done.”

2. Maybe it’s about having an “expert” help us.
Author Sasha Cagen, on her website: “As the world's leading todolistologist, I'm all about breaking down your big dreams into manageable steps and fully celebrating every crossed-off item along the way so you ENJOY the process of doing.”

3. Maybe it’s about helping each other.
Listography's Lisa Nola: “A lot of people enjoy sharing and commenting and being inspired by other people. I made some lists about her [Nola’s mother, who died of cancer last year] that were really private, but I made them public at the time. It was the same way people use any social media website—it was sort of reaching out for comfort. A lot of people reached out, and I was surprised at how comforted I was.”

***

When you think about it, list making has a kind of creative limit: it’s mostly aggregation, filling empty spots with preexisting items. But choosing those items is often an assertion of power, an act of curation: what doesn’t make the cut is as important as what does.

Today, though, as we increasingly rely on obscure knowledge for novelty, what kind of power does list making give us: the supremacy with which to name globe-shaped foods? A fine eye for spotting the 10 hottest women on the Texas sex offenders list? I worry that we find ourselves knowing a lot, so little of it worth knowing. We risk becoming masters of our own triviality.

Eco, in his interview with Der Spiegel, said, “The list doesn’t destroy culture; it creates it.” This may once have been the case, but it isn’t anymore. For better or for worse, the list now recycles culture. Where once it bred, today it borrows.



Related: 100 Great (Not Best) Songs of 2011 and How Much More Do Books Cost Today?

Jillian Steinhauer writes about art, comics, and other things that strike her fancy for places like the New York Observer, Guernica Daily, Hyperallergic, and The Jewish Daily Forward. Like you and all your friends, she's on Twitter. Image: A page from Madonna's to-do list in 1990, courtesy of Gotta Have It, via Lists of Note.

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