Form in One-Way Street is no mere envelope, but the very arena in which these objects and phenomena clash and generate their sparks. This edition’s index testifies to the dizzying thematic diversity of Benjamin’s undertaking: children’s toys, capital punishment, money, mobs, utopia, fancy goods, misery, souvenirs, beggars, and red neon advertising signs reflected in pools of dirty rain. Its formal daring is unmatched by any of Benjamin’s earlier work… One-Way Street is dead set on a new mode of materialism, one that shares with Surrealism an esteem for everyday objects, debris, junk, and dross-for whatever is marginal, marginalized, outmoded, or fleeting. “The prose in One-Way Street is positively electrified by the historical moment… Far more important than any residues of past literature, however prevalent, are the ways in which One-Way Street ushers in a wholly original literary aesthetics.
0 kommentar(er)
