Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding by W Terrence Gordon, 338 pages

Marshall McLuhan exploded into public consciousness with the publication of Understanding Media in 1964, although he had already built a considerable reputation with his previous works, The Mechanical Bride and The Gutenberg Galaxy.  In the '60s and '70s these pioneering studies of media resulted in him becoming a media star himself, appearing on the cover of Time and Newsweek, in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, as well as on countless talk shows and even more untelevised lectures.  He was hailed as the prophet of television and the wise man (or, perhaps, the holy fool) of the global village.  Although his reputation has declined in the years since his death in 1980, McLuhan continues to serve as a starting point, signpost, and icon for many in the fields of media studies, cultural criticism, and electronic communication.

Gordon depicts McLuhan as, above all, a man struggling to make sense of the world.  He emphasizes the provisional nature of much of McLuhan's work, portraying his subject as an explorer continually probing reality, searching out the patterns that will reveal the deeper underlying structure.  As such, McLuhan's work was grounded in objectivity - his studies of how to survive in the media environment no more constitute an endorsement of that environment than a scientist's study of climate change endorses such change.  Gordon demonstrates how McLuhan's playfulness, which serves to amuse as well as confuse critics and admirers alike, was enabled by this detachment, but was rooted in an imagination that sought understanding through metaphor and analogy.