For digression, as a discursive practice, performs the implications of our divided attentions, the distractedness in which Benjamin discerned a sign of modernity. it’s all swerves; Delay and indirection -the phenomena of mediacy- become at once sources of pleasure and devices of provocation in a larger universe that seems committed to directness, speed, and immediacy (doing it fast, getting there right away). The accidental, here, is no longer exceptional; it has become the rule. “If it can go wrong, it will;’ is an engineer’s maxim. "Since digression can happen, it should;’ is the maxim of loiterature. Whether such complacency about digressing is synonymous with "going wrong;’ though, is very much the question loiterature asks us to consider.
Ross Chambers, Loiterature