Walter Benjamin. Translated by Howard Eiland & Kevin McLaughlin. 
 
Belknap Press of Harvard: 1999. First US edition. Hardcover with jacket. Wrinkle of water damage close to the edges on bottom corners of pages 1 - 650. Line of red marker across fore-edge. Very good.
 
"'Here we have a man whose job it is to gather the day's refuse in the capital. Everything that the big city has thrown away, everything that it has lost, everything it has scorned, everything it has crushed under foot he catalogs and collects. He collates the annals of intemperance, the capharnaum of waste. He sorts things out and selects judiciously: he collects like a miser guarding a treasure, refuse which will assume the shape of useful or gratifying objects between the jaws of the goddess of Industry.' This description is one extended metaphor for the poetic method, as Baudelaire practised it. Ragpicker and poet: both are concerned with refuse."