1930s and 40s
McLuhan was no gentleman.
Marshall McLuhan (1934 or 35, age 22/24). Tonight I crossed swords with Gertrude Stein.
Gertrude Stein came to Cambridge today to speak on the subject: “I am I because my little dog knows me.” Naturally, I could not help letting the remark slip, rather loudly I admit, that this is a prime example of the infantile nature of her prose style. She was not amused. Stopping mid (child-like) sentence she fixed me with a look, grabbed her umbrella, and made her way through the crowd to where I was standing. “What,” she said, “are people like you doing here at Cambridge?” “My dear woman,” I said …
Me (August, 2010, age 58)Â What did McLuhan say next?
Unfortunately, we do not know what Marshall McLuhan said next. And it is not clear that this is actually how he found himself crossing swords with Gertrude Stein.
Philip Marchand tells the story this way in his biography of McLuhan. But Terry Gordon in his biography of McLuhan tells the story very differently. According to Gordon, McLuhan did not boorishly interrupt Stein’s address. Instead, Stein spoke boringly and without interruption for an hour. McLuhan, irritated, waited till the question period to ask what Stein thought of Wyndham Lewis’s thoughts about “the subject of time,” suspecting that it might well get a rise out of Stein because of the length of her talk and her well-known sensitivity to Lewis’s poisonous criticisms of her writing style.
No matter, whoever is more clearly the injured party – McLuhan in the Gordon version, Stein in the Marchand version – McLuhan proves himself to be no gentleman. And either way, we can still speculate as to what McLuhan might have said next. Two come-backs come to mind: “My question exactly;” and “You mean my fallacy is all wrong?”Â
What do you think Marshall might have said?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 46.
W. Terrence Gordon, Marshall McLuhan:Â Escape into Understanding, 1997, p. 62.
Will the real Marshall McLuhan please stand up!
Marshall McLuhan (October, 1934, age 23). Â A lesson from I.A. Richards.
I have had the most remarkable experience. I. A. Richards whose lectures I am attending here at Cambridge invited us to participate in an experiment. He handed out poems but did not tell us who wrote them and asked us to comment on them. It really was quite embarrassing. Thankfully not for me as I managed to escape for the most part with my dignity intact. But many of my fellow students said the most laudatory things about pure doggerel and heaped undeserved criticism on poets of canonical standing.
Me (June 2010, age 57).  A lesson from McLuhan?
Here are four short passages. It’s only fair to tell you that only one of these was actually written by Marshall McLuhan. Which one is the real McLuhan?
(1)   A modern movie actress who tries to play a role will seem old fashioned. To cope with this, actresses have cooled themselves way down, become numb blanks. Thus today’s stars are totally tranquilized. The smart thing for a girl nowadays is to play numb. Dumb actresses used to be in demand, now numb actresses are in demand. Rigor mortis is de rigueur.
(2)   There is a current issue of the TV Guide which contains a survey of convicts’ attitudes towards TV. That is people really up for a long time, many of them for life, and how they regard television. All convicts are apparently supplied with good TV sets. Such is the hardship of our prisons. They pass the word along: all the new gimmicks, all the new twists they find in crimes; and these are passed along quickly to the boys who are on the way out, and are tried out quickly in the community. There really is an astonishing story of how much television has helped to improve the level of crime.
(3)   The owner of a Hollywood hotel in an area where many movie and TV actors reside reported that tourists had switched their allegiance to TV stars. Moreover, most TV stars are men, that is, “cool characters,’ while most movie stars are women, since they can be presented as “hot” characters.
(4)   By filling the space of the TV with a mosaic of close-ups, The Hollywood Squares hypnotizes its audience by paralyzing their senses and numbing their eyes to other distractions. The movie-world is literally chopped up into nine squares, each of which contains a close up. The theme music is the ticktock of a hypnotists watch.
See you tomorrow with the answer to this puzzle.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, pp. 35-37.
Marshall McLuhan, idea consultant!
Marshall McLuhan (June 3, 1955, age 43). Â I’ve got a billion of ‘em!
Bill Hogan and I have hit upon a scheme that will make us rich. We’ve formed a business called Idea Consultants. We’re the perfect team – I’m a good talker and he’s a good listener. Here’s our slogan – “A headache is a million-dollar idea trying to get born. Idea Consultants are obstetricians for these ideas.”
Here are three of our ideas:
- See-through potties for toilette training children
- Pollen-free package tours for hay-fever sufferers
- Urine-coloured underwear
All we need now is our first customer.
Me (June 2010, age 57). Â In part, Marshall, in part!
It’s easy to make fun of Idea Consultants and the ideas they came up with. {see two earlier posts – first, second] McLuhan and Hogan ran the business for two years, but never made a sale. However, some of their ideas were fascinating ideas for products that were far ahead of their time. For example today Mrs Hinton Googled “Idea Consultants” and got 17,300,000 results. One of their product ideas was for “television platters” – the DVD or video cassette. Another was for a TV program in which viewers would be presented with a dramatized business problem and a prize would be offered for the best solution. McLuhan believed that ordinary viewers were more likely to come up with innovative solutions than the experts.
Here’s your chance to test this idea: Imagine such a program on the BP gulf coast oil spill. Would amateurs be able to deal with the disaster better than the experts?   What do you suggest BP do to cap the well?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 109.
Details, details!
Marshall McLuhan (July, 1948, age 37). Finkelstein versus McLuhan.
My son, Eric, brought to my attention a slim volume of criticism on my books, Sense & Nonsense of McLuhan, by one Sidney Finkelstein. In it Finkelstein alleges a good deal of nonsense and it would appear no sense.
The lamenting and lamentable Finkelstein, is caught up with details. That’s not my bag. However, I cannot resist pointing out that on page 17 he gets a detail wrong himself. He writes, “Another great media revolutionist to McLuhan was Johann Gutenberg, who printed a Latin Bible from movable type in Mainz in 1437. (sic)“ Dates are not my strong point, but I think Finkelstein got that one wrong. I’m a word man not a numbers man, myself. For example, as Corinne keeps reminding me, I can never seem to remember the kids’ birthdays.  Â
Me (February 2010, age 57). How important are the details?
The details would appear to be, although I am not an expert on the early book:  1436 is the year Gutenberg and his partner, Andreas Dritzehn, first started work on printing by movable type. And the Mainz bible was not printed until 1454 or 1455. But what does it matter 1436, 1437, 1454, 1455?
Mistakes in detail bothered McLuhan’s critics. Why?  Scholars generally believe that errors in small things suggest the possibility of errors in big things. They reveal a failure in seriousness – that you do not care enough to get them right. And they worry about errors a great deal. One professor of mine once offered to pay a dollar (a dollar was worth a good deal more then than it is now) for every mistake we could find in one of his textbooks. It is amazing the number of errors you will find in any book, if you examine it closely.
In general Marshall McLuhan did not worry about details, although he could be a stickler for some details. For example in the 1970s he insisted that his students refer to the “divisions” of rhetoric rather than the “parts” of rhetoric. Details or facts, I seem to recall he once said somewhere, should never be allowed to interfere with the truth.
(More on McLuhan’s critics tomorrow.)
Do you sweat the small stuff? Is it small stuff?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Sidney Finkelstein. Sense & Nonsense of McLuhan, New York: International Publishers, 1968.
Inviting, confronting, and ignoring criticism
Marshall McLuhan (July, 1948, age 37).  Everybody’s a critic!
Ted Carpenter is a breath of fresh air. With him at St. Michael’s Toronto is getting less parochial with every passing second. Last night he had my darling wife Corinne in stitches at dinner. He was lecturing he told us at the university on the sexual practices of the natives of Polynesia. Apparently he upset the tender sensibilities of one of the more prudish co-eds in the class, and she walked out in disgust. “No need to hurry,” he shouted after her, “there’s plenty of time to book your ship to the islands.” Between giggles Corinne remarked that perhaps Ted was too hard on the girl. I looked over at him. “See Ted, everybody’s a critic.”
Me (February 2010, age 57): Perhaps not everybody. But there certainly were a lot!
Ted Carpenter and Marshall McLuhan met at Toronto in 1948. They became close friends and worked together closely on the study of media in the 1950s and most of the 1960s. Carpenter was known for his volubility, an ability to rub people the wrong way, and a wicked sense of humour – a teacher at a Catholic college he built up according to Phillip Marchand, “the largest collection of books on the devil and diabolism in Canada.” Not surprisingly, he and McLuhan developed a large number of enemies at the university. Anyone who has taught at a university knows this is not hard to do, but Carpenter and McLuhan seemed to have had a gift for it. One of Carpenter’s favorite gambits, for example, was that when an enemy came in the common room and a chair was open beside him he would catch the man’s eye and at the same time, slowly tip the chair over. McLuhan preferred to ignore his critics. “Come on Ted,” he used to say, “if this is what we’re up against, we’re destined for kudos.”
And, of course, they were. (More on McLuhan’s critics tomorrow.)
How do you deal with your critics?  Head on like Carpenter? Or forget about them, like McLuhan?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Phillip Marchand. Marshall McLuhan: The medium and the messenger, 1989, p. 124-125.
Merry Xmas, Professor McLuhan!
Marshall McLuhan (December, 1947, age 36). Thank God it’s Xmas
Our fourth child, Stephanie, was born in October, Eric is only now just recovering from a bout with the flu, and I can’t hire anyone to help Corinne with the work around the house for less than my salary, which is the princely sum of $4,200. Still Corinne is glowing and while I find marking end Xmas exams tiresome, you know me, tireless. At present, I have three books on the go: one on Eliot and two on popular culture, Guide to Chaos and Typhon in America.
Me (December 2009, age 57). I agree
It is time to leave Professor McLuhan to his household troubles and work on his books, and meditate on the 12 days of Christmas a period which as McLuhan knew marked the beginning of the year from the 7th century through to the 13th. I will take a short break myself and make my next post on January 7th.
Before I do a few thoughts on the two books on popular culture McLuhan mentions above which eventually became one: The Mechanical Bride, his first book. Bride has presented a bit of a problem for students of McLuhan. Coming before his discovery of media it is far more accessible than his later books, and deals with a subject that would continue to fascinate McLuhan as a student of media, comics and advertising, but in a very different way. Bride looks at comics and advertising for what they reveal about American culture and its values, and in particular for what they reveal about what McLuhan believes is wrong with American culture. For example, Dagwood in the Blondie comic strip is a wimp and represents everything that is wrong with American men: in short they are not real men. And many things readers of the later McLuhan will find familiar are there: for example, Poe’s sailor caught in the maelstrom who escapes through understanding his situation, the idea that the book is not about the subjects or objects, or exhibits it discusses – advertisements and comics – but rather what they reveal about something else, American values and ways of living, a mosaic presentation in which the chapters can be read in any order. Yet it is not the McLuhan that he will come to be. He has not yet discovered his grand theme – the effects media have had on mankind because of the way they work rather than what they contain. Instead what we find is many familiar things being used in an unfamiliar way. Here is McLuhan the literary critic critiquing comics and advertising through close reading of their contents in ways he had learned at Cambridge. For example, in the chapter titled “Horse Opera and Soap Opera” he observes that Westerns (the B movies also known as dusters and oaters) have much to teach us about the importance of the frontier, business, action, the office, and men in American culture while it is to soap opera that you must go to learn about the mainstream, society, feelings, the home, and women. All of which is interesting but not important in the way the later McLuhan’s observation about media are important. Because if you then say about any observation in Bride “Interesting, but so what?” The answer more often than not is, “not much.”
In lieu of a question a greeting: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 190-191.
Marshall McLuhan’s war
Marshall McLuhan (March, 1944, age 32). Uncle Sam may want me, but I don’t want to go
According to the draft board here in St. Louis I am 1A and have been so for the last three months, that is since getting my Ph.D. (Cambridge giveth and Uncle Sam threatens to taketh away!) If I am drafted I have two choices serve Uncle Sam or return to Canada to fight for King and country. I’d rather do neither. My friend Wyndham Lewis [see previous posts] has been giving me dark looks about this. No matter here is my thinking. (1) I need to support my family, Eric is 3, and Corinne is expecting. (2) I want to be with my family. Assumption College in Windsor may make me an offer , if so I will bundle up the family and leave St Louis on the first train, and say “Adios St. Louis.”
Michael Hinton (2009, age 57). McLuhan was no hero
In 1944 my Father was 17 years old when he signed up with the British Fleet Air Arm, after being turned down because of his age by the Royal Canadian Air Force. He had a good war. The war ended just as he completed his training to be a pilot. In 1918 my Grandfather was 15 and fighting in France with the British Army. He had a goodish war, he lived, but never talked about it. Today with Canadian troops in Afghanistan and the peace movement forgotten behind us, it’s difficult to look back non-judgementally at McLuhan’s avoidance of the war and his frank admission that he wanted no part of it. McLuhan’s biographers say little about this episode. But it is hard not to look at it with the dark unwanted thought that McLuhan was afraid, and for good reason. Teenagers do what they do for many reasons and unreasons. What motivates a boy of 15, or 17 to want to fight in a war may be just as dark and forbidding to look at as what motivates a man in his 30s with a pregnant wife and a three-year old son not want to fight.
Today is Remembrance Day in Canada. What would you have done in Marshall McLuhan’s position? Who and what are you remembering today?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Handbook for Conscientious Objectors. Edited by Arlo Tatum. Published by the CCCO, an agency for military and draft counciling, established in 1948. 12th edition, April, 1972.
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 156-157.