Relationship
Marriage: You’ve got to work at it
Me (September, 2010, age 58). And now for something completely different.
Marriage is a subject people don’t typically turn to Marshall McLuhan for insight or advice. But when you think about it, it’s not a bad idea. After all, he was married for 41 years. He and his wife Corinne had six children. By all accounts their marriage was a success.
For those of you looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right, here’s what Marshall had to say about the secret to a great marriage, when he was interviewed by Jane Howard for a close up article she wrote about him in Life Magazine in February 1965. (By the way I found my Mrs. Right in 1976.)
Marshall McLuhan (February 25, 1965, age 54). Don’t play the match game.
“Corinne, what did I say to that journalist, Jane Howard, about marriage? Was I for it or against it?”
“Don’t be silly Marshall, of course you were for it. Here’s exactly what you said. It’s right here in this week’s issue of Life.”
Like any other relationship marriage must be remade by the contracting parties every day. It’s a terrible illusion in people’s lives that if they don’t match each other exactly, they ought to drop everything and split up. They don’t consider the possibility of making as an alternative to matching. Any relationship can be a depth relationship, if you try and make it so. People used to say, ‘Well I’m married, that’s that, put up or shut up’ – which I happen to think is a very good idea. But now they get divorced – they drop out of marriage for the same reason they drop out of school, because they’re looking for a depth relationship, a profound role.
“Not bad eh?”
“Not bad at all, Marshall, not bad at all.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Jane Howard, “Oracle of the Electric Age,” Life Magazine, 25 February 1965, p. 99.
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) 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?”
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: Escape into Understanding, 1997, p. 62.
What the Apollo program was really all about.
Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1969, age 58). A man on the moon?
As usual the networks have missed the real story. I am not referring to their failure to report my birthday, but their coverage of the Apollo program moon landing.
“That’s one small step for man,” Neil Armstrong has been telling us on every newscast, “one giant step for mankind.” But this isn’t about putting a footprint on the surface of the moon. It’s about getting a look at ourselves. To see us as others see us. In other words, it’s been an “ego trip.”
Me (July, 2010, age 58). Take a look for yourself.
As Homer teaches, getting home can be a long hard journey.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, Who Was Marshall McLuhan, 1994, pp. 230.
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) 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
Reading for this post
Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, Who Was Marshall McLuhan? 1994, pp. 227-230.
The difference involvement makes
Marshall McLuhan (1966, age 54/55). Tony understands.
I was talking with Tony Schwartz, the New York sound wizard, again today. I must say he embarrassed me with his total understanding of something I have written about in Understanding Media. In this electric age in which we live, I was saying, we are bombarded with instant information on all sides at once. The result is all our senses are involved in depth.
“Marshall,’ he said, “it’s the difference between getting a telephone call that your house is burning and receiving a letter telling you that your house has burned!”
Me (July, 2010, age 57). Is involvement a Trojan horse?
Businesses often say they want their employees to be more involved. Whether you’re a manager or an employee you might ask yourself whether it would actually be a good thing if all employees were more involved. Involvement, as McLuhan suggests, comes at a psychic price. Ringing phones may raise your heart rate, but do they make it easier to put out fires?
How involved are employees at the place where you work? Is increased involvement what businesses really want?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
PS: From me. Happy birthday Marshall! Please join us [virtually] as we raise a glass to toast the 99th birthday of Marshall McLuhan.
Reading for this post
Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, Who Was Marshall McLuhan? 1994, p. 152.
Memories.
Marshall McLuhan (June 16, 1975, age 63). My first memory.
I am in Edmonton. I can’t be much more than two years old. I’m looking out the window of a street car and I see horses on the river bank. I remember thinking they look so small they could fit in my nursery. Such is the magic of visual perspective. To me the horses in the distance not only looked small, they were small. I was a very perceptive lad.
Me (July, 2010, age 57). Too good to be true?
Philip Marchand writes in his biography of McLuhan that “in view of McLuhan’s later obsession with visual perspective as an invention of the print era and his almost visceral rejection of that perspective – in later years, the painter Harley Parker recalls, McLuhan seemed actually to believe that ‘things became smaller as they receded into the distance’ – the memory is almost too pat.”
Who can say? My first memory is from the time I was two or three. I’m in a long hallway. I look around and realize that I’m lost. Given that this blog in a way is an exercise in both discovery and self-discovery, a way of finding my way home, intellectually, perhaps this first memory of mine is also “almost too pat.”
What is your first memory? Does it reveal something significant about you?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Philip Marchand. Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989 p. 8-9.
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.
The truth about advertising.
Marshall McLuhan (1977, age 66). What we know that isn’t true
Much of what people take for granted about advertising simply isn’t true. Common sense says people read advertisements and then buy the product. Yet as David Ogilvy says research shows people only read the advertisement after they’ve bought the product.
Me (May 2010, age 57) What is true?
In the City as Classroom Marshall McLuhan examines some of the false assumptions people commonly make about advertising. One of those assumptions, he says, is that advertising is designed to sell things to everybody. It can be easily seen this is not true, as McLuhan says, by imagining who any given advertisement is directed at. For example, consider this small advertisement from the New Yorker:
Don’t self-publish alone!
Publishing can be maddeningly complicated. At Vantage Press our experts have simplified the process for over 20,000 authors. Use our fulltime service approach to publish your best book now.
Who is the audience this simple, scare-tactic ad is directed at? Is it you?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Marshall McLuhan, Kathryn Hutchon, and Eric McLuhan, City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media, 1977, pp. 158.
Discovering new things.
Marshall McLuhan (1977, age 66). 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.