McLuhan intuitively grasps the notion that a good critic examines a poem in order to understand how (and why) it achieves its effects and successfully communicates with its readers through its words’ various shades of meaning in terms of relationships, ambiguities, and resonances in the context of the poem itself.
Richards insists that literary criticism ought to focus on the meaning of words and the way in which they are used. He dismisses the “proper meaning superstition” as hogwash, primarily because words and their meanings are not independent of the way in which they are used. Words control thought. Their relationships create meaning since nothing has its meaning alone. A single note is not music. A single word is not a novel.
Additionally, McLuhan sees, a good critic examines what’s on the page, not what’s beyond it (in terms of who created it and why), in order to form sound judgments concerning its value. In other words, a good critic doesn’t ask how a poem makes its readers feel; rather, a good critic explains why it makes them feel the way it does; or, more clearly, its not what a poem “says” (its content or message) but how its said or “presented” (its context or medium) in terms of the effect it has on a reader – also considered the cause of the poem since a poem only exists when it is being read – that really matters.
By the time McLuhan adds a second B.A. – this one from Cambridge – to his growing list of impressive credentials, he no longer feels he’s beginning at the beginning. In fact, when he leaves the institution in 1936, his list of primary sources and influences has multiplied exponentially as he systematically ploughed through work after work with gusto and joy.
Not only does he find great solace and discover irrefutable support for his theories and beliefs in the French Symbolist poets and Cubist painters as well as the work of novelist James Joyce, economic-historian Harold Innis, poets T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and painter-writer Wyndham Lewis, but he also begins his conversion to Roman Catholicism.
McLuhan prays for direction for two years before he converts. At one point, he writes to one of the Fathers at St. Louis University and asserts he does not “wish to take any step in it that is not consonant with the will of God… My increasing awareness has been of the ease with which Catholics can penetrate and dominate secular concerns – thanks to an emotional and spiritual economy denied to the confused secular mind.” Later, he elaborates “there is no need to mention Christianity. It is enough that it be known that the operator is a Christian.”
Yet, McLuhan’s anxious, mostly because he worries about how his mother will deal with it. For her part, Elsie weeps copiously. Her eldest has ruined his chances to become a Great Man because Catholics are second-class nobodies in both business and education, at least as far as she’s concerned. McLuhan dismisses her histrionic nay-saying; she, after all, has no inkling of the benefits and solace Catholicism bestows upon him, of the way it counteracts the effects of “that swift obliteration of the person which is going on.”
For the first time in his spiritual life, he’s at peace and deeply grateful for Catholicism. He believes an individual always maintains a constant nonstop dialogue with the Creator; and, “for that kind of dialogue, you don’t need even to be verbal, let alone grammatical.”
The kind of dialogue he would have with Marjorie’s another matter entirely. Here, he most assuredly needs to be both verbal and demonstrative. As the months wear on, McLuhan’s love for his perfect woman wears off, not surprisingly, considering time and distance factors.
At first, they write each other regularly, and he takes enormous pride in wearing the dashing scarves and colourful sweaters she knits for him; but, slowly, his feelings undergo a sea change. By the time he concludes his second year at Cambridge, McLuhan conceives of a way to break it to her gently, never dreaming his brilliant plan will backfire just as brilliantly.
He issues an ultimatum: Come to Cambridge now or forget it! Marjorie heads for England on the very next boat. Egads! This is not supposed to happen. The woman is supposed to refuse to visit, not to hop on the next thing sailing!
The pair spends some lovely times together, trekking around James Joyce’s Dublin, biking through the English countryside, attending the cinema, dining by candlelight, and dancing to the beat of Joe Young’s “Take My Heart,” Irving Berlin’s “Let Yourself Go,” and Walter Hirsch’s “Bye Bye Baby,” but when Marjorie returns to Winnipeg, McLuhan admits to himself, somewhat guiltily, he’s happy she’s gone. A couple of months later, he writes the first love of his life a delicate Dear-Jane letter and reluctantly terminates the engagement.
If nothing else, McLuhan’s time at Cambridge boosts his confidence and provides him with the kind of self-assurance he needs to pass the “tripos,” the final English-literature examination that stands between him and his dreams. When he receives an upper second (second-class honours) instead of a first (straight As) on the exam, he feels diminished, unhappy, and deeply chagrined. More than anything else, he feels relief the ordeal’s behind him (since exams have always been his Achilles heel).
Not without justification, McLuhan believes a graduate with a mere upper second cannot look forward to the benefits, advantages, and prestige a clean first provides; fortunately, his “poor” standing does not deter him in his quest to create a first-class body of work. After all, he reasons, if John Ruskin, who earned a fourth, had achieved greatness without the coveted first to aid him in his pursuits, the odds are in his favour that he, in possession of an upper second, will similarly accomplish great things.
By all accounts, McLuhan has come by his solid and sturdy strength of character honestly, several decades earlier, growing up deeply committed to excellence and wholly determined to make his mark. The young Canuck from the Prairies would, one way or another, indeed prove he was, in his mother’s words, “clearly destined for greatness right around the globe.”
The role of advertising is not merely to sell good products but rather to confirm your own good judgement in buying them.
– Marshall McLuhan
The live-it-up attitude of the 1920s’ Jazz Age was, in large part, responsible for the catastrophe looming on the horizon of the next decade. With industry producing vast quantities of assembly-line goods for the first generation of women to embrace short skirts, makeup, cigarettes, and alcohol as well as the first generation of mobile family men in need of the latest inventions (radios, iceboxes, toasters, etc.) in automobiles to transport them to their offices, demand exceeds supply; but, short years later, the economy tanks, sinking demand.
McLuhan strikes a professorial pose at Canada’s Assumption College.
Black Tuesday, the 29 October 1929 stock-market crash (complicated further by “dust-bowl” droughts in the West), first plunges the continent, then the globe, into the Great Depression.
This is a devastating time of mass hunger, homelessness, and poverty with unemployment rates skyrocketing from 9 to 30 per cent and wages plummeting by 60 per cent. When stock prices drop 40 per cent, hundreds of banks close their doors and wickets, thousands of businesses declare bankruptcy, and millions of dollars in savings accounts go up in smoke (or dust).
