Second Thoughts

<p>George Steiner's discussion of Jeffrey Mehlman's writing on Walter Benjamin gives the flavor of Mehlman's writing in <em>Second Thoughts</em>.</p><p>The arch erudition and playful intelligence of Jeffrey Mehlman's concise jeu d'esprit Walter Benjamin for Children sparkle. Mehlman weaves a sequence of associative arabesques 'intertextually imbricated psychoanalytically informed' on the script for two radio programmes for children which Benjamin wrote during 1929-1930. Almost in the style of a magician Professor Mehlman demonstrates the literally catastrophic substance of Benjamin's tales for children. With a scholastic acuity and wit resembling that of Benjamin himself Mehlman teases out in the thematic rootedness of catastrophe and fraud the phantom presence of the motif of a 'false messianism' which flowers nearly subliminally in these seemingly innocent broadcasts.</p>