Conversation
What if he’s right?
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Here are two short lists.
Three things that haven’t worked in America since the coming of TV:
Movies
National magazines
Comic books
And two things that thanks to TV Americans have discovered a new passion for:
Skin diving
Small cars.
Me (August, 2010, age 58). Now what?
I wonder if it’s too late to make a call to my broker?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 417 and 421.
What would Marshall say? (continued)
Me (August, 2010, age 58). McLuhan in conversation (continued)
Yesterday we left Marshall in conversation with journalist Herb Caen at a topless restaurant in San Francisco in August 1965. Readers will recall that McLuhan had called attention to the visual bias of Caen’s language. Let’s take one more look – sorry, I apologize for my visual orientation – at that exchange. Here, to refresh your memory is their conversation from yesterday:
[Caen] Being President of the Leg Men of America, I never felt a primal urge to lunch among the topless ladies, but in such distinguished company who could resist? ‘Strip steak sandwich,’ I said to waitress Marilyn, who was wearing blue sequin pasties and not much else. As she walked away, I commented ‘A good-looking girl.
[McLuhan] Interesting choice of words. Good-LOOKING girl. The remark of a man who is visually oriented, not tactually. And I further noticed that you could not bring yourself to look at her breasts as she took your order. You examined her only after she walked away – another example of the visual: the further she walked away, the more attractive she became.
Question: What do you think Caen said next:
(a) “If you say so Marshall.”
(b) “Fascinating, I never noticed – look I’ve done it again – my visual orientation.”
(c) “What?”
(d) “Actually, I’m rather inhibited.”
Marshall McLuhan (August 1965, age 54) The answer is …
Of course (d) – which, if memory serves me, I followed up with:
Another interesting word. Inhibited is the opposite of exhibited, and what is exhibited causes you to be inhibited.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Herb Caen, “Rainy Day Session,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 12, 1965, p. 25.
What would Marshall say?
Me (August, 2010, age 58). McLuhan in conversation.
Forty-five years ago, in August 1965, McLuhan was in San Francisco to take part in the Marshall McLuhan Festival organized by the PR team of Howard Gossage and Gerald Feigen, who had organized the event to build McLuhan as a public figure. One day they took McLuhan for lunch at a topless restaurant along with journalists Tom Wolfe and Herb Caen. In the article Caen wrote about the outing he reports this exchange between himself and McLuhan:
Being President of the Leg Men of America, I never felt a primal urge to lunch among the topless ladies, but in such distinguished company who could resist? ‘Strip steak sandwich,’ I said to waitress Marilyn, who was wearing blue sequin pasties and not much else. As she walked away, I commented ‘A good-looking girl.’
Question: What do you think McLuhan said next?
(a) “She certainly is.”
(b) “I hear you Herb.”
(c) “Excuse me, Marilyn, I’ll have the strip steak too.”
(d) “Interesting choice of words. Good-LOOKING girl. The remark of a man who is visually oriented, not tactually.”
Marshall McLuhan (August 1965, age 54). The answer is …
Of course (d) – I have little in the way of small talk. And, if memory serves me, after I said that I said this:
And I further noticed that you could not bring yourself to look at her breasts as she took your order. You examined her only after she walked away – another example of the visual: the further she walked away, the more attractive she became.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Herb Caen, “Rainy Day Session,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 12, 1965, p. 25.
Wiseguy or wise guy?
Marshall McLuhan (1965, age 66). Of course it’s obvious …
“What do you think, Marshall? At the same time as we are chatting here, just the six of us,* America’s biggest communication conference, led by S. I. Hayakawa, the semanticist, is meeting across town at the San Francisco Hilton with over 1,000 people in attendance.”
“Obviously, it’s unimportant. In the time it takes to get a 1,000 people to agree on anything conditions will have changed. With the conditions changed the conversation will be pointless. They’ll be meeting for the wrong reasons on the wrong questions. Under electronic conditions of high speed change this is inevitable.”
(*Tom Wolfe, Howard Gossage, Gerald Feigen, Mike Robbins, Herbert Gold, and Edward Keating.)
Me (July, 2010, age 57). What should be done?
As usual McLuhan’s wiseguy banter raises serious questions. Under electronic conditions of high speed change are large conferences likely to be a waste of time. A disquieting thought given the number and size of such conferences that continue to be held today.
Is McLuhan right on this one? What is your view? Are large meetings inevitably focused on the wrong things? If so, what forms and methods for holding conferences are likely to be most effective? Is the “unconference” the meeting of the future?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Tom Wolfe. “What if he is right,” in McLuhan: Hot and Cool, 1967, pp. 44-45.
What was Marshall McLuhan up to?
Marshall McLuhan (December 13, 1977, age 66). I’m stunned!
Peter Gzowski actually suggested on television today that I had failed grade six! The fact is – as told him – “I never failed any grade ever.”
Me (June 2010, age 57). What was McLuhan up to?
What Gzowski asked was whether ordinary people who hadn’t attained McLuhan’s academic stature (Full Professor Toronto, Cambridge Ph.D.) should be able to feel better knowing that McLuhan had failed grade six. An easy question. At least one would think so. At any rate, McLuhan’s response clearly surprised Gzowski.
Why did McLuhan deny he’d failed? It is a fact that he did fail. And you can read about it in the biographies of McLuhan by Philip Marchand and Terry Gordon. It is also a fact that his Mother persuaded the school to let him go on to grade 7 and prove he could do the work, which he did. So why didn’t McLuhan say this? What was McLuhan up to?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
PS: For something completely different see yesterday’s post
Reading for this post
W. Terrence Gordon. Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding, 1997, p. 10.
Philip Marchand, Marshall Mcluhan: the Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 17-18.
The elusive Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan (May 19, 1966, age 54). Foul play!
“How is it Professor McLuhan,” Eric Goldman asked me earlier today on WNBC television program The Open Mind, “that you should be so concerned with media? Here you are the son of Baptist parents, convert to Catholicism, a Canadian student of English literature, formerly an engineering student and now …”
“Oh, don’t bother with that data.” I said.
“Why?
“It’s all wrong! And in any case quite unnecessary.”
Me (June 2010, age 57). What was McLuhan up to?
Gerald Stern who quotes this exchange between McLuhan and Goldman in his introduction to McLuhan: Hot and Cool says that McLuhan typically refused to discuss his family life, personal opinions or his past. As a result, “personal and biographical information about McLuhan is difficult to trace.” And, “Stearn adds, “there is a coy, almost purposeful elusiveness about the man himself.” Why? Stearn suggests there is no good reason why McLuhan side stepped these subjects: he was simply a “puzzling” character.
This is possible, but there is I think a better answer. It is more probable that McLuhan actually believed what he said: that biographical details were “quite unnecessary.” McLuhan was trained at Cambridge in the close reading critical analysis of I. A. Richards. I imagine if McLuhan had been asked if asked about the usefulness of biographical details in the understanding of any authors work he would have said these details were “quite unnecessary.” Everything you needed to know to understand a poem or a novel, Richards taught, was in the written work – that is in the work’s diction, rhythm and structure. And this was the method McLuhan followed in his teaching.
(And see tomorrow’s post for a more troubling example of McLuhan’s elusiveness.)
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
McLuhan: Hot and Cool. Edited by Gerald Emanuel Stearn, 1967, p. IV.
The 100 percent sensible Marshall McLuhan.
Marshall McLuhan (Spring 1971, age 59). McLuhan to Peter Newman
Did you hear about the man who went on a date with Siamese twins? The following day a friend asked him if he had a good time. The man’s reply: yes and no.
Me (June 2010, age 57). Two cheers for Marshall
Yesterday a small test was made of Patrick Watson’s observation made on “This Hour has Seven Days” that no one can understand more than 10 percent of what Marshall McLuhan has to say. The test of course was unscientific and leading rather than persuasive. Today I want to present a more sweeping assessment of McLuhan’s sensibility. Namely, that on unimportant subjects – that is subjects only tangentially related to media and media theory Marshall McLuhan is always easy to understand. For example here is McLuhan talking about his personal dislike of technical innovation and change on the CBC television program “This Hour Has Seven Days.” (May 6, 1966):
“I’m resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change. But I’m determined to understand what’s happening because I don’t choose to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that because you talk about something recent you’re in favour of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I’m resolutely against and it seems to me that the best way of opposing it is to understand it. Then you know where to turn off the button.”
What has this got to do with the man who dated Siamese twins? The punch line also works for the question: Do you understand what Marshall McLuhan is saying? Yes and no.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Who Was Marshall McLuhan, edited by Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, 1995, pp. 109, 135, and 136.