What's in a bio when...
“Contemporary man has created an information environment that embraces all technologies and cultures in an inclusive experience.”
- Marshall McLuhan and Harley Parker,
THROUGH THE VANISHING POINT, 1968, p.6
"We live 200 years every annum."
- Marshall McLuhan
AUDIO COMMENTARY - JUNE 22, 2007 – MP3 – 7MB (coming soon)
Marshall McLuhan proposed that modern humanity had become discarnate thanks to electric technology. This condition added a new landscape to the given geographic habitat for our natural body.
We propose that the digital landscape of the past 25 years has shrunk the previous electronic habitat to a tiny, user-friendly scale. We are now bigger than our media to the point that they are mere organs attached to our given physical dimensions. These organs take on a "life" of their own on a scale never previously imagined.
So a biography of a "media celebrity" like Marshall McLuhan must consider these new conditions as they span the seven decades of his life.
What are the BENCHMARKS for juggling the reservoir of experience and imagery associated with his life?
Marshall McLuhan's Physical (chemical) Body:
He was born in Edmonton, Alberta, on July 21, 1911. His family moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1916 where he was educated. He did postgraduate work at Cambridge, England in the Thirties. He taught at Catholic universities from 1937 until 1976. He married Corinne Lewis in 1939 and raised a family of five children. He died on Dec. 31, 1980.
"Remarkable evidence was given, anon, by an eye, ear, nose and throat witness, whom Wesleyan chapelgoers suspected of being a plain clothes priest..."
FW 86.32-34
AUDIO COMMENTARY - JUNE 00, 2007 – MP3 – 0MB (coming soon)
Marshall McLuhan's Astral (spiritual) Body:
He converted to Catholicism in 1937 and attended Mass as often as possible.
"... he who was well known to celestine circles before he sped aloft, our handsome young spiritual physician that was to be, seducing every sense to selfwilling celebesty, the most winning counterfeuille on our incomeshare lotetree, a chum of the angelets..."
FW 191.15-19
AUDIO COMMENTARY - JUNE 00, 2007 – MP3 – 0MB (coming soon)
Marshall McLuhan's TV (one-way analog media) Body:
In March 1967, NBC aired "This is Marshall McLuhan" in its EXPERIMENT IN TV series. PLAYBOY MAGAZINE featured an in-depth interview with him in the March 1969 issue.
He was a guest on many TV talk shows, including David Frost, Dick Cavett, and Peter Gzowski. He appeared in cameo in the Woody Allen film, ANNIE HALL.
"... looking through at these accidents with the faroscope of television, (this nightlife instrument needs still some subtractional betterment in the readjustment of the more refrangible angles to the squeals of his hypothesis on the outer tin sides), I can easily believe heartily in my own most spacious immensity as my ownhouse and microbemost cosm when I am reassured by ratio that the cube of my volumes is to the surfaces of their subjects as the sphericity of these globes..."
FW 150.32-151.3
AUDIO COMMENTARY - JUNE 00, 2007 – MP3 – 0MB (coming soon)
Marshall McLuhan's Chip (omni-directional digital paramedia) Body:
McLuhan was named the "patron saint" of WIRED magazine and a quotation from him appeared on the masthead for the first six years of its publication.
"... receives through a portal vein the dialytically separated elements of precedent decomposition for the verypetpurpose of subsequent recombination so that the heroticisms, catastrophes and eccentricities transmitted by the ancient legacy of the past; type by tope, letter from litter, word at ward, with sendence of sundance, since the days of Plooney and Columcellas when Giacinta, Pervenche and Margaret swayed over the all-too-ghoulish and illyrical and innumantic in our mutter nation, all, anastomosically assimilated and preteridentified paraidiotically, in fact, the sameold gamebold adomic structure of our Finnius the old One, as highly charged with electrons as hophazards can effective it, may be there for you, Cockalooralooraloomenos, when cup, platter and pot come piping hot, as sure as herself pits hen to paper and there's scribings scrawled on eggs."
FW 614.33-615.10
AUDIO COMMENTARY - JUNE 00, 2007 – MP3 – 0MB
The effects of each of these bodies and landscapes on the assessment of an individual's life is the problem presented to the 21st Century and highlighted by the Marshall McLuhan Center on Global Communications.
|
MARSHALL McLUHAN. Born Herbert Marshall McLuhan in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 21 July 1911. University of Manitoba, B.A., 1933; M.A., 1934; Trinity Hall, Cambridge, B.A., 1936; M.A., 1939; Ph.D., 1942. Married: Corinne Keller Lewis, 1939; children: Eric, Mary Colton, Teresa, Stephanie, Elizabeth O'Sullivan, Michael. Instructor, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1936-37; instructor of English, St. Louis University, 1937-44; associate professor, English, Assumption College, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, 1944-46; instructor, 1946-52, professor of English, St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, 1952-79; chairman, Ford Foundation seminar on culture and communications, 1953-60; co-founder Explorations magazine, 1954; co-editor, 1954-59; editor 1964-79; director, media studies for U.S. Office of Education and the National Association of Education Broadcasters, 1959-60; director, Toronto University's McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology, 1963-66, 69-79; editor, Patterns of Literary Criticism series, 1965-69; consultant, Johnson, McCormick and Johnson, public relations, Toronto, 1966-80; Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, Fordham University, New York City, 1967-68; consultant, Responsive Environments Corporation, New York, 1968-80; consultant, Vatican Pontifical Commission for Social Communications, 1973; Eugene McDermott Professor, University of Dallas, 1975; Pound Lecturer, 1978; fellow, Royal Society of Canada, 1964. D.Litt., University of Windsor, 1965; Assumption University, 1966; University of Manitoba, 1967; Simon Fraser University, 1967; Grinnel College, 1967; St.John Fisher College, 1969; University of Western Ontario, 1971; University of Toronto, 1977; Honorary LL.D., University of Alberta, 1971; University of Toronto, 1977. Recipient: Canadian Governor-General's Prize, 1963;; Niagara University Award in culture and communications, 1967; Young German Artists Carl Einstein Prize, West Germany, 1967; Companion, Order of Canada, 1970; President's Award, Institute of Public Relations, Great Britain, 1970; Assumption University Christian Culture Award, 1971; University of Detroit President's Cabinet Award, 1972. Died in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 31 December 1980.
FILMS
This Is Marshall McLuhan, 1968; Annie Hall (cameo as himself), 1977.
RECORDING
The Medium Is the Message, 1967.
PUBLICATIONS
The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. New York: Vanguard Press, 1951; London: Routledge, 1967.
Selected Poetry of Tennyson, editor. New York: Rhinehart, 1956.
Explorations In Communications, editor with Edmund Carpenter. Boston: Beacon Press, 1960; London: Cape, 1970.
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962; London: Routledge, 1962.
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill, 1964; London: Routledge, 1964.
Voices of Literature, Vols. I-IV, editor with R.J. Schoeck. New York: Holt, 1964-70.
The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, with Quentin Fiore. New York: Bantam, 1967; London: Allen Lane, 1967.
Through the Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting, with Harley Parker. New York: Harper, 1968.
War and Peace in the Global Village: An Inventory of Some of the Current Spastic Situations That Could Be Eliminated by More Feedforeward, with Quentin Fiore. New York: McGraw Hill, 1968.
Counterblast. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1969; London: Rapp and Whiting, 1970.
The Interior Landscape: Selected Literary Criticism of Marshall McLuhan, 1943-1962, editor, E. McNamara. New York: McGraw Hill, 1969.
Culture Is Our Business. New York: McGraw Hill, 1970.
From Cliché to Archetype, with Wilfred Watson. New York: Viking Press, 1970.
Take Today: The Executive As Dropout, with Barrington Nevitt. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1972.
The City As Classroom, with Eric McLuhan and Kathy Hutchon. Agincourt, Ontario: Book Society of Canada, 1977.
FURTHER READING
Crosby, Harry H., and George R. Bond, editors. The McLuhan Explosion. New York: American Book Company, 1968.
Curtis, James M. Culture as Polyphony: An Essay on the Nature of Paradigms. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1978.
Day, Barry. The Message of Marshall McLuhan. London: Lintas, 1967.
Duffy, Dennis. Marshall McLuhan. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969.
Finkelstein, Sidney Walter. Sense and Nonsense of McLuhan. New York: International Publishers, 1968.
Kroker, Arthur. Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis/McLuhan/Grant. New York: St. Martin's, 1985.
Marchand, P. Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989.
Miller, Jonathan. Marshall McLuhan. London: Fontana, 1971; New York: Viking, 1971.
Rosenthal, Raymond, editor. McLuhan: Pro and Con. Funk and Wagnalls, 1968.
Sanderson, F., and F. Macdonald. Marshall McLuhan: The Man and His Message. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum, 1989.
Stearns, Gerald Emanuel, editor. McLuhan: Hot and Cool. New York: Dial Press, 1967; London: Penguin, 1968.
Theall, Donald F. The Medium Is the Rear View Mirror: Understanding McLuhan. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1971. |
