Marshall McLuhan: Wise Guy

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

This book is part of the admirable Quest Library, which provides
introductions for bright senior high-school students to the lives and
achievements of distinguished Canadians. Marshall McLuhan is an obvious
but tricky subject for the series, a complex figure difficult to keep in
full focus. Judith Fitzgerald makes some interesting points—generally
via well-selected McLuhan quotations, but the study soon gets into grave
difficulties. We are twice told that he learnt from his Cambridge days
that artists are less important than their creations, yet a high
percentage of space is devoted to (not always relevant) biographical
considerations.

There are other problems. Fitzgerald has earned her living as a
literary journalist, and I once heard McLuhan remark that, in the
countless times he had been reported in the press, his interviewers had
never quoted him with total accuracy. Sure enough, this book contains a
number of slips–notably in its account of Cambridge “new
criticism” (of which I am a product), but also in the geography of
McLuhan’s Toronto. At one point, even the date of the end of the
Second World War is incorrectly given. Hardly an example of careful
scholarship.

Worst of all, the book is written in what I can only describe as an
appallingly vulgar prose, including non-words like “muchical” and
“pishifying” and phrases like “knocked off his spots” and
“shoot the breeze.” Serious discussion cannot be conducted in this
style, which offers the worst possible model for young readers. Not
recommended.