Talk given at Birkbeck, University of London, on 22 September 2016 for the occasion of the publication of Walter Benjamin’s The Storyteller: Tales out of Loneliness, Edited and translated by Sam Dolbear, Esther Leslie, and Sebastian Truskolaski. Illustrated by Paul Klee, Verso, London 2016 Walter Benjamin’s The Storyteller: : Tales Out of Loneliness is an edition of