Volume 9, Number 9 · November 23, 1967
Cut-Rate Salvation
By Anthony Quinton
McLuhan: Hot and Cool—A Critical Symposium
edited by G.E. Stearn
Dial, 312 pp., $6.95
The Medium Is the Massage
by Marshall McLuhan, by Quentin Fiore
Random House, 160 pp., $10.95
The Mechanical Bride
by Marshall McLuhan
Vanguard, 157 pp., (paperback, $2.95) (paper)
Any effort to get a clear view of Marshall McLuhan's doctrines is seriously discouraged by his explicit and repeatedly expressed scorn for old-fashioned, print-oriented, 'linear,' rationality. By rejecting as obsolete the humdrum business of setting out definite theses, assembling evidence in support of them, and undermining actual and possible objections, he opts out of the usual argumentative game of truth-seeking, rather in the style of a chessplayer who kicks over the table. In this situation ordinary criticism is enfeebled by an uncomfortable suspicion that it is missing the point.
Review, 4318 words
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