m3,4 (masterpiece)

At this point in the discussion of experience, with its complexity and depth, we can only assume that Benjamin had a chuckle when introducing this citation. But in fact this little snippet is a masterpiece (if we can use that term). It's certainly comic, somewhat destabilized to that degree, since it's a paternalistic (not to say authoritarian) bit of advice for professional journalists, workers, that states that the essence of their task is to convey within their writing an "immediate experience," which, coincidentally (or is it?), happens to be the operative term for the product of idleness as we've been discussing it. Through this piece of workplace advice we have the perfect cipher for the conjoining of the two types of experience Benjamin has been theorizing. 

I imagine a faster reading might stop here, smiling at the irony, and moving to the next quote. And it is a nice irony! But this is only one of the levels on which the citation operates: we can say that as much as humor is on the side of idleness, the humor of this passage is an idle thing, we know that idleness, as in the passage itself, is intimately conjoined with work, and here too, if we flip this passage over, so to speak, and take it completely seriously, in a work-like manner, it functions as a key methodological statement for the Arcades Project itself. We can take it seriously: the language not only picks up on discussions of "immediate experience" but also echoes, most obviously, the central idea for the Arcades Project of the "now of recognizability" in the "vivid chronicle of what is happening," so that indeed we can read this as specific advice from Benjamin on how to achieve the primary objectives of the Arcades Project as a whole, looking for an authentic "field," like the force fields mentioned in m1a,4, the "documentary account," which might describe the documentary nature of the Arcades Project, and so on. The passage in many ways works as much as straightforward commentary as anything in convolute N, in this case positioning the Arcades Project as "reportage," a kind of daily drudge, but also with the highest of aims, the literal documentation of "immediate experience." Almost like a priceless collectible, it's extraordinary that Benjamin could even find such a citation, as here it sits as an uncanny summary of the convolute and the larger work, but beyond that a specimen and example of Benjamin's own ability to be a "good" "professional" "journalist" who has the "capacity for having an experience," in this case through reading, through citation, copying, writing.