In the ongoing struggle to define and delineate narrative, the literary list presents a problem. The theoretical scholarship on literary lists has focused predominantly on lists in literature and has largely accepted the perspective of classical narratology, positioning these lists in opposition to narrative in general, and to the narratives within which they are embedded, in particular. However, lists as literature have remained largely unexamined, and it is in relation to these literary lists that the problem of definition arises. If the opposition of lists to narrative is to be accepted, what is to be made of texts such as Joe Brainard’s I Remember, where the text itself is “merely” one long list? Does such an opposition relegate Brainard’s text – and others like it – to the realm of the strictly non-narrative? And what implications does this idea have for real-world readers of the text, in their interpretation and interaction with the work? This exegesis will analyse the content and structure of Brainard’s text in respect to the work’s operation along the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes, and its presentation and negotiation of temporal, informative and textual gaps. Drawing predominantly on contributions from narratology and literary theory, it will consider Brainard’s literary list in light of traditional and recent concepts of narrative. Rather than confirming the distinction between the literary list and narrative, analysis of Brainard’s work reveals distinctive narrative elements emerging from its purportedly non-narrative form, raising the question of how concrete and useful a distinction between lists and narrative really is, and opening up possibilities for future explorations of literary lists in both theory and creative practice
