Re: Marshall McLuhan

[Mary Jo Watts <mwatts@rci.rutgers.edu>]

The best part from the obit to know is that 'his books are not easy to
read"!!!

McLuhan as a scholar in the academy was a modernist scholar, especially
interested in the 'high' modernists Ezra Pound and James Joyce (thus the
puns scattered throughout the prose along with the wild connections). (For
those of you interested in Canadian intellectuals, the great (IMHO)
thinker/critic/early net denizen Hugh Kenner was his student and
introduced to Pound by him. Kenner-- now there's a fantastic writer!)

One thing I remember Kenner writing about MM was that he was the sort of
person known round the world for his thoughts on media yet could never sit
through and entire film.  That amused me. Guess he would have been
fascinated by the media-byte lack-of-attention-span new CNN that I loathe.

But the COOLEST (in the non-McLuhanesque sense of the word) books MM did
experimented with typography-- _Culture is Our Business_ is my personal
fave.  If you want to read his aphoristic but DENSE prose I'd start with
_Understanding Media_. There is also a collection of his letters which are
easier to read, and an anthology of his work out there.

The collected letters contain 2 to GG-- and there are a slew of others to
prominent Canadians (Robert Fulford mentioned earlier is in there.)  I
really liked reading the letters and I would BEGIN there in an ideal
world.  He trys to explain his loose theories to all sorts of people.

Note-- The original WIRED magazine was heavily influenced by MM and
included a quote by him in their masthead in every issue.

-Mary Jo