A tribute to and a lament for Marshall McLuhan. Five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday, I present one of McLuhan’s observations and talk about its relevance today. 300 ideas. 300 days. 300 posts.
Creating
Working with others.
Marshall McLuhan (October 8, 1966, age 55). What a day!
I spent the day with George Leonard, who is a Senior Editor at Look Magazine. We talked without interruption from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. about the future of education. Quite frankly education isn’t what it used to be since the coming of TV. George is going to write up our conversation and the article will appear in Look. I can’t wait to see the expression on the face of the Dean of Graduate Studies when I show him my latest publication. He’ll be apoplectic.
Me (July, 2010, age 57)Â Which raises questions
“The Future of Education: The Class of 1989,” appeared in Look (February 21, 1967) as an article jointly written by Marshall McLuhan and George B. Leonard. But, as Leonard explains in his memoir, “Jamming with McLuhan, 1967,” McLuhan had nothing to do with the writing of it. Leonard says that he enjoyed the intellectual experience of working with McLuhan. But after writing only one other article – “The Future of Sex” – Leonard decided to end the partnership. In short, Leonard thought he wasn’t getting the credit he deserved. He was doing the hard work of writing and a good deal of the thinking, but readers were assuming the ideas were all McLuhan’s.
Are unequal partnerships of this type destined to fail? How much of the writing of the later McLuhan – particularly in his co-authored work – is actually McLuhan?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
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Reading for this post
Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, Who Was Marshall McLuhan? 1994, pp. 227-230.
Marshall McLuhan: Filmmaker.
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 68/69). Let’s make a movie!
I have just spent a very productive day with Jane Jacobs. We have written a script for a movie, “A Burning Would.” (You will of course recognize the reference to Finnegans Wake, “A burning would has come to dance inane.”) If all works out this film will either be the final word on the nature of film or stop the Spadina Expressway dead in its tracks.
Me (June 2010, age 57)Â Â Lessons?
Jane Jacobs describes the chaotic and exhilarating day she spent with McLuhan writing a film script in Who was Marshall McLuhan. The word “script” is an exaggeration. Here’s how the day went: he persuaded her to give it a try, they talked about ideas, McLuhan’s secretary, Margaret Stewart took notes, and typed them up, and McLuhan made arrangements to meet with the filmmaker David Mackay to discuss the “script.” Jacobs describes the resulting “script” as “garbled and unreadable” but also as “dazzling sparks and fragments.”
Remarkably the film (12 minutes long) was made [and even more remarkably doesn’t seem to be posted on YouTube]. Jacobs says that the film was “good” but “the final product bore no relationship at all to our original script.”
Perhaps, the major lessons to be learned from this film are:
Don’t be afraid to try new things (neither Jacobs nor McLuhan had ever tried to write a script before.)
Get yourself good partners.
Don’t be afraid to fail.
What new things are you doing?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Who Was Marshall McLuhan. Edited by Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, 1995, pp. 101-102.
For other inspiration see Julien Smith’s In over your head.
And thanks to Michael Edmunds for this interview of McLuhan on his plans for filmmaking originally published in Take One in the 1970s – Marshall McLuhan makes a movie.
The McLuhan method.
Marshall McLuhan (Spring 1971, age 59). At work in the Coach House
Come in, come in. Watch your step. No it’s no bother. Glad you came. Mrs. Stewart, let’s continue this dictation later. Now let me explain what I’m doing.  It may not look like it, but I’m writing a book.  You see these piles of books each with a file folder on top? That’s how you write a book. Get yourself some file folders, fill them with clippings and quotations, and then comment on them. Commenting, by the way, is easier if you have a secretary to comment to.
Me (June 2010, age 57). Â Order out of chaos
Dictation probably worked well for McLuhan because he liked to talk ideas out. I don’t. I prefer to write ideas out. The file folder method, however, is very similar the one I have chosen as the method for this blog. Each blog begins with a book by or about McLuhan in which I mark passages and a sheet of paper on which I place other references, clippings and quotations, which I then comment on. How’s it going? As the man who jumped off the Empire State building, said as he hurtled past the 40th floor, “so far so good.”
What’s your method of work? Did you choose it or did it choose you?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Who Was Marshall McLuhan, edited by Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, 1995, pp. 141.
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.
Happy rapidly approaching centennial, Marshall McLuhan!
Marshall McLuhan (June 2, 2010, age 98). Â Just one problem.
Marshall, have you heard?
Heard what, Corinne?
About the plans to celebrate your 100th birthday next year.
Yes, and I have a concern.
What’s that?
Neither, 100 nor 2011 are divisible by 3. As you know I consider numbers divisible by 3 to be lucky. Perhaps we should skip it. My 150th isn’t far off!
Me (June 2010, age 57)Â Â Plans are underway
At least two meetings have taken place in Toronto – the last on May 25 – involving over 60 people led by Bob Logan and Eric McLuhan to plan events to celebrate the life and work of Marshall McLuhan in 2011 on the 100th anniversary of McLuhan’s birth [July 21, 1911]. The McLuhan Centenary Celebrations is seen as a wide-ranging series of “events and exhibitions” which will take place in 2011 in Toronto, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Bologna, Amsterdam and Berlin, and hopefully Montreal and elsewhere. These include: a film festival; something on advertising, music, television, wearable technologies, and education; academic conferences; a series of events as yet undisclosed called “McLuhan in Europe,” the revival of McLuhan’s famous Monday night media seminar, a proposal to restore the Coach House, the home of McLuhan’s Center for Culture and Technology in the late 1960s and the 1970s, and the establishment of a McLuhan museum in Toronto.  The next meeting of the organizing committee will take place in Toronto on June 29.
What events do you think should be part of the McLuhan Centennial Celebrations? What about an event for Montreal? I’d love to hear what you think.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Minutes of the May 25 McLuhan Centenary Celebrations Committee meeting
Discovering new things.
Marshall McLuhan (1977, age 66). Â Try this out for size
Here’s a game marketing experts play to discover new products. Take any object, say a Q-tip or a thumb tack. A Q-tip or thumb tack is not any one particular thing but a relationship between itself (figure) and everything about it (ground). As a result it is easy to invent new things by combining familiar figures with an unfamiliar ground.
Me (May 2010, age 57).  What does experience tell us?
This is another of Marshall McLuhan’s “warm up” exercises to “sharpen your powers of observation,” which you can find in his book City as Classroom. Just as words have different meanings in different contexts artifacts would appear to have different uses in different environments.
Take the familiar Q-tip. What unfamiliar grounds can you place it in contact with?” (touch screen, sun screen, electrical outlet, electric light … ) What new products can you create?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Marshall McLuhan, Kathryn Hutchon, and Eric McLuhan, City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media , 1977,  pp. 16.
The writing methods of Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan (Fall 1951, age 40). Â Boredom is the enemy!
Finally my book on industrial folklore is being published by Vanguard Press. I will be very glad to get it out of my mind as it now seems to me to be ancient history. I’ve lectured it, written it, and the editors have hounded me to re-write it for years. I’m thoroughly sick of it.
Me (May 2010, age 57).  Avoiding boredom came at a cost
Like all of McLuhan’s books his first one, The Mechanical Bride, is not easy reading. Part of the reason is that he could not bring himself to rewrite. He wrote it seems to amuse himself and he wrote very quickly. Whenever he was asked by his editors to look again at anything he wrote he refused to clarify his ideas but instead added on new ideas to the ones already there.
The problem, said Seon Manley, who was an editor at Vanguard in the 1940s, is that anything that smacked of good writing – clarifying an idea, cutting extraneous material, or providing a telling example – bored McLuhan. And McLuhan refused “to bore himself.” The result was a style of writing many have found impenetrable.
How then should an intelligent reader approach the task of reading Marshall McLuhan? Read fast? Don’t be afraid to skim or jump about? Don’t worry if you don’t get it? Realize, perhaps, you’re not meant to?
Is it true, as McLuhan liked to say, “clear prose indicates the absence of thought?”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, pp. 118.
Separation is obsolete
Marshall McLuhan (January 26, 1976, age 64). Sheer stupidity
Last night I shifted 40 to 50 books off the sofa and miraculously Sheila Watson’s Coach House press collection of essays and stories, Open Letter, came to hand. It really is a delight. As I was reading her essays on Wyndham Lewis it hit me forcibly that we have all been fools. Here we are joined in a common interest and we have done less than we might to advance that interest because we no longer live in the same place. The wind has blown us and we have allowed ourselves to be scattered.
Me (May 2010, age 57).  Has technology compensated for stupidity?
Unlike books, electric media now enable us to reconnect, work together and live apart in ways McLuhan could not. Whether this is a good thing or not, it is a fact. You no longer need to live in the same town to be part of the same community.
What discarnate, disembodied communities are you part of?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 516.