From the Editor

To choose is as difficult as the choices are to list. That's true when choosing a course, a curriculum, required reading, a new colleague, a partner, or a path through the Colonial Mall parking lot -- not that choices are innumerable, as a list may make them appear. The word "list," though, has numerable origins: from the OE lystan akin to lust which gives us the meaning -- "wish" or "choose"; or from the OE hlystan akin to listen which gives the meaning -- "a craving" or "inclination to hear"; or the OE liste or edge which provides the meaning for, among other things, "an arena for jousting," "an arena for combat," "a field of competition or controversy"  or, more generally, "a limit" or "boundary." No doubt there is much tension in the word "list" -- to lust for, yet be bounded by -- to hear of the limits or boundaries, yet not see them -- an arena for competition or controversy, and if my impression of jousting is correct, quite terrifically violent and unnervingly risky this competition may be.

We live in an age of lists -- the top ten, the top one hundred, this year's best, or better yet the 1998 Modern Library's top one hundred books of the century!  Lists also give rise to awards and trophies, similar, I suppose, to the tradition of jousting, risking your neck for the golden cup or some other precious prize.  I am under the impression that there has to be a beginning to the list and an end, the head of the class and the dunce, a winner and a loser.  Can one exist without the other?   This, I assume, according to our faith in ratios, in rationality, in Plato and Aristotle, our faith in the world according to binary limits -- heaven and hell, good and bad, sane and insane, up and down, young and old, life and death.  There must be something at the bottom and something at the top, a number one and a number ten.  Let's forget any other possibilities.  If there were anything below the bottom or above the top, I'd rather not have my whole sense of logic fall to the floor in a heap.  Bookends are convenient.

I suppose making lists is a way of making life easier.  By believing in their authority, it is much easier to choose; that is, if we can trust the list makers to do their jobs well, if we can believe the person who says "let's do the numbers" to see what choice there is to make. And rather than question the whole idea of numerical weight or order, even a chain of being (where does that leave my favorite food, the oyster, for goodness sakes?), in our hectic get it done mode, we often ascribe to the wisdom of the numbers, especially having to do with students, majors, fte's, sch's, reading lists, courses, dollars, teacher effectiveness, and SOIS scores; rather than the wisdom of listening for a student's craving or inclination, of determining the limits or boundaries of study, or contesting the value of the liberal arts against vocational training.  Bloody hell, certainly it is risky to challenge the tyrannical authority of the lists themselves.  Lists, whatever the numbers say, consist of arbitrary guesses of what our choices really are.  Hopeful, we use them to blindly stab (objectively, we reason) into the subjective heart of value.

What number would you give to reading a novel as opposed to watching a movie, eating french fries as opposed to steamed veggies, Jeannette Winterson versus Camille Paglia; Tom Clancy versus Richard Ford. I remember an economics professor who once challenged me to give a dollar value to everything I did in a day -- to see how much value I could get. More bang for the buck kind of thinking -- it was intriguing, but in the final analysis utterly useless -- it was a game, a philosophical joust into the capitalist-practical dreamscape, with numbers to back it up. If I came out on top with a million bucks by the end of the day, I could say "I feel like a million (you-know-whats)."  If I could somehow manipulate the numbers to my advantage, I would do so.  A nap was worth 5,000 dollars, a trip to the dry cleaners 2 cents, an earnest conversation with my ill-tempered room mate, a waste of time and money.  It was all about manipulating the numbers and making yourself the winner before the contest even began; however, on even ground, by fair chance, through any democratic rule of debate -- to enter the list, to enter into choice, is to do battle with conscience and value.