Benjamin in Extremis

From n+1 magazine…

Walter Benjamin, or rather, the now-beloved figura of Benjamin—shuffling, myopic, mustachioed, fat, unhealthy, small round glasses glinting like flashlights—was largely unattractive in his own lifetime. Introducing Benjamin, a precis of his life and work in comic-book form, spends an inordinate amount of time demonstrating that Benjamin had no positive libido—and that, in fact, women just could not under any circumstances find him attractive. How strange is it now, then, to read in the Guardian that “as a teenager,” the novelist Nicole Krauss “had a crush on the German philosopher.” How odd to reflect upon the growth and consolidation of a veritable Benjamin industry in the sixty-five years since his death, an industry that extends well beyond the academy, to art-pop songs like Laurie Anderson’s “The Dream Before (For Walter Benjamin),” and Jay Parini’s embarrassingly unreadable “novel of ideas” Benjamin’s Crossing. A movie must surely be on the way: can I start by suggesting Tim Robbins as Benjamin? More…