A reflection on an influential figure in the genre-oriented criticism of the late twentieth century.

This post could also be called: Walter Benjamin in the Age of Me Noodling Around with Small Data.

(Co-written by AG and Ted Underwood.) Of all our literary-historical narratives it is the history of criticism itself that seems most wedded to a stodgy history-of-ideas approach—narrating change through a succession of stars or contending schools.