Why McLuhan on Joyce (and Homer)

Based on Understanding Media

It is no longer possible to adopt the aloof and dissociated role of the literate Westerner.(Understanding Media,, pag7)

This is the Age of Anxiety for the reason of the electric implosion that compels commitment and participation, quite regardless of any "point of view."(Understanding Media, pag7)

The aspiration of our time for wholeness, empathy and depth of awareness is a natural adjunct of electric technology.(Understanding Media, pag7)

The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns.(Understanding Media, pag8)

The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message, as it were, unless it is used to spell out some verbal ad or name. This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the "content" of any medium is always another medium.(Understanding Media, pag10)

Let us return to the electric light. When the light is being used for brain surgery or night baseball is a matter of indifference. It could be argued that these activities are in some way the "content" of the electric light, since they could not exist without the electric light. This fact merely underlines the point that "the medium is the message" because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.(Understanding Media, pag10)

Instead of asking which came first, the chicken or the egg, it suddenly seemed that a chicken was an egg's idea for getting more eggs. (Understanding Media, pag14)

The "content" of writing or print is speech, but the reader is almost entirely unaware either of print or of speech.(Understanding Media, pag19)

Unaware of our typographic cultural bias, our testers assume that uniform and continuous habits are a sign of intelligence, thus eliminating the ear man and the tactile man.(Understanding Media, pag24)

Today when we want to get our bearings in our own culture, and have need to stand aside from the bias and pressure exerted by any technical form of human expression, we have only to visit a society where that particular form has not been felt, or a historical period in which it was unknown.(Understanding Media, pag26)

Francis Bacon never tired of contrasting hot and cool prose. Writing in "methods" or complete packages, he contrasted with writing in aphorisms, or single observations such as "Revenge is a kind of wild justice." The passive consumer wants packages, but those, he suggested, who are concerned in pursuing knowledge and in seeking causes will resort to aphorisms, just because they are incomplete and require participation in depth.(Understanding Media, pag40)

If it is not enough, please take a look on these findings about Homer and Joyce or go back to the start