Customer Reviews

Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding : A Biography

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I purchased this book because I was interested in learning as much as I could about the enigmatic Marshall McLuhan. Unfortunately, Mr. McLuhan has failed to find his ideal biographer in this work. Marshall McLuhan was the media intellectual from Canada who wrote, taught and spoke presciently of the effects of media on ourselves and our culture. Much of his work was rather heady stuff, and out of the reach of the dillettante. Even his most famous phrase, "the medium is the message" is poorly understood by many, including some who are thought to be blessed with large portions of gray matter. And the author of this biography W. Terrence Gordon can't seem to find the formula for delivering palatable explainations of McLuhan's catchphrases. The book unevenly shifts from the recounting of McLuhan's life, to the development of his groundbreaking research and novel ideas on everything from the ancient Trivium to electronic media, and he never settles into a comfortable pace. One can sense that McLuhan's life was unique, compelling and interesting, but it is rendered dry and antiseptic in this telling, and our author fares even more poorly in attempting to school us in the intellectual legacy of McLuhan, never properly defining terms in some instances, jumping way over our heads in others, and most maddening of all, sticking 80-some pages of notes at the end of the book which would have served us far better as foot-notes or inclusions in the main text. All this having been said, the subject was interesting enough and the materials included specific enough, where I was able to find many interesting paths for further exploration, which made slogging through this ponderous book, worth the effort at the end... But as I said, this fascinating man's life is deserving of a far more interesting and organized writer's efforts.

I read this book ten years ago, cover to cover, and it stays with me.

McLuhan is undeservedly a forgotten thinker today despite his prescient ideas about technology and media. We neglect his classic "Understanding Media" at out peril, especially his account in it of the paralyzing numbness that follows the discovery of any technology and that precedes human understanding and mastery. This includes the numbness that keeps the human race from seeing or understanding itself in the mirror of mass TV and mastering the technology in ways that benefit the human race.

McCluhan never saw a PC but he would surely rejoice at the invention of the digital, interactive PC. His spirit lives on in another oddly forgotten yet prescient little book: George Gilder's "Life After Television: the Coming Transformation of Media and American Life." (1988)

Back to Terrence Gordon, who fully understands all this and offers a warm and nuanced picture of McLuhan's. Few things have made me respect the Catholoic faith as much as Gordon's account of the faith and daily devotion that McLuhan practiced throughout his life.

Mr. Gordon concentrates on Mcluhan's intellectual development and shows McL.'s work as a single work in progress built on a unique foundation. It is not as merely gossipy as Marchand's biography, and not for the reader unfamiliar with the world of ideas McL. dealt with. There is nothing of the pop celebrity here, but a serious presentation of the intellectual ground under all of McLuhan's work.