Marshall Mc Luhan: Eine Biographie (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
A delightful read despite a few Internet-spoofing/inspired typographic and content experiments.Because I truly know nothing of McLuhan's work, I was open to everything in the book and never had a chance to think that Coupland got something wrong or misinterpreted some essential part of McLuhan's thought. Your mileage may vary depending on how much you know.This book did exactly what a pop biography should do. I feel like I understand McLuhan's position in our academic history a little better and now I want to read a few more biographies and a couple of McLuhan's most influential books. This is a pretty great introduction to McLuhan. Douglas Coupland, for all his cyber-affectations, makes the most sense as a kind of man-of-letters, a heightened conversationalist. So he's a great person to introduce McLuhan, making complexities easy to apprehend and being pithy and memorable while doing it.The weaknesses of the book: it's clear he did little or no biographical research of his own, and his grasp of McLuhan's ideas isn't too deep either. So it functions neither as its own biography, or its own critical introduction. Rather, it's a digested form of both.We can say for sure, though, that it's effective - after finishing it I went out and bought Understanding Media.
What do You think about Marshall Mc Luhan: Eine Biographie (2011)?
Really fascinating, set me off on a Macluhan Quest!
—Darlene
