One-Way Street by Walter Benjamin

One-Way Street by Walter Benjamin

Presented in a new edition with expanded notes, this genre-defying meditation on the semiotics of late-1920s Weimar culture, composed of 60 short prose pieces that vary wildly in style and theme, offers a fresh opportunity to encounter Walter Benjamin at his most virtuosic and experimental, writing in a vein that anticipates later masterpieces.

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 aestheticsIts 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. 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. Form in One-Way Street is no mere envelope, but the very arena in which these objects and phenomena clash and generate their sparks. Benjamin’s aphorisms mimic the rhythms of the street, instantiating the experiences most proper to it: distraction, reverie, shock, haste, detour, etc. Scathing critique is mixed with imagistic commentary and surrealistic prose poetry—all broken into shards and scattered like a mosaic of fragments. But however atomized and heterogeneous, the little pieces of One-Way Street pursue a common goal: an idiosyncratic exposé on history (specifically, the disintegration of culture) as deciphered in the most concrete of its artifacts and rituals. -- Michael Blum * Los Angeles Review of Books *
One-Way Street is Benjamin’s most daring and experimental book; though short, it contains a wide range of genres ranging from aphorisms and political satire to maxims and instructions. -- Carolin Duttlinger * Times Literary Supplement *

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was the author of many works of literary and cultural analysis. Michael W. Jennings is Class of 1900 Professor of Modern Languages at Princeton University. Greil Marcus is the author of The Doors, Mystery Train, and other books.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780674052291
ISBN 10	0674052293
Title	One-Way Street
Author	Walter Benjamin
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Harvard University Press
Year published	2016-05-02
Number of pages	144
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.