Marshall McLuhan. Judith Fitzgerald

yeah? Poet John Milton lost his eyesight in February 1652, most likely because of glaucoma.”

      “Pfft! Because of heavy traffic congestion, Julius Caesar banned all wheeled vehicles from Rome during daylight hours.…”

      Facts, figures, fictions, flights of fancy. Throughout these impressionable years, McLuhan despairs of ever learning everything he believes he really needs to know. He studies long hours and spends countless more memorizing long passages of poetry and dramatic prose.

      Elsie, similarly motivated (but more concerned with method, performance, and delivery), even practises Browning poems and Shakespearean sonnets in tones both spirited and mesmerizing while doing the housework, running the carpet-sweeper over the Persian rug she’s finally acquired or replacing the slab of ice in the bottom tray of the brand-new icebox she’s recently purchased.

      By the time McLuhan enters university, he’s read, heard, memorized, and consumed almost everything of value and interest written in the English language with the notable exception of Paradise Lost, John Milton’s epic poem. (He considers it beyond his comprehension at his inexperienced age.) In his zeal to “own literature,” McLuhan handily (if not unconsciously) prepares himself for the very (ivory) towers (of Babel) he’ll eventually topple. After all, he’s strangely convinced he’s on his way to becoming the man with the message for the human race poised, then, as now, on the brink of one complicated yet potentially beautiful new world.

      McLuhan’s immediate world, once he comes to understand it better, begins to reveal its own set of complications. For one thing, his parents, slowly drifting apart as his mother’s on-stage ventures take off and his father’s career never does, quarrel fiercely, frequently, all too often forgetting the stress and anguish they’re rather selfishly inflicting upon their captive audience.

      Elsie is extremely ambitious; Herb is not. Elsie wants to beautify the Gertrude Street dwelling; Herb is content to live within its walls exactly as it is. Elsie wants to be the first on the block to own a car; Herb never owns one in his life. The stylish Elsie is, in short, a woman; the casual Herb, as she tells the boys in mean-spirited disgust for her husband’s disinterest in all things fashionable, is not a man.

      Herb, a maddeningly mild-mannered and agreeable man, is happy to sit back and shoot the breeze. He loves his sons very much and spends long hours with them, delighting in their intellectual progress and generally staying out of harm’s way. One game the trio particularly enjoys involves finding, learning, and memorizing the meanings of the most difficult words in the dictionary, a daily habit his firstborn, now a self-described “intellectual thug,” adopts for life.

      Despite the fact Maurice is more his father’s top banana and strong-willed Marshall tends to be the apple of Elsie’s eye, the boys are close, probably because their mother’s “boundless egotism,” as her eldest describes it, requires they stick together for protection during her emotional storms.

      Privately, McLuhan bemoans the cruel fate that has brought his parents together as both he and Red witness the frenzied events that will ultimately tear the ill-suited couple apart. Then, not suprisingly, when Elsie blows her stack for no good reason either child sees, her sons become easy targets for her fury and frustration.

      Later, McLuhan observes his childhood was so very painful in some respects that he can barely stand to think about it. Yet, he loves and respects his mother, somehow intuitively grasping the psychological dynamic fuelling her ballistics derives from her own childhood, damaged by an intense, unpredictable, and volatile taskmaster of a father given to temper tantrums of legendary status among locals.

      Naturally, when the often-generous (and certainly incomparable) Elsie brags about either the talented Maurice or the gifted Marshall to the many people she invites to break bread at the family’s table – lavishly praising their brilliant minds, excellent behaviour, and strapping young physiques – both boys glow with pride.

      McLuhan fails grade six. His schoolteacher mother, well-acquainted with her son’s intellectual abilities, naturally sets the principal straight concerning the school’s problem. Her son, a brilliant young genius, truly destined for greatness, is simply bored, bored, BORED. When McLuhan enters grade seven on the condition he “handle it,” he handles it, thanks to a teacher who loves words, language, and literature as much as he does.

      It is during this pivotal year that McLuhan finally discovers the path he believes he must tread; and, later, by the time he’s making inroads at the University of Manitoba in 1928, he’s already proven his mother right.

      McLuhan can see lovely splashes of stars, sparkling jewels so close and bright, clear nights in the fragrant garden on Gertrude; yes, he can see the splendid stars, he can almost scoop up handfuls of them; and, yes, one day – whether he becomes an engineer, doctor, or Olympic rower – he will see the name of Marshall McLuhan glittering magnificently among them, no doubt because he’s finally figured out what it is he wants to do.

      He enters the University of Manitoba fully convinced his interest in structure and design will be put to best use studying engineering, but after spending that summer working among a crew of surveyors in the wilds of mosquito-friendly Manitoba, McLuhan anguishes over his future before switching to English and philosophy, a decision that proves to be one of the best he makes.

      Nonetheless, the young scholar’s tormented by feelings of inadequacy and his fear that, although he now knows what he wants to study, he’s still no closer to determining how he’ll realize his dream of becoming a Great Man once his studying days are done.

      A Christian who reads the Bible daily, McLuhan had attended Winnipeg’s Nassau Baptist Church (at his mother’s insistence), even though his father was Presbyterian; as he matured, McLuhan opted to attend any Church but the dull and stuffy Baptist one. One breezy evening in April 1930, sitting on the throne and pondering what he’d just learned in Sunday school that day, it comes to him:

      He’ll write a Great Book that will prove all life – mental, material, spiritual, physical – is governed by laws, laws that no one else has even noticed, laws that no else has even considered discussing between the covers of a book. His book will be philosophically grounded in this world; it will not be a religious book; but, its central idea, issuing from Christ’s precepts and McLuhan’s understanding of the primary importance of Pentecost in view of the laws he’s perceived, will provide comfort and enlightenment. The laws are infallible – as precise as mathematics, as ubiquitous as weather – and, if a person correctly grasps them in all their glory, a person goes a long way.

      Pentecost is the divine mystery, the all-encompassing power or energy responsible for the miracle of creation.

      Thus, because the world exists – living beings see, feel, hear, taste, touch, smell, and know it – the human race owes allegiance to it (or, more accurately, to its Creator and the fruits of His labour). In believing in Pentecost as the divine mystery, McLuhan pledges his own allegiance to the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1226–1274), the theologian canonized as the patron saint of students and universities in 1323 as well as one of the greatest and most influential religious thinkers (who had, incidentally, taken a vow of chastity and renounced the trappings of this world).

      Saint Thomas wrote numerous lucid and erudite volumes (including the Summa Theologica), and he also preached with great eloquence and inspiring conviction concerning his certainty God exists and His proof is everywhere (in everything) in this world in which we live. Throughout his life McLuhan will maintain close ties with the so-called Thomist School. His idea of the “sensuously orchestrated” individual of the future corresponds with doctrines aligning God with universal