Walter Benjamin

by Esther Leslie

Overview

Drawing upon a wealth of journal writings and personal correspondence, Esther Leslie presents a uniquely intimate portrait of one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century, Walter Benjamin. She sets his life in the context of his middle-class upbringing; explores the social, political, and economic upheaval in Germany during and after World War I; and recounts Benjamin’s eccentric love of toys, trick-books, travel, and ships. From the Frankfurt School and his influential friendships with Theodore Adorno, Gershom Scholem, and Bertolt Brecht, to his travels across Europe, Walter Benjamin traces out the roots of Benjamin’s groundbreaking writings and their far-reaching impact in his own time. Leslie argues that Benjamin’s life challenges the stereotypical narrative of the tragic and lonely intellectual figure—instead positioning him as a man who relished the fierce combat of competing theories and ideas.

Closing with his death at the Spanish-French border in a desperate flight from the Nazis and Stalin, Walter Benjamin is a concise and concentrated account of a capacious intellect trapped by hostile circumstances.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781861893437
Publisher:	Reaktion Books, Limited
Publication date:	01/15/2008
Series:	Critical Lives
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Esther Leslie is professor of political aesthetics in the School of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London. She is also author of Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism, Hollywood Flatlands, and Synthetic Worlds, the last published by Reaktion Books.
 

Table of Contents

Abbreviations
 
1  Benjamin's Remnants
2  Youth Culture, 1892-1916
3  Making a Mark, 1917-24
4  Books after Books, 1925-9
5  Man of Letters, 1930-32
6  Noms de Plume, 1933-7
7  Writer's Block, 1938-40
8  Afterwords
 
References
Select Bibliography
Photo Acknowledgements

Editorial Reviews

"Clear and welcome. . . . Leslie records some of the many conjectures about [his death] and some of the fantasies about his survival and purported later life. So much about this man feels unfinished that we cannot let him go."

Financial Times Magazine - Simon Kuper

"Leslie has inhaled the author of The Arcades Project as Kazin inhaled Blake. Benjamin, in fact, seems more coherent in her page than in his own. . . .  It is as if, by evoking the tactile vitality of all that he touched with his thought, Leslie brings him back alive and kicking from the last border he crossed. Argue if you wish with his idea of 'aura,' his 'hierarchies of meaning,' or whether mechanical reproduction is good for the masses. But the mind that put Kafka and Chaplin into the same conceptual frame is his very own Klee painting, an Angelus Novus—the angel of history."

Harper's Magazine - John Leonard

Leslie (English and humanities, U. of London, UK) surveys Benjamin's work, including his unpublished German texts, focusing on his commentary on the politics and aesthetics of technology, and on the underpinning of his work, in particular as he responds to Marxism and its interpretations. Her study also investigates Benjamin's political affiliations and the political context in which he wrote. The subtitle alludes to a caution in one of Benjamin's final compositions written at the end of the 1930s; according to Leslie, Benjamin warns against "the energies of conventional interpretation." The book is distributed by Stylus. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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