Stephen King's grocery list (1992?)

[Baker, John]

Whether grocery lists or laundry lists, the trope has been around at least since 1969, when Woody Allen's humor piece, The Metterling Lists, was published in The New Yorker on 5/10/1969 (subsequently reprinted in Allen's collection Getting Even).  It's a satirical review of The Collected Laundry Lists of Hans Metterling, Vol. I, published by Venal & Sons.  Metterling supposedly was a famous Central European intellectual, probably a reference to Franz Kafka.  Allen made his point in the first paragraph, when he wrote that "this obdurate and sparkling book will instantly lay to rest the unpleasant rumors that Venal & Sons, having reaped rich rewards from the Metterling novels, play, and notebooks, diaries, and letters, was merely in search of continued profits from the same lode.  How wrong the whisperers have been!"

 

John Baker

 

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