Through the Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting

by Marshall McLuhan, Harley Parker

Poetry, Art Studies, Philosophy

Genres: Poetry, Philosophy, Art

268 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the United States and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. He is known as the "father of media studies".
McLuhan coined the expression "the medium is the message" in the first chapter in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and the term global village. He predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. He was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, though his influence began to wane in the early 1970s. In the years following his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles. However, with the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web, interest was renewed in his work and perspectives.

Reviews

[Sparrow .]

I’ve had this book for decades, and was about to throw it out, unread, when it suddenly snared me. Thank God! Parker & McLuhan surf the fluid currents of Western culture – plus one Neolithic drawing, a fragment of Chinese calligraphy, a Persian map of the world (16th-century), and a 1960s magazine ad for the International Silver Company – analyzing how each artist depicted physical space. (All the reproductions are in smeary black-and-white – which is valuable in itself.) Alternating with the visual art is poetry. (For example, this fragment from Ben Jonson entitled “Bartholomew Fair”:

Enter Costard-monger, followed by Nightingale.

COST. Buy any pears, pears, fine, very fine pears!
TRASH. Buy any gingerbread, gilt gingerbread!
NIGHT. Hey, now the Fair’s a filling! (Sings.)
O, for a tune to startle
The birds o’ the booths here billing,
Yearly with old saint Bartle!

The note beside it reads: “The fair is an all-at-once ’Happening’ of multifarious events – all the fairs that ever were.”)

McLuhan invented his own alternative to Marxism, based on the technological phases of society. Instead of the rise of capitalism, the printing press changes everything. Instead of consumer capitalism, there’s the invention of TV. I hate to admit it, but his thesis seems as logical as Marx’s.

Harley couldn’t restrain himself from including one of his own mediocre (but interesting) canvases, on page 216. (Its title: “The Trip.”) Next to it, one of the authors – or both of them? – wrote:

“A Chagall-like memory of children’s games. Air flight involves an extension of the whole body. Once in the air a plane makes its own times and spaces…”

(You never know who is writing what in this book, published in freewheeling 1969.)

Maybe McLuhan was right, and the era of unified television did create a global village – but the Internet has shattered us back into angry tribes.