Understanding McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan’s name flies about these days the way “Technocracy” did in the Thirties: a picture story in Life; status as resident sage in the files from which they confect the Time Essay; random allusions in the columns of every journal one picks up, from national review to the National Catholic Reporter, not to mention Encounter, Popular Photography, and the Times Lit. Sup. A season ago one of the better-heeled monthlies was phoning about offering a grand or so to the lean hungry free-lancer who’d tool a few thousand words to go under the title, “Against McLuhan.” And I’ve forgotten which magazine writer, reaching for a handy simile, said that to broach a simple topic with so-and-so was “like talking to Marshall McLuhan about the weather”: he’s achieved eponymous status, like Dr. Fell and Dr. Pangloss and Dr. Einstein. I’ve even come across his name, misspelled, in a popular novel.

In all of which he resembles the fly that has gotten into the movie projector and overlays, in silhouette, random scenes. For it’s understood (1) that no one has, really, dug him; (2) that he’s nonetheless “in”; (3) that “the medium is the message,” and if you don’t understand that you are to keep quiet until you’ll say that you do.

HK

About the Author

Hugh Kenner

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Marshall McLuhan’s name flies about these days the way “Technocracy” did in the Thirties: a picture story in Life; status as resident sage in the files from which they confect the Time Essay; random allusions in the columns of every journal one picks up, from national review to the National Catholic Reporter, not to mention Encounter, Popular Photography, and the Times Lit. Sup. A season ago one of the better-heeled monthlies was phoning about offering a grand or so to the lean hungry free-lancer who’d tool a few thousand words to go under the title, “Against McLuhan.” And I’ve forgotten which magazine writer, reaching for a handy simile, said that to broach a simple topic with so-and-so was “like talking to Marshall McLuhan about the weather”: he’s achieved eponymous status, like Dr. Fell and Dr. Pangloss and Dr. Einstein. I’ve even come across his name, misspelled, in a popular novel.

In all of which he resembles the fly that has gotten into the movie projector and overlays, in silhouette, random scenes. For it’s understood (1) that no one has, really, dug him; (2) that he’s nonetheless “in”; (3) that “the medium is the message,” and if you don’t understand that you are to keep quiet until you’ll say that you do.