written by Walter Benjamin
shared by sean on January 12th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
I like two parts of this essay in particular. In the 4th section, on storyteller as having counsel: “After all, counsel is less an answer to a question than a proposal concerning the continuation of a story which is just unfolding.” And in the 6th section where Benjamin elaborates on the rise of the novel at the expense of storytelling: “no event any longer comes to us without already being shot through with explanation. In other words, by now almost nothing that happens benefits storytelling; almost everything benefits information. Actually, it is half the art of storytelling to keep a story free from explanation as one reproduces it.”