The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin
Jeffrey DeShell

Walter Benjamin. The Arcades Project. Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1999. 1,073 pp. $39.95.

A truly monstrous book, Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project is an attempt to write a non-narrative history of the nineteenth century, a history which dispenses with the notions of linear development and progress and relies instead on fleeting images, quotations, and the correspondences or collisions between bits of minutia and esoterica. All in an attempt to awaken us from the dream/myth begun in the nineteenth century, the phantasmagoria of consumption that Benjamin identifies with capitalism.

This book is not the best introduction to the work of Benjamin, and the ideal reader would come heavily armed not only with knowledge of Benjamin’s thinking, but an arsenal of Marx, Baudelaire, Balzac, Blanqui, Fourier, and nineteenth-century French history. The foreword, glossary, index, and footnotes are helpful but not exhaustive. The book’s most difficult feature, however, stems from its explicit and consistent refusal of linear narrative (the chapters are arranged alphabetically and seemingly arbitrarily, so one can start anywhere) and from its insistence on the presentation of minute, concrete detail above the overt explication of theoretical, conceptual, or contextualizing concerns. This style, which is probably more familiar to readers of postmodern fiction than history, philosophy, or even literary theory, demands a different way of reading: a reading that is slow, patient, and thorough.

The book did not leave me with the satisfied feeling of having completely comprehended a polished argument, but I do remember flashes of ideas and imagery: the quotation from Marx describing how the physical senses have been replaced by the sense of ownership; Baudelaire’s suggestion that beggars wear gloves when they beg; gambling and collecting as ways of disrupting the flow of mythological, narrative time. In sum, like the best of literature, The Arcades Project shocked me out of my habits of reading and made me look at the objects around me in new ways. [Jeffrey DeShell]


Interview with Founder Board of Directors Funders Submission Guidelines Dalkey Archive Full Catalog Current and Forthcoming Titles Recent Titles Review of Contemporary Fiction Special Library Offer Special Backlist Sale Stores & Wholesalers Academics Libraries Reviewers Context Casebooks Author Interviews Links Dalkey Archive News Events Newsletter

The Review of Contemporary Fiction The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin Jeffrey DeShell Walter Benjamin. The Arcades Project. Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1999. 1,073 pp. $39.95. A truly monstrous book, Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project is an attempt to write a non-narrative history of the nineteenth century, a history which dispenses with the notions of linear development and progress and relies instead on fleeting images, quotations, and the correspondences or collisions between bits of minutia and esoterica. All in an attempt to awaken us from the dream/myth begun in the nineteenth century, the phantasmagoria of consumption that Benjamin identifies with capitalism. This book is not the best introduction to the work of Benjamin, and the ideal reader would come heavily armed not only with knowledge of Benjamin’s thinking, but an arsenal of Marx, Baudelaire, Balzac, Blanqui, Fourier, and nineteenth-century French history. The foreword, glossary, index, and footnotes are helpful but not exhaustive. The book’s most difficult feature, however, stems from its explicit and consistent refusal of linear narrative (the chapters are arranged alphabetically and seemingly arbitrarily, so one can start anywhere) and from its insistence on the presentation of minute, concrete detail above the overt explication of theoretical, conceptual, or contextualizing concerns. This style, which is probably more familiar to readers of postmodern fiction than history, philosophy, or even literary theory, demands a different way of reading: a reading that is slow, patient, and thorough. The book did not leave me with the satisfied feeling of having completely comprehended a polished argument, but I do remember flashes of ideas and imagery: the quotation from Marx describing how the physical senses have been replaced by the sense of ownership; Baudelaire’s suggestion that beggars wear gloves when they beg; gambling and collecting as ways of disrupting the flow of mythological, narrative time. In sum, like the best of literature, The Arcades Project shocked me out of my habits of reading and made me look at the objects around me in new ways. [Jeffrey DeShell]

Search the full text of our books: