The Arcades Project

Benjamin, Walter; Translated by Howard Eiland & Kevin McLaughlin, prepared on the basis of the German volume edited by Rolf Tiedemann

ISBN 10: 067404326X / ISBN 13: 9780674043268

Published by The Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) & London (UK), 1999

META-CLASSIC: MONUMENTAL: NEW First Edition hardcover (Orig. 1999) Unstated First Printing, NEW handsomely-designed unpriced mylar-protected jacket, NEW cover w/ library-durable navy-blue fabric wrapping spine & extending 2.36" onto front & back panels covered in slate-blue paper w/ a portrait of Walter Benjamin printed blue-on-blue on front panel, STRIKING "electric-blue" card-stock end-papers, EXCELLENT unblemished smooth-cut text-block exterior, NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed in Adobe Bethold Baskerville Book & Bodoni on 45-pound Glatfelter Offset Hi-Opaque paper * 6.86" x 10.18" x 2.12", 1.86 kg, xiv+1074 (1098) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: "To great writers," Walter Benjamin once wrote, "finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives." Conceived in Paris in 1927 & still in progress when Benjamin fled the Occupation in 1940, "The Arcades Project" (in German "Das Passagen-Werk") is a monumental ruin, meticulously constructed over the course of 13 years: "the theater," as Benjamin called it, "of all my struggles & all my ideas." Focusing on the arcades of 19th-century Paris--glass-roofed rows of shops that were early centers of consumerism--Benjamin presents a montage of quotations from, & reflections on, 100s of published sources, arranging them in 36 categories w/ descriptive rubrics such as "Fashion," "Boredom," "Dream City," "Photography," "Catacombs," "Advertising," "Prostitution," "Baudelaire," & "Theory of Progress." His central preoccupation is what he calls the commodification of things--a process in which he locates the decisive shift to the modern age. "The Arcades Project" is Benjamin's effort to represent & to critique the bourgeois experience of 19th-century history, &, in so doing, to liberate the suppressed "true history" that underlay the ideological mask. In the bustling, cluttered arcades, street & interior merge & historical time is broken up into kaleidoscopic distractions & displays of ephemera. Here, at a distance from what is normally meant by "progress," Benjamin finds the lost time(s) embedded in the spaces of things. * HIGHEST PRAISE: "Quite simply, 'The Arcades Project' is one of the 20th-century's greatest efforts of historical comprehension, even in its fragmentary form. And the fragmentary form is in any case not untrue to Benjamin's over-all intentions. The book would surely have remained a palimpsest of quotations, for reasons Benjamin several times explains in his writings: the palimpsest is Benjamin's form, his own eccentric effort at totalization." -T.J. Clark, author of "Farewell to an Idea" * "More than half a century after it was composed, Walter Benjamin's fragmentary 'Arcades Project' still surpasses all other historiographic projects on the 19th-century & its capital, Paris. 'The Arcades Project' remains unequaled in the wealth of perspectives it offers, & no other study has come close to its methodological inventiveness or so exemplarily met its demand that history writing be reinvented for every topic & on every occasion. Benjamin's work is the most advanced, most complex, & most comprehensive study of the dominant motifs of the 19th century--motifs that continue to be critically important for us today." -Werner Hamacher, author of 'Premises' * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & due to its weight to international destinations via postal-regulation-mandated USPS INTERNATIONAL PRIORITY AIRMAIL at nation-by-nation rates available on request. Seller Inventory # 010480

Synopsis:

"To great writers," Walter Benjamin once wrote, "finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives." Conceived in Paris in 1927 and still in progress when Benjamin fled the Occupation in 1940, The Arcades Project (in German, Das Passagen-Werk) is a monumental ruin, meticulously constructed over the course of thirteen years--"the theater," as Benjamin called it, "of all my struggles and all my ideas."

Focusing on the arcades of nineteenth-century Paris-glass-roofed rows of shops that were early centers of consumerism--Benjamin presents a montage of quotations from, and reflections on, hundreds of published sources, arranging them in thirty-six categories with descriptive rubrics such as "Fashion," "Boredom," "Dream City," "Photography," "Catacombs," "Advertising," "Prostitution," "Baudelaire," and "Theory of Progress." His central preoccupation is what he calls the commodification of things--a process in which he locates the decisive shift to the modern age.

The Arcades Project is Benjamin's effort to represent and to critique the bourgeois experience of nineteenth-century history, and, in so doing, to liberate the suppressed "true history" that underlay the ideological mask. In the bustling, cluttered arcades, street and interior merge and historical time is broken up into kaleidoscopic distractions and displays of ephemera. Here, at a distance from what is normally meant by "progress," Benjamin finds the lost time(s) embedded in the spaces of things.

About the Authors: Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was the author of many works of literary and cultural analysis.

Howard Eiland teaches literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kevin McLaughlin is Assistant Professor of English at Brown University and the author of Writing in Parts: Imitation and Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Literature.

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Arcades Project
Publisher: The Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) & London (UK)
Publication Date: 1999
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: New
Dust Jacket Condition: New
Edition: 1st Edition