Mcluhan- 1

McLuhan, I don't know how many of you recall him from the 60s, but he had, for a very brief period of time, about five or six years, an extraordinary influence on American culture.

You couldn't pick up a magazine or turn on the TV without hearing McLuhan, McLuhan, what he said, what he thought, what he predicted.

He was consulting with Madison Avenue, with politicians, with Hollywood, so forth and so on.

And his influence, he died in the early 70s, and his influence died with him, even though he had founded the Center for Media Study at the University of Toronto in Canada.

He really seemed to spawn no highly visible successors, was a unique personality and breakthrough, much in the same way that Joyce was a unique personality.

And spawned very few imitators.

And the irony of all this is that McLuhan did his journeyman work before he burst onto the world stage as this mysterious savant of media.

He did his work as a Joyce scholar.

That's what he was, a literary critic, Joyce scholar, medievalist, that sort of thing.

And then in the early 50s or middle 50s, he wrote a book, which I've never read, it's very hard to find, called The Mechanical Bride, that was his first testing of his ideas.

McLuhan is primarily understood as a communication theorist or a philosopher of media.

And that's what he talked about.

He turned the analytical Western deconstructionist method on the technologies of communication, printing, film, photography, dance, theater, even such things as money, he thought of as forms of media.

And he carried out and analyzed these various forms of media and reached very controversial conclusions.

One of the things that was puzzling to me as I went back through and read all this is one of the things was McLuhan was synonymous with incomprehensibility in the 60s.

I mean, the whole thing was, who can understand this guy, you know, he's like Buddha, he speaks these words that we can't understand.

Well, now, 25, 30 years later, it reads pretty straightforwardly.

And most of what he's predicted has come to pass, I think even McLuhan would be amazed at the speed with which the Gutenberg world has been overturned.

I mean, there's no hint in here of home computers, let alone interactive networks, virtual reality, phone sex, and so forth and so on.

But this was all grist for the McLuhan-esque mill, and he would have had, he lived, had much to say on this.

It surprised me in reading this stuff how demanding it is on your own literacy.

I mean, he assumes, basically, that the people he's talking to have read everything and have understood it.

I mean, from Homer to Rabelais to Chaucer to Mad Magazine, he assumes you have a complete knowledge of modern film and popular print journalism and popular culture.

All of this was grist for his mill.

I'll show you the books I'm reading from and talking about, and then I'll actually read you a section of McLuhan,

because it's like Joyce, it's a stylistic thing that you can't really encompass without getting your feet wet.

This was his best-known book, probably, and this is the original paperback edition.

This book was immensely discussed when it came out, and probably very little read, judging by the quality of the discussion.

Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, this is how most people heard of McLuhan.

And he followed it up with The Gutenberg Galaxy.

These are all first editions.

These books, I don't think, are in print.

Few intellectuals in this century have fallen so totally through the cracks as McLuhan.

The Gutenberg Galaxy, very interesting.

I'm going to read from some of it tonight.

It's organized around chapter headings such as,

Does the interiorization of media such as letters alter the ratio among our senses and change mental processes?

Or Pope's Dunciad indicates the printed book as the agent of a primitivistic and romantic revival.

Sheer visual quantity evokes the magical resonance of the tribal horde.

The box office looms as a return to the echo chamber of bardic incantation.

That's a chapter heading.

Topography cracked the voices of silence.

And one of my favorite,

Heidegger surfboards along on the electronic wave as triumphantly as Descartes rode the mechanical wave.

So, there's a lot of fun in McLuhan.

And this comes out of his being a Joyce scholar.

You just can't mess with that without fun.

This is his third book with Harley Parker,

Through the Vanishing Point, Space in Poetry and Painting.

And I guess I should say a few years ago somebody asked me to review McLuhan's letters which had been published, which I did.

It was a Gnosis or somebody.

Anyway, it brought back to me,

He was a convert to Catholicism.

And an extraordinarily complex intellectual with a medievalist who became a Joyce scholar who became a communications expert.

And in McLuhan, there is a very deep strain of nostalgia for the essence of the medieval world of what he called manuscript culture.

And essentially, his entire output is a critique of print and of the impact of print on culture.

And I think though he attempted to be fairly even-handed,

His final resolution of all this was that it had many, many detrimental and distorting effects on the Western mind.

This is another little book he published back in the heyday.

And he experimented with topographic layout,

somewhat hearkening back to the surrealists,

whom he discusses a great deal.

And there was something about,

it was his fascination with topographical layout

that also brought him into such congruence with the wake.

So let me read you a section from the Gutenberg Galaxy

that is both interesting to think about,

or, if you can't understand it,

then an interesting example of what McLuhan's style was like,

and what I mean by that he was an extraordinarily demanding intellectual.

He doesn't cut you much slack.

This is a short section called

Only a Fraction of the History of Literacy.

He has been typographic.

Till now we have been concerned mostly with the written word

as it transfers or translates the audio-tactile space

of sacral, non-literate man

into the visual space of civilized or literate or profane man.

Once this transfer or metamorphosis occurs,

we are soon in the world of books,

scribal or typographic.

The rest of our concern will be with books,

written and printed,

and the results for learning and society.

From the 5th century BC to the 15th century AD,

the book was a scribal product.

Only one-third of the history of the book

in the Western world has been typographic.

It is not incongruous, therefore,

to say, as G.S. Brett does in Psychology, Ancient and Modern,

and here's the quote,

The idea that knowledge is essentially book learning

seems to be a very modern view,

probably derived from the medieval distinctions

between clerk and layman,

with additional emphasis provided by the literary character

of the rather fantastic humanism of the 16th century.

The original and natural idea of knowledge

is that of cunning or the possession of wits.

Odysseus is the original type of thinker,

a man of many ideas

who could overcome the cyclops

and achieve a significant triumph of mind over matter.

Knowledge is thus a capacity

for overcoming the difficulties of life

and achieving success in this world.

So that closes the quote.

Then McLuhan comments,

Brett here specifies the natural dichotomy

which the book brings into any society,

in addition to the split

within the individual of that society.

The work of James Joyce exhibits

a complex clairvoyance in these matters.

His Leopold Bloom of Ulysses,

a man of many ideas and many devices,

is a freelance salesman.

Joyce saw the parallels on one hand

between the modern frontier of the verbal

and the pictorial

and, on the other,

between the Homeric world

poised between the old sacral culture

and the new profane or literate sensibility.

Bloom, the newly detribalized Jew,

is presented in modern Dublin,

a slightly detribalized Irish world.

Such a frontier is the modern world

of the advertisement,

congenial, therefore,

to the transitional culture of Bloom.

In the 17th or Ithaca episode of Ulysses,

we read,

what were habitually his final meditations

of some one sole unique advertisement

to cause passers to stop in wonder,

a poster novelty

with all extraneous accretions excluded,

reduced to its simplest and most efficient terms,

not exceeding the span of casual vision

and congruous with the velocity of modern life.

In the books at the wake,

James S. Atherton points out,

and here's Atherton's quote,

amongst other things,

Finnegan's wake is a history of writing.

We begin with writing on

a bone, a pebble, a ram skin,

leave them to cook in the mothering pot,

and Guten Morgue with his Cro-Magnon charter,

tinting fats and great prime,

must once for omnibus step rubric red

out of the wordpress.

The mothering pot is an illusion to alchemy,

but there is some other significance

connected with writing,

for the next time the word appears,

it is again in a context

concerning improvement

in systems of communication.

The passage is,

all the Irish signics of her

dip and dump help a bit

from and Father Hogam

till the Mutter Maskens.

Dip and dump help a bit

combine the deaf and dumb alphabet signs

in the air,

or Irish signs,

with the ups and downs

of the ordinary ABC

and the more pronounced up and downs

of Irish Ogam writing.

The mason following this

must be the man of that name

who invented steel pen nibs,

but all I can suggest for Mother

is the mothering of Freemasons

which does not fit the context,

although they, of course,

also make signs in the air.

Is that perfectly clear?

Now back to McLuhan.

Guten Morgue with his Cro-Magnon charter

expounds by mythic gloss

the fact that writing

meant the emergence of the caveman

or sacral man

from the audio world

of simultaneous resonance

into the profane world

of daylight.

The reference to the masons

is to the world of the bricklayer

as a type of speech itself.

On the second page of the wake,

Joyce is making a mosaic,

an Achilles shield,

as it were,

of all the themes and modes

of human speech

and communication.

Bygmeister Finnegan

of the stuttering hand,

Freeman's Maurer

lived in the broadest way

immorginable

in his rush lit

too far back

for massages

before Joshua and Judges

had given us numbers.

Joyce is,

in the wake,

making his own

Altamira cave drawings

of the entire history

of the human mind

in terms of its basic gestures

and postures

during all phases

of human culture

and technology.

As his title indicates,

he saw

that the wake

of human progress

can disappear again

into the night

of sacral

or auditory man.

The finn cycle

of tribal institutions

can return

in the electric age,

but if again,

then let's make it awake

or awake

or both.

Joyce could see

no advantage

in our remaining

locked up

in each cultural cycle

as in a trance

or dream.

He discovered

the means

of living simultaneously

in all cultural modes

while quite conscious.

This means

he cites

for such self-awareness

and correction

of cultural bias

in his

colliderioscope.

This term

indicates

the interplay

in colloidal mixture

of all components

of human technology

as they extend

our senses

and shift

their ratios

in the social

kaleidoscope

of cultural clash,

deor,

savage,

the oral

or sacral scope,

the visual

or profane

and civilized.

So,

that's his comment.

Only a fraction

of the history

of literacy

has been typographic.

These people,

Joyce,

to some degree

Pound,

McLuhan,

they were

the prophets

of the world

in which

we now

stand,

the world

of integrated,

interactive media,

extraordinary data

retrieval

that erases

the 17th century

notion

of the unconscious.

Nothing

is now

unconscious

if your data

search commands

are powerful enough.

and the remaking

of the human

image

that required

centuries

for print,

the transition

that we talked

about in here

from scribal

culture

to true book

culture

occupied 500 years.

The transition

from book culture

to electronic culture

has occurred

in less than 50 years.

I mean,

it's eerie

to read

his examples

of contemporaneity

because there's

stuff like

Marilyn Monroe,

Perry Como,

James Dean.

I mean,

he's writing

from another era

and yet,

from his point

of view,

he's firmly

embedded

in a kind

of super future

that we

are now

able to look

back on.

Here's another

section that

I think

makes some

of this

more clear.

The name

of this section

is

The Medieval

Book Trade

Was a Second-Hand Trade

Even as with

the dealing

today

in Old Masters.

From the 12th century

onward,

the rise

of the universities

brought masters

and students

into the field

of book production

in class time

and these books

found their way

back to the monastic

libraries

when students

returned

after completing

their studies.

a number

of these

standard

textbooks

of which

approved

exemplars

were kept

for copying

by the

stationari

of the

universities

naturally

found their

way into

print quite

early

for many

of them

contained

in undiminished

request

in the 15th century

as before.

These official

university texts

offer no problems

of origin

or nomenclature

and then

he's quoting

Goldschmidt

he adds

soon after

the expensive

vellum

could be

dispensed with

and the cheaper

paper

made the

accumulation

of many books

a matter of

industry

rather than

wealth.

Since however

the student

went to

lectures

pen in hand

and it was

the lecturer's

task to

dictate

the book

he was expounding

to his audience

there is a

great body

of

repertorata

which constitute

a very complex

problem

for editors

so really

like for

Joyce

for

McLuhan

the book

is the

central

symbol

of the age

the central

mystery

of our time

in a sense

I sort of

share that

notion

it's a very

Talmudic

notion

it's a very

psychedelic

notion

it's the idea

that somehow

the career

of the word

is the

central

overarching

metaphor

of the age

and

naturally

if the book

is the central

metaphor

for reality

then reality

itself

is seen

as somehow

literary

somehow

textual

and this

in fact

is how

I think

reality

was seen

until the

rise of

modern

science

we're always

taught

you know

that the

roots of

modern science

go back

to

democracy

and atomism

which is

of course

true

but the

number of

people who

knew that

a thousand

years ago

was probably

very few

that the

the real

notion

out of

which science

had to

divest

itself

is the

notion

of a

book

or if that

seems too

concrete

a story

a narrative

the story

of man's

fall

and redemption

that was

what the

Christian

exegesis

of

post-identic

time

was all

about

with the

rise of

modern

science

the idea

of narrative

has become

somewhat

overthrown

McLuhan

would say

that narrative

persisted

far beyond

its utility

because

the

biases

of print

kept it

in place

for such

a long

time

everyone

assumes

that

tools

are

tools

and you

use

them

and that's

that

for McLuhan

the entirety

of the

toolkit

of modern

western

man

can be

traced

to the

unconscious

assumptions

of print

for example

the idea

of the

individual

which is

a pretty

personal

notion

right there

in close

to the

heart

the idea

of the

individual

is a

post-medieval

concept

legitimized

by print

the idea

of the

public

this concept

did not

exist

before

newspapers

because before

newspapers

there was

no public

there were

only people

and

rulers

very rarely

bothered

to pass

on their

thinking

to anybody

other than

their closest

associates

and then

only for

utilitarian

reasons

the notion

of an

observing

citizenry

somehow

sharing

the governance

of society

this again

is a print

created

idea

the idea

of

interchangeable

parts

without which

our world

would hardly

function

there would

not be

automobiles

buildings

aircraft

interchangeable

parts

that's an

idea that

comes from

the

interchangeability

of letters

in a

printer's

block

all

that

was the

first

industry

to ever

utilize

the

concept

of

easily

reformulated

subunits

and

it's strange

you know

the Chinese

get credit

for inventing

printing

thousands

and thousands

of years

before

Europe

but they

would

carve

a single

block

of wood

and print

it

movable

type

the

distribution

of

books

becomes

the

paradigmatic

model

for the

distribution

of any

product

you know

it's

produced

it's

edited

it's

manufactured

it's

sold

and then

sequels

are

spawned

all

products

have followed

this model

but books

were one

of the

earliest

mass

manufactured

objects

to be

put

through

this

cycle

modern

city

planning

the

linearity

of it

the

way

in which

land

surveys

are carried

out

these

are all

unconscious

biases

imbibed

from

the world

of print

and

they

make

sense

if you're

a print

head

but one

of the

peculiar

things

notice

that

animals

do not

possess

language

many

human

societies

do not

possess

writing

printing

and

very few

human

societies

and

only

two

on

earth

invented

printing

and yet

once

invented

it

feeds

back

into the

evolution

of social

structures

and defines

everything

and yet

it's an

extraordinary

artificiality

and we

have been

imprisoned in

it for

hundreds and

hundreds of

years now

now it

is breaking

down

and

we are

changing to

a different

sensory

ratio

and you

might suppose

if you

hadn't given

us a lot

of thought

that the

new

electronic

media

television

and so

forth

would carry

us into

an entirely

different

sensory

ratio

McLuhan

felt

differently

he felt

that it

was

restoring

us

to

a

medieval

sensory

ratio

he felt

that

television

screen

is much

more

like

an

illuminated

manuscript

than

a page

of print

the

distinction

may seem

subtle

at first

but

if

you're

looking

at an

illuminated

medieval

manuscript

notice

I said

looking

you must

look

in order

to

understand