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A review by casparb
One-Way Street: And Other Writings by Walter Benjamin
Benjamin is a kind of black sheep in the 20thc and an icon the more I think of him the more I'm overwhelmed what a person he's warm and accessible and genuinely piercing. One Way Street as Verso has it here is a curious hodgepodge of Benjamin in both the height of his theoretical practice - the iconic Theologico-Political Fragment , On Language ... , and Surrealism nestle among each other - as well as more autobiographical works such as Hashish in Marseilles and the phasing sharpness of the title essay.
He's just exquisite I can't do him justice here. I'll leave with two:
The satirist is the figure in whom the cannibal was received into civilisation (p.327)
Life only seemed worth living where the threshold between waking and sleeping was worn away in everyone as by the steps of multitudinous images flowing back and forth, language only seemed itself where sound and image, image and sound interpenetrated with automatic precision and such felicity that no chink was left for the penny-in-the-slot called "meaning" (p.263)
He's just exquisite I can't do him justice here. I'll leave with two:
The satirist is the figure in whom the cannibal was received into civilisation (p.327)
Life only seemed worth living where the threshold between waking and sleeping was worn away in everyone as by the steps of multitudinous images flowing back and forth, language only seemed itself where sound and image, image and sound interpenetrated with automatic precision and such felicity that no chink was left for the penny-in-the-slot called "meaning" (p.263)