Letters of Marshall McLuhan
About this book
Coiner of the famous phrase "the medium is the message" and author of two widely read, controversial volumes--The Guttenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media--Marshall McLuhan was one of the most talked about personalities of the 1960s. He appeared on the cover of Newsweek and The Saturday Review, was written about in Time, Life, The Nation, The New Yorker, and The National Review, was the subject of an hour-long documentary on NBC, and had an unforgettable walk-on role in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, playing himself. A seminal thinker, he introduced popular culture as a subject for serious thought, and started people thinking about how technology--especially electronic media--shapes the way we perceive the world. McLuhan corresponded with a vast number of people, from Hubert Humphrey and Jimmy Carter to popular advice columnist Ann Landers. Indeed, his correspondents amount to a Who's Who of western culture, both high and low, including Duke Ellington, Woody Allen, Jacques Maritain, Rollo May, Susan Sontag, Eugene Ionesco, Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, and Bob Newhart. At times playful and at times profound, his letters offer an invaluable commentary on McLuhan's work and, in some instances, the most lucid and detailed explanation of his ideas available. A brilliant letter-writer and a genial man who made friends all over the world, Marshall McLuhan left behind a correspondence that brims with insight, good humor, and the love of language and word play. His letters offer an invaluable glimpse of the private life and inner thoughts of one of the great minds of the twentieth century.