Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City

by Graeme Gilloch, Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin is now widely recognized as one of the most original and perceptive thinkers of the twentieth century. This book is a timely and lucid study of Benjamin's lifelong fascination with the city and forms of metropolitan experience.Benjamin's critical and complex account of the modern urban environment is traced through a number of key texts: the pioneering sketches of Naples, Marseilles and Moscow; his childhood reminiscences of Berlin; and his brilliant and unfinished studies of nineteenth-century Paris and the poet Charles Baudelaire.

Gilloch emphasizes the importance of these writings for an interpretation of Benjamin's work as a whole, and highlights their relevance for our contemporary understanding of modernity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Architecture

227 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1996

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've read a little Benjamin and found yourself rereading passages and scratching your head because, well, you're not as well read as you might be and you, like me, are more curious than scholarly, then I'd pick up this elegant little volume and read it slowly and deeply. Gilloch not only puts Benjamin's writing in perspective of his time and place, but opens the door to the depth and rightness of Benjamin's observations. I am deeply indebted to Gilloch, whose perceptive readings and lucid rendering of Benjamin's difficult work has helped me to read the man with greater insight and enthusiasm.

[Charlie Mansfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Developed from Gilloch’s PhD thesis, this book helps other academic researchers to find a productive route into Benjamin’s vast writings. In one of our projects for example, we sought 4 key themes that Gilloch finds in Benjamin’s work and applied them to a seaside city in the UK, with some success.

[Philippe · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Myth and Metropolis, Graeme Gilloch makes a valiant attempt to orient prospective readers in Benjamin's writings on the city. He structures the work longitudinally into four main periods, from the early Denkbilder (Naples, Moscow) on Berlin memories, to the Paris Arcades work and the writings on Baudelaire. Vertically (so to speak), Gulloch distinguishes five layers in his reading: physiognomic, phenomenological, historical, mythological and political. Finally, the fabric of Benjamin's metropolitan writings is traversed by numerous modulations: between surface and depth, the monumental and the marginal, the dreamlike and the concrete.

My conclusion after reading this book is that there is no Benjaminian method and no theory except an uncanny isomorphism between city and text. Benjamin's work is a labyrinthine text-as-city, with dead-end streets, shadowy pedestrian bridges, luminous courtyards and enigmatic reflections in shop windows that draw the reader ever further into a kind of mournful and lyrical urban symphony.

Gilloch's effort is commendable, but he might have shaved off another 30 pages or so to avoid repetition and give his account more heft. 3.5 stars.

[Guy Mankowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm currently about halfway through this book and have found it deeply engrossing. In it, complex ideas are disseminated in a manner that is not only readable, but almost compulsive. The chapter on 'phantasmagoria of modernity' was a stand out for me, synthesising Benjamin's ideas about the fetishisation of product through arcades beautifully. The book offers deep and useful insights into the way cities are constructed to reflect need, whilst using writing that is inspiring and evocative. Lines like 'the cityscape and the artefacts within found therein are dream-like creations of dormant creativity' typify what I mean. The idea that we can somehow unpack 'utopian wish images' through Benjamin's methods is a fascinating one and I can't wait to see what the other chapters offer. I would suggest this book for someone familiar with Marx's ideas on consumerism, it also sat well for me with Baudelair's ideas on flaneurism and Foucault's theories of power.

[Yvonne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in a lucid way, with a conclusion that tilts anyone who is seriously interested in Walter Benjamin's work simply of the floor.