Talk of the Town

Understanding McLuhan

Tue. Apr. 6, 7:30-9:00 pm

With: David Staines, Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Ottawa

Marshall McLuhan is one of Canada’s intellectual icons. He rose to popular acclaim throughout the 60’s and 70’s and became "... a critical figure in the evolution of our understanding of culture, media, and communication" (James Carey). He often expressed his significant theories in simple aphorisms like "the medium is the message" and "the global village". But when people turned to his books for further understanding, the language and sophistication of his work often proved hard to grasp. Now with the publication of his lectures and media interviews, Understanding Me, a new, more accessible entry point into McLuhan’s work is available.

At a time when television was becoming a pervasive and dominant medium, and computers were the size of the average suburban living room, McLuhan foretold of the development of the personal computer and anticipated the wide-ranging effects of the Internet. He was a visionary and a scholar, whose unprecedented remarks on popular culture captured the attention of believers and critics alike. But McLuhan was more than a cryptic commentator on pop culture. What he understood better that anyone else was the transformation brought on by a new electric age. He recognized the trend toward the globalization of communications and the coming of a digital age of instantaneous and simultaneous interaction. It is twenty-four years later, and we have emerged into the very world that he predicted, and perhaps only now has the groundwork been laid for understanding the ideas with which McLuhan baffled some of his contemporaries.

In nineteen previously unpublished lectures and interviews that span the last twenty years of McLuhan’s life, Understanding Me offers an opportunity to understand his work as he intended. Gleaned from the archives of Universities across North America and from media appearances both here and abroad, readers are treated to a McLuhan that is always insightful, humorous and able to deliver his message to any and all that listen. Whether one on one with long-time friend Tom Wolfe or before an audience of two thousand, the ease with which McLuhan speaks about matters otherwise dealt with at great length in his books is accommodating and invaluable to anyone curious about the ideas of this pioneer in thinking on mass media and the electric age.

Dr. David Staines, co-editor of Understanding Me, will join Talk of the Town to discuss the relevance of McLuhan in today’s multimedia environment. He is a former student and friend of McLuhan, a distinguished scholar and professor of English at the University of Ottawa and general editor of McClelland & Stewart’s New Canadian Library.

You can get more information on Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews, by Marshall McLuhan, edited by David Staines and Stephanie McLuhan at the McClelland Stewart web site.

The discussion will take place at UBC’s Robson Square campus. Attendance is free of charge, but please pre-register at info.talkofthetown@ubc.ca or phone 604.822.5675.

Tom Wolfe on McLuhan

"New communications theorists will arise... but one thing will not change. First they will have to contend with McLuhan."

Philip Marchand on McLuhan

"I need not, here, get into the topic of McLuhan's famous "incomprehensibility." That incomprehensibility, first of all, mainly affected readers of his books who never had the opportunity to see and hear McLuhan in action... His speech, as he himself often noted, was more accessible than his prose-that was mandarin-style, like the approved prose style of academia, which he could effortlessly produce."

Bibliography

• The Mechanical Bride; Folklore of Industrial Man, Vanguard Press, 1951.
• The Gutenberg Galaxy: the Making of Typographic Man, University of Toronto Press, 1962.
• Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McGraw-Hill, 1964.
• The Medium is the Massage, Bantam Books / Random House, 1967.
• Culture is Our Business, McGraw Hill, 1970.
• City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media, The Book Society of Canada, 1977.

Links & Readings

Links

McLuhan Studies

This site features an on-line publication devoted to examining, discussing and continuing the work of Marshall McLuhan.

Marshall McLuhan: Genealogy and Legacy

This article by James W. Carey is archived in the Canadian Journal of Communication, 1998.

McLuhan: Where Did He Come From, Where Did He Disappear?

An article by Ruth Katz in the same journal.

The Story of McLuhan’s Unauthorized Biography

A direct link to an article in McLuhan Studies by Philip Marchand about the writing of McLuhan’s biography.

McLuhan.ca

This is site was launched by the McLuhan Global Research Network and describes itself as "... a labour of love in honour of the work of Marshall McLuhan".

Readings

Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, Philip Marchand, Vintage Canada / Random House, 1989

Marshall McLuhan: The Man and his Message, George Sanderson and Frank McDonald, Fulcrum, Inc, 1989

Essential McLuhan, Frank Zingrone and Eric McLuhan, House of Anansi Press, 1995.

Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding, W. Terrence Gordon, Ginko Press, 1997

Marshall McLuhan; Wise Guy, Judith Fitzgerald, XYZ Publishing, 2001