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I used to collect books of lists. I say used to – I might not be able to resist if I came across a new one. But it’s a limited sort of field, although perhaps wider than you might think. The classic volume in the field is the simply titled, and best-selling, Book of Lists, of course, yet it also includes such esoteric tomes as The Book of Royal Lists (which I have with a signed inscription – although not to me – of one of the compilers), The Complete Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Lists and – not in my collection but should certainly be on my to-buy list (aha!), The Wrestlecrap Book of Lists! (which comes complete with a tax-free exclamation mark as part of its title).

It is only human nature to make lists. For collectors, lists are almost their raison-detre. Collectors love nothing more than to compile lists of the things they collect. Bibliography – which is something I’ll be talking about at more length some other time – is the ultimate act of list-making in the book collecting world.

But think further. Lists are a component of fiction, too. One of the first things school students learn about the comma is that it is used to make lists. Writers also like the semi-colon for this purpose – the semi-colon being this mysterious, alluring punctuation mark that, like a bit of a tipple, one can become overfond of. I first came across the Semi-Colon, Its Imminent Disappearance, And The Importance Of Its Preservation (or at least, I wish there was a book with that title – I’d buy it!) in John Irving’s Hotel New Hampshire (of which I only have a battered and bruised British first edition of little financial value). The book includes, towards the end, a discussion on the semi-colon, bemoaning the fact no one uses it any more. Which is, as the English say, poppycock! I am glad to report the semi-colon is very much alive and starting revolutions. Last I heard it was wanted by the FBI for causing excessive literariness and endangering public safety. However, we have not gathered here to discuss the renegade semi-colon, but rather the function of lists, to which the humble semi-colon is a mere accessory.

Why are lists important? They have so many uses I can only talk about two or three of them. One is in description, as in this snapshot of the city of Haifa (from my forthcoming story “The Projected Girl”, in Ellen Datlow’s Naked City anthology):

Standing on the balcony and leaning slightly out over the railings, Danny could see the streets below, where partisans, rabbis, poets and assassinated politicians wove between each other: there Hannah Senesh, who parachuted into Yugoslavia and death at the hands of the Nazis; there the Ba’al Shem Tov, who could perform miracles; there the great Arlozorov Street, named after the man who was shot right there on the beach, back in 1942; there Ibn Gvirol, the Andalusian poet and author of the Fons Vitae. Looking left, the golden dome of the Baha’i temple shone in the sun and there, further down, was the great sprawling mass of Hadar, with its shawarma stands, its cheap clothing and sunglasses, its second-hand book stores, dingy travel agents and numerous coffee shops – Danny’s favourite place in the whole, wide world.

There is something interesting to me in the way street names define a city. Israeli cities are full of ghosts; London’s streets of implied exotic pasts – Rose Street was a public latrine, St. Giles’ Circus – now a busy intersection – was a public gallows. Geomancy is fun. But speaking of ghosts and gallows leads me, naturally, to murder. The fact is that crime writers love their lists. Lists are often used to hide clues, as in the following example:

On the desk of the late Mr. Penrose-Trimm were a letter opener, made of ivory; an envelope with a Cape Triangular stamp, cancelled, and an almost-illegible scribbled address; a whiskey glass, empty; a pen; a notebook; a vase of fresh flowers; a clock stopped at three-thirty-five; a capsule of cyanide; a paperweight with a red-black substance staining one side; a revolver; a plastic frog; a pencil case; and a typewriter.

Ooh, those crafty crime writers! Which of these items is a clue? Who murdered Mr. Penrose-Trimm? And how? Was it cyanide in his whiskey? Was it the paperweight stained with what might be blood? Was it the revolver? What does Mr. Penrose-Trimm do?

We can deduct (write it down, Watson!) that Mr. Penrose-Trimm is a writer (pen, notebook, typewriter). We might infer that he is a crime writer – hence the various exotic murder implements on the table; that he may have a child (hence the plastic frog); that someone has changed the flowers on his desk recently; and on and on and – look! I made another list right there.

The real clue, which we only figure out many pages later, was actually the envelope with the Cape Triangular stamp, by the way. The almost-illegible address scribbled on the envelope actually says, “It was Colonel Mustard, in the Billiard Room, with the number eight ball.” But no one had thought to look at the writing closely until the detective, Mr. Pembrook-Pentecost Primm, has a blinding flash and realises the clue had been there all along. There is another reasoning in crime circles for including clues in lists: the unwary reader, eager to get to the action, would often skip lines of static description, therefore not even seeing the planted clue until forced to go back and say, “Oh, yeah, right, it was there all along.” It’s a bit of an iffy proposition – hoping the reader skips what you write is not such a great idea – but it works.

Lists really are essential. They impose order, which is what writing essentially is. The humble commas serve as the traffic officers – or rather, traffic cones – while the semi-colons act as glow-marks along the proverbial road of the narrative. There is a wonderful crime story by Antony Mann called “Shopping” which is composed entirely of shopping lists (they start with flowers and chocolate and end up with knife, masking tape and black bin bags). Finally, lists can be used for both humour and to create dissonance, and I’ll end this with a short extract from my forthcoming book (with Nir Yaniv), The Tel Aviv Dossier, in which I get to indulge my love of lists to a Nero-like level of excess.

We’re going up-hill. Everything is at an angle, and here and there there’s the sound of crashing, buildings falling down, the noise startling in the quiet. Occasionally something comes rolling down the slope – loose fencing, car tyres, an Uzi, a potted-plant, a dead cat, a frying-pan, an old issue of Penthouse, a black chasid’s hat looking like a flying-saucer, a dirty-laundry basket made of bamboo, a paperback Amos Oz novel, a TV remote control, a goldfish, a photocopier rolling like a boulder, a Coca-Cola sign, burger wrappers, a door, a little clay figure of the sort school kids make in art class… Daniel reaches out for that last one. It’s an ugly thing, a grotesque little figure like some sort of primitive fetish figurine, but painted in garish gouache colours. It’s a head. It looks like a toad. I almost expect it to blink. I hate toads. Frogs too. Daniel says, “It’s a head.”

“Yes,” I say, a little testily, “I can see that.”

“No,” he says. “It’s a head.”

“Daniel, I already told you–”

“Hagar–”

“Dan–”

I finally look up. And there’s a human head coming down the slope towards us. It’s disgusting. I make sure the camera captures it. The head bounces and rolls and comes to land at Daniel’s feet. I think I’m going to be sick.

“I told you,” he says.

Lavie Tidhar writes weird fiction. This is his web site. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and lived in South Africa and the UK. Most recently he’s lived in the Banks islands of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, one of the most remote and isolated places on Earth. Lavie’s website is http://www.lavietidhar.co.uk/.

In 2007, Apex Publications released a collection of Jewish adventure stories titled HebrewPunk from Lavie Tidhar. This book is available as a direct order from the Apex Store and from the Apex aStore.