(np) Walter Benjamin

[Raphael Saltwood]

While that

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
 is indeed a brilliant essay

  *    I especially like the passing reference to bicycle races among newsboys whose employers sponsored the races & who aspired to become bicycle racers (for the historical flavor & because who doesn’t like bicycle racers? - (Ginger Baker started as one before getting into drumming
  *   https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/aug/19/ginger-baker-cream-blind-faith-interview-rocks-backpages
  *   Has a brief, sidelong mention of his bike racing)
  *   And how he relates that to the aspirational tendencies of mechanically reproduced art for viewers to become part of such a work, and rather optimistically (which is nice because he usually isn’t very) to define this as a progressive tendency



  *    there’s also a neat article in Rhizome

http://rhizomes.net/issue20/yates/
which really gave me a feeling of sympathy for the guy, whose intellectual gifts were never fully appreciated in his lifetime.

Please pardon me if I’ve posted it here before - or if I inadvertently copied somebody’s previous post of it, as I recently did with the book cover article (Tim Strzechowski put it up on the Facebook Pynchon group & I opened the link, read it later, and forgot where it came from)

But it did seem like a fun read anyway!