![]() ![]() The city will offer sufficient fantasy to meet most needs. Those who fall under Benjamin’s spell may find themselves less willing to suspend their disbelief in fiction. It captures the relationship between a writer and a city in a form as richly developed as those presented in the great cosmopolitan novels of Proust, Joyce, Musil, and Isherwood. The Arcades Project surpasses its legend. In recent decades, as portions of the book have appeared in English, the unfinished opus has acquired legendary status. ![]() A sprawling, fragmented meditation on the ethos of 19 th-century Paris, The Arcades Project was left incomplete on Benjamin’s death in 1940. By any standard, the appearance of this long-awaited work is a towering literary event. Just published in its first full English edition, The Arcades Project should also win readers with broader tastes. We will be feasting on Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project for years to come. We live on history, biography, criticism, reporting and what used to be called belles-lettres. ![]()
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