Well, okay.

Or maybe it is bedtime reading, for insomniacs. Unless one is an insomniac who reads for meaning, in which case one will be up all night. Clive James, the British cultural critic, is less than sympathetic to Benjamin and his influence: “Part of his sad fate has been to have his name bandied about the intellectual world without very many of its inhabitants being quite sure why, apart from the vague idea that he was a literary critic who somehow got beyond literary criticism: he got up into the realm of theory, where critics rank as philosophers if they are hard enough to read. Clever always, he was clear seldom: a handy combination of talents for attaining oracular status. More often mentioned than quoted, he has become a byword for multiplex cultural scope. But the unearned omniscience of postmodernism depends on its facility for connecting things without examining them, and the routine invocation of Benjamin as a precursor is symptomatic.” Perhaps so, but just think what “critical theory” would be if its practitioners did read him.