ll! gr | The McLuhan DEW-LINE ASS Hae ii min te VOLUME 1, NUMBER3 = = —sSSEPTEMBER, 1 968: A Second Way to Read — warand — peace inthe global village or McLuhan Made Linear‘Human Development Corporation 119 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003 Copyright © 1968, Marshall McLuhan Printed in United States of America or “\..if he really is ¢ an ote want to be admitted, because if he is ai only mean that he is doing something wi stood, approved, and therefore old hat—wo thing new, anything worth doing, can't be People just don’t have that much vision.” Pablo Picasso, quoted by Francoise q and Carlton Lake in “Life with een The enclosed Bantam Book, War and Peace in the Global Village, should be released on the stands just about the time you open this package. It is one of the two newest McLuhan books, the other being Through the Vanishing Point, with Harley Parker, Harper & Row. It is given to you here—not only as a free gift with your subscription to the McLuhan DEW-LINE — but to serve as the basis for a brief sensory-retraining pro- gram, which will be contained in this letter. There are three reasons for including this sensory- retraining program at this time, and in this form. They are: 1, Dr. McLuhan has, from time to time, been criti- cized for his style. To give just one amusing example, here is what Benjamin De Mott said about it in the New Yorker: “...His writing is deliberately anti-logi- eal: circular, repetitious, unqualified, gnomic, out- rageous.” 2. And so it might seem—not only to the public at large, but to many of the readers of this Newsletter.tion, however, is Why? Why shosen this particular style? Why. wy years deliberately developing ang (2 What does he seek to express with he cannot express in a more conyen- ma peop more important: Is there a key to this style, that will ‘make the main ideas contained within stile, immediately available to the average (and, we it miorrad, linear) reader? Is there “a second way” to mus “for example, War and Peace in the Global pea e much of the unfamiliarity, il — that will remove Pa iricetore discomfort, that the average reader feels i first encountering it without preparation? And is “secondary approach” also enable the Suse this book, and this style, as an introduc- a toa whole new emerging human sensibility, much more wide-spread than Dr. McLuhan’s work? 3. We believe it can. We therefore submit it for you ‘ourself, We believe, in summary, that it will ercitd, clear up at least some of the confusion con- erning jan’s style. : eres you to Eetiier and Peace in the Global Village (and other McLuhan books) in both i linear ways. asa ann from ee if you wish, and achieve ‘a deeper understanding of other Twentieth Century writers, such as Joyce, Eliot and Yeats... plus the overwhelming appeal to the young of such Pop-Rock groups as Simon and Garfunkel or the Jefferson Air- plane... plus the inevitable emergence, and domi- nance, in the industrial arena of the corporate con- glomerate—all of which depend on the same structural elements as Dr. McLuhan’s style. ‘Now let us turn to an examination of these elements: “...1 have spent my life in clearing out of poetry every phrase written for the eye...” =W. B. Yeats, “Am Introduction to My Plays” Fifteen years ago, when McLuhan first began to publish his Canadian magazine, Explorations, his style was exactly what you would expect. It was clear and connected, linear and lucid, perfectly step-by-step. For example: “It’s natural today to speak of “audio-visual aids” to teaching, for we still think of the book as norm, of other media as incidental. We also think of the new media (press, radio, TV) as. mass media and think.of the book as an individ- ualistic form~individualistic because it isolated the reader in silence and helped create the Western “I”. Yet it was the first product of mass production.” —Classroom Without Walls, 1953 You will immediately realize that Dr. McLuhan is dealing here with much the same material as is con- tained in his later works. And yet the style is com- pletely different. The parallel with Picasso is perfect: Dr. McLuhan’s early style is as conventional, and as easy to take, as Picasso’s paintings of clowns and lovers in the Blue and Pink periods. Picasso began to change his style, almost imper- ceptibly, in 1906. McLuhan began to change his — even more imperceptibly — in 1954, In that year he >: