Umberto Eco is terrifyingly erudite, as anyone who has read his novels will attest: the extravagant wealth of information in his novels, on medieval scholarship, or the Kabbalah, or any of a dozen other subjects, is staggering. And anyone who has read, for example, the six-page-long description of the main door of the church of the abbey in The Name of the Rose will confirm that Eco has a penchant—perhaps even a passion—for the obsessively detailed catalogue. His most recent novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, could with justice be described as an amnesic narrator rattling down through a catalogue of pre-World War II Italian comic books, popular songs, magazines, newspapers, and other relics of his forgotten childhood.

So Eco’s latest book, The Infinity of Lists, a work of non-fiction about lists in literature and art from Homer to Dalí, is at the very least in character. And much as Yambo worms his way through pages and pages of exhaustively detailed memorabilia in Queen Loana, so Eco’s musings on the list worm their way through pages of examples of lists in Jorge Luis Borges, Aristotle, James Joyce, Hesiod, Italo Calvino, Rabelais—a great deal of Rabelais—Victor Hugo, and Walt Whitman.

Let me be clear about what the reader should expect from this book: it is an anthology with an essay threaded through it. By even the most generous estimate, only about a fifth of the book is actually Eco talking about lists. The remaining four-fifths is devoted to excerpts from various works of literature and pictures of paintings. Essentially, The Infinity of Lists is a list of lists, with commentary by Eco.

Now, this commentary is quite good, when it goes beyond introducing the anthologized material. It is of course a list of various historic kinds of lists, as well as a list of the reasons for lists. Eco’s thesis, insofar as it goes beyond such cataloguing, is that a poetic or artistic list is greater than the sum of its parts: it implies meaning beyond the boundaries of its constituents, perhaps even creates meaning in a way that nothing else can. That’s a fascinating claim, and one well worth investigating.

The anthologized literary excerpts are also quite good, though of course they are literally nothing but occurrences of literary lists throughout history, and some of them are thickets of impenetrability. Others, however, are marvelous: Thomas Mann’s list of musical instruments, for instance, or Borges’ list of animals (which includes subcategories such as “suckling pigs,” “those that have just broken the flower vase,” “those that at a distance resemble flies,” “etcetera,” and “those that are included in this classification”), or Italo Calvino’s list of the cities in the Khan’s atlas, or—my favorite—Edmond Rostand’s list of the many and various modes in which the Viscount de Valvert should have insulted the nose of Cyrano de Bergerac, delivered by Cyrano himself.

The principle weakness of the book is the art—which, while gorgeous and varied, is much less connected to the rest of the book than it could have been. Far too often, it seems to be merely illustrating the text, rather than the argument. For instance, when Eco uses Ausonius’ list of the characteristics of various fish to demonstrate the “topos of ineffability,” the corresponding illustration is a mosaic of fish, with no apparent link to the ineffable. Since the book is supposed to be as much about the list in the visual arts as in literature, the persistent degradation of the visual arts to illustration rather than a parallel argument hurts the book as a whole.

Ultimately, what can be said about this strange book? That depends. If you, like Eco, easily enjoy lists of the names of angels, the imports of Tyre, mythological medieval beasts, the physical characteristics of women ugly or beautiful, the streets of Paris, alchemical materials, or the things Roland Barthes likes, then this is the book for you. If on the other hand you, like me, are ashamed of your secret impulse to skip the non-dialogue, non-plot portions of books, then this book will be slow-going. But if you take it a few pages at a time, you’ll find it a fascinating and rewarding look into a mostly unexplored aspect of literature and art.

Buy this book online or from your local bookstore. For more titles like this, visit Rizzoli.

This past May, Arda Collins, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, came to the University of Chicago as part of the Poem Present series, reading from It Is Daylight, her first collection of poems. Tall and thin, with an almost adolescent lankiness, she possessed the gentle incertitude of an awkward teenage girl. Her soft, charming monotone matched her appearance and demeanor as well as her poetry of timid surveillance and meek action, at times ironic and at others strikingly emotional. Her poetry is a result of much craft and control; the anxiety and animation in the poet’s voice carefully ebbs and flows, coupled with an irony that manages to remain connected and personal as part of a crafted persona. This was evident as much in her voice as it is on the pages of her collection.

In her foreword, Louise Glück writes, “Collins has invented a persona: Welcome to my world, the first poem seems to say, and for the next ninety-two pages, we are her mesmerized audience—nobody escapes.” Collins’ poems possess a certain hypnotic quality that affects us acutely. Her images are effortless, quiet, and in their lulling quality, unexpectedly beautiful. In “The Sound Of Peeling A Potato” she opens,

Polished shoes, and the world shines in them like a heaven.
Green grass on a sunny November afternoon
and the Leaning Tower of Pisa just in sight.

From the very start of the poem, Collins gives us simple, tested images and constructions. She uses images of grass, heaven, and Pisa, and situates the reader by simply stating the weather, month, and time of day. Rooting the poem in such simple imagery from the start, she runs the danger of being cliché at times; later in the poem—“Lovers at a wintry lake / covered at night with snow.” Again, the observational images of love, nature, and weather, and the cleanness of language seem to toe the line of simple reiteration of what poets began writing centuries ago and what many poets today have largely abandoned.

Yet Collins is doing more than that; she exhibits an understanding of her contemporary readers through her command of these pleasantly unassuming images and their gentle, lulling effect on us. She may be referring both to the lovers and to what has generally come before in the poem when she writes, “They’ll wait five hundred years / while they sit and listen to a potato being peeled.” Collins writes of a quiet half century that passes, an epic passing of time, juxtaposing it with the epically mundane things—the sound of peeling a potato, for example—that fill up such time. Now we begin to understand her project and her use of the images and language, now banal and overused, which have filled the epic space of poetic history. And because of this lulling continuum between the mundane and the epic, the poem’s end is striking:

Not for all the blue sky will they know,
not for all the summer grasses, not for the creamiest cheek
that turns its lips the same forever for a lover on train over a hillside.

A sweeping portrayal of humanity comprises the greater part of the poem, a human history quietly filled with routine tasks—which are reinforced by the outward banality of the imagery. Against this background, these blue skies, summer grasses, and the rambling, constricted construction of the final line are unexpectedly salient. As Glück predicted, we are mesmerized by Collins’ simplicity—and by the end of this mesmerizing process we are struck by her precise, attentive reinvention of these constructions and images.

Yet readers may encounter some difficulty with Collins’ crafted persona. Sometimes Collins’ insistence on outwardly trite and unspectacular images gives us the sense that Collins is hiding from herself, afraid to commit to any specific vision of self and of the persona she seems to want to craft. In “Spring” she employs images and objects that reappear throughout the collection, such as food, lights, and houses. The persona of the poem seems to define herself against and in relation to this recurrent imagery. At the start of the poem, she is “making a roast”—producing something tangible that is hers, a physical stamp of the self in the world. Yet soon thereafter, “When I went back in the house, / the roast was burned black / and the bread was hard,” and here what had been her marker of self is ruined. Even though she “was getting hungry,” she at this point instead “felt afraid / of seeing the refrigerator light go on.” At the end of the poem, her decision to leave the house and purchase food represents an intermediary place between cooking for herself and going hungry, thus providing an intermediary place of self-definition against these images of food. The poem finishes,

I could get in the car right now
and drive all night,
as soon as I had a sandwich.
Turkey, tomato, mayo,
Swiss, lettuce. It was exciting.
I still had my shoes on. I drove to a truck stop.
It was bright inside and I loved the world.
I bought a sandwich and ate it from my lap while I drove.
When I pulled up to my house it was quiet.

Even in these last lines the persona seems to change her mind about what is vital to her own identity. Despite her fear of light in her own home, she is stimulated by the light of another building in the world. The car she drives becomes an intermediary and ambivalent place of inhabitance, just as the sandwich is an intermediary object of self. Then when she pulls up to her home, there is an ominous note of uncertainty. Throughout the entire poem, Collins continually redefines herself in terms of these other things, always noncommittal and always rejecting old notions and replacing them with new, less assured ones; in redefining these images and notions and sprinkling the self amidst them, she manages never to commit to any particular identity or trust any portrayal of self. She is constantly in between, in suspension.

At other times, we observe the persona’s explicit unwillingness to commit. In “It Is Daylight” Collins writes, “Many houses are abutted by hedges. / I don’t like this, but I wouldn’t take them away” and later, “I felt somber and excited about to go into my house”—a blatant paradox. Similarly in “Garden Apartments,” “They were basically ugly. / It’s no one’s fault though” first qualifies her judgment with “basically” and then makes a point not to blame anyone, almost apologizing for her statement.

It seems as if this young poet is searching still, searching for a semblance of self-understanding within an emotional and physical place. She hides herself sometimes and flaunts herself at others, but in the end we are left wondering what Collins wants us to do with this volatile and charming but ultimately idiosyncratic persona. Despite the wonderful craft and command of irony Collins so clearly possesses, we may just have to wait for her next collection for any sort of commitment to a defined self. Until then, however, readers with a certain level of patience will be quite content with It Is Daylight.

Andrew Chen is a third-year undergraduate at the University of Chicago, where he studies English. He writes mostly poetry but tries to branch out as much as he can. He is a contributing editor for The Midway Review as well as a member of the editorial board of Euphony, which he likes very much. He grew up in New Jersey and spends as much time there as he can afford.

Today’s graphic novels are striving to prove to literati that they aren’t just kids’ stuff. By tackling adult themes and employing sophisticated art styles, writers and artists like Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean have shown us what lies beyond the superhero weekly; in doing so they have changed our perception of what graphic novels can be. The Australian artist and illustrator Shaun Tan has, in his own way, been involved in this movement for years—in the medium of picture books written for adults. Despite his considerable talent, he received little American attention until the publication of The Arrival in 2006, in part due to the notoriety of his new publisher, Arthur A. Levine Books (of the Harry Potter series). Major trade magazines such as Publishers Weekly marveled at this innovative and intricate work, going so far as to call it a “timeless stunner.” But Tan still remains a relatively minor name in graphic novels. With the American publication of Tales from Outer Suburbia, a collection of illustrated short fiction, that could all change.

Tan’s art combines intricate detail with incredible breadth of scope. Each image creates a world replete with bizarre machines, animals, ecologies, and other quirks that only become apparent upon re-reading. Combining a sophisticated voice with a child’s-eye perspective and an aesthetic sense equally at home in the heartwarming and the macabre, Tan’s work is unlike anything we’ve seen before. This may explain why he has enjoyed little notoriety in the graphic novel community—his work surpasses its form as he treads into newer, bolder territory. Tan’s picture books celebrate the timeless art of book design, a point especially valuable in an industry where content is beginning to be considered without regard to form. His books don’t contain art—they’re objects of art. They speak to the children in us, but with adult sensibilities. Nostalgic but innovative, they address the core of why we read: to capture a slice of the wonders of imagination that came so easily to us in childhood.

Tan’s work leans toward the darker side of our imaginations. His illustrations for The Viewer—a story by Gary Crew about a boy who finds a viewfinder that tells the sordid history of human violence—are dominated by an apocalyptic sense of dread. But since the protagonist is a naïve child, they become a sick joke only we’re in on. This combination of childlike innocence and dark themes characterizes much of Tan’s work. The Rabbits tells the classic story of colonialism on an island of rabbits conquered by wheel-footed imperials. The Lost Thing is about a boy who discovers a giant semi-mechanical crab without any clear purpose; as no one else can see the lost thing and the boy’s attempts to get it noticed are ignored, we’re forced to wonder who the really alienated character is. The Red Tree is a deeply affecting collection of images with dark, simple captions (such as “the world is a deaf machine” and “without sense or reason”). One of Tan’s best and boldest books, the illustrations are tied into a narrative by the constant presence of a lone girl wandering through dystopian landscapes. Tan’s closest American contemporary is Tim Burton, whose movies for grown-up-kids evoke the same dark feelings that linger through childhood. But Tan’s art accomplishes more with much less, and is a hell of a lot scarier.

These images draw their power from Tan’s incredible attention to detail and wild imagination, no more apparent than in The Arrival. The book poses as a collection of sepia-toned photographs. They images are finely etched pencil drawings that perfectly capture minute facial expressions and the grandeur of entire cities—if only photographs looked this good. Contrasting this realism is a city cast into shadow by flying dragons, gargantuan zeppelins, lizards with feathers, incomprehensible contraptions, and fruits with tails. Nothing replicates the awe-inspiring newness of the immigrant experience like this imagery, coupled with details like ideograms as unreadable to us as Tan’s nameless protagonist. Though for all its fabulism, The Arrival is told with great restraint. Images speak perfectly without the aid of story of captions, and while it will leave no reader unaffected by its poignancy, it’s not a sob story.

Tales from Outer Suburbia moves Tan into newer, lighter territory. It’s a collection of vignettes about the strangeness that lurks under the surface of banal suburban landscapes. Some of the stories are almost entirely text while others are almost all image. Tan plays with his aesthetics as much as he does literary forms: some stories take the form of rich, realistic pencil sketches while others exhibit a brighter color palette than found in other works. But Tan being Tan, these baby-blues and bubble-gum-pinks are used to shade intercontinental ballistic missiles dotting backyards in a satire on arms escalation.

Overall, Tales from Outer Suburbia has a more accessible, cartoony feel to it than most of his other books. This new art style shows just how multi-faceted Tan’s talent is: every form he picks up immediately becomes intensely evocative, rich with meaning and symbolism. Many of the stories opt for the mysterious and heartwarming over the dark and despairing; Tan’s bold social commentaries are well balanced by simple but heartwarming stories. This project is more playful and experimental than Tan’s previous efforts, and the results are rewarding to match. With Tales from Outer Suburbia, Tan takes the picture book—and graphic novels as a whole—into brand new territory. It’s rare to see an artist this playful with forms who also provides deeply satisfying art, but beyond any abstract talk, Tan’s art will leave every reader—children and nostalgic adults—touched.

In many ways, Tan represents everything modern graphic novel artists want: someone innovative and familiar with serious artistic talent and a literary imagination to match. His work may be difficult to classify, but there’s an easy solution to that problem: give these fantastic art books their own display shelf.

Max Falkowitz is a regular reviewer for the online journals Curled Up With A Good Book (curledup.com) and The Book Report (bookreporter.com). He studies Psychology at the University of Chicago.

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Images courtesy of Arthur A. Levine Books