What can we learn from an apparently simple list, apart from the contents of the list?
Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
The list below has been written in accordance with a couple of rules (constraints) I set for myself, in the spirit of the Oulipo.
The Oulipo, or Workshop of Potential Literature, is a way of using constraints in order to produce a piece of creative writing. For example, you might decide that you will not use a particular letter (this is a lipogram), or where all the words in a piece start with the same letter (tautogram).
According to one of the founders of the Oulipo:
“Oulipians are rats who build the labyrinth from which they will try to escape.”
The following classification of my articles was constructed using four principles. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to work out what those principles are. (I’ve already given one of them away.)
I have been influenced partly by Borges’ taxonomy in Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.
Here’s the list:
Articles about education, articles I have written and wish I hadn’t, articles I haven’t written but wish I had, articles I’ve finished but not started, articles I’ve started but not finished, articles I’ve written under a pseudonym, articles I’ve written under my real name, articles that are about writing, articles that are in this list but do not belong in it, articles that are not about education, articles that are not about writing, articles that are not in this list but should be, articles that have been dictated, articles typed in a serif font, articles typed in an Arial font, articles written for a third party magazine or newsletter, articles written for one of my blogs or newsletters, articles written in a notebook in pen, articles written in a notebook in pencil, articles written using a keyboard, creative nonfiction, draft articles, fiction, published articles, scheduled articles, unpublished articles.
You’d be perfectly justified in asking what the point of this exercise was, or what benefits (if any) I derived from it. Here’s my attempt at an answer:
I thought it would interesting and enjoyable to attempt, and it turned out that I was correct.
In order to adhere to the constraints I’d imposed on myself, I had to think very carefully not only about the contents of the list but the order in which the items appear. For example, should they appear in ascending order of importance, or descending order of frequency.
I also had to think: should I make the list syndetic or asyndetic.
These are important considerations. As Eric Griffiths states in his book, If Not Critical:
“[In a list]... (1) the order of items of information is itself a source of information; (2)...the interconnections between items in a sequence can imply more than one rationale, a rationalwe which may change and have, so to speak, a story of its own to tell, and (3) most importantly of all, ... a good way to see how a piece of writing is working is to rewrite it, and consider what difference the rewriting makes....”
So my next challenge to you is to try to rewrite this list, in order to see what difference a change in the ordering makes. Or come up with your own list entirely.
Go to Oulipo22 for more information.
Eric Griffiths, If Not Critical, OUP, 2018