The Lure of the List

By LINDSAY WATERS

Who doesn't find lists irresistible? Letterman's Top Ten, no matter how dumb it is, jolts a tired show and audience to attention. The cultural critic Greil Marcus used deadly serious humor to rate the deaths of rock stars in his classic 1979 essay "Rock Death in the 1970s: A Sweepstakes," deflating a lot of pretentious nonsense being written about rock...