[lit-ideas] The life of Walter Benjamin, not very well told
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 12:37:28 -0700
*Review of a book on Walter Benjamin in today's Wall Street Journal*
*http://tinyurl.com/q2qwcyp <http://tinyurl.com/q2qwcyp>*
'Benjamin is here as much a flesh-and-blood representative of the modern as
its theoretician. Modernism was all about the peripheral, the ephemeral,
the accidental, the transient. It was about plurality, not singularity;
ambiguity instead of certainty. Walter Benjamin traveled this off-road, and
his thought was consistent with his experience. He was an incessant
gambler, a serial adulterer, an experimenter with drugs and a refugee in
every sense. In discarding traditional intellectual categories and seeking
new kaleidoscopic sources of inspiration, he showed parallel urges in his
ideas.'
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This paragraph alone should win its authors some sort of prize.
Robert Paul
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