The Vanguard of What?

My friend pointed out Marshall McLuhan’s house and said that if we waited long enough, we might see him. It was the early 1970s, and I was visiting Wychwood Park, a bucolic enclave in midtown Toronto. “Who’s he?” I asked, getting an incredulous stare in return. “He’s very famous. You know: the medium is the message.” I couldn’t fathom why this University of Toronto English professor was a star, and my friend couldn’t really explain what his celebrated aphorism meant, other than that it was “genius.” However, he was certain that McLuhan was worth stalking.

Unlike Northrop Frye, another U of T professor with an international reputation, Marshall McLuhan didn’t earn his fame primarily through academic or highbrow preoccupations. Instead, he dealt with what most of us encountered daily: the media. (And, unlike McLuhan, Frye never had a cameo in a Woody Allen film.) But after a period of...