The decay of community implicit in

The decay of community implicit in the contrast between story and novel progresses further with information. Unlike either story or novel, information has no depth, no spaces where the listener or reader may enter to supply her own interpretation. On the contrary, Benjamin says, the primary requirement for information is that it be “ ‘understandable in itself ” (p. 89), fully explained and immediately accessible. Whereas story presupposes a shared context and communal values, information can be transported into any context. The incongruous juxtapositions of newspaper fillers illustrate the disappearance of shared, stable contexts: how many camels were born last year in Saudi Arabia, how many months an elephant carries its young before parturition. What connection does this information have to the reader, and what contexts does it presuppose and create? According to Benjamin, the triumph of information over story and novel bespeaks the death of experience, for to him experience means something more than facts or explanations. It signifies the texture of life created from a wealth of small shared moments, the unspoken and unconscious expectations that form the fabric upon which the figures of story are embroidered. In the absence of these shared con-texts, experience is incommunicable. Facts can be told; events can be narrated; but experience cannot be shared, for the cloth out of which it is woven has been destroyed.