Volume 48, Number 1 · January 11, 2001
The Marvels of Walter Benjamin
By J.M. Coetzee
Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926 Edmund Jephcott, Harry Zohn, and others.
by Walter Benjamin, edited by Marcus Bullock, edited by Michael W. Jennings. Translated from the German by Rodney Livingstone, Stanley Corngold,
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 520 pp., $37.50
Selected Writings,Volume 2: 1927-1934
by Walter Benjamin, edited by Michael W. Jennings, edited by Howard Eiland, edited by Gary Smith. Translated from the German by Rodney Livingstone and others.
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 870 pp., $37.50
The Arcades Project
by Walter Benjamin, Translated from the German and French by Howard Eiland, by Kevin McLaughlin
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 1,073 pp., $39.95
The story is by now so well known that it barely needs to be retold. The setting is the Franco-Spanish border, the time 1940. Walter Benjamin, fleeing occupied France, presents himself to the wife of a certain Fittko he has met in an internment camp. He understands, he says, that Frau Fittko will be able to guide him and his companions across the Pyrenees to neutral Spain. Frau Fittko takes him along on a trip to scout out the best routes; he brings along a heavy briefcase. Is the briefcase really necessary, she asks? It contains a manuscript, he replies. 'I cannot risk losing it. It…must be saved. It is more important than I am.'
Review, 6413 words
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