Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Eric McLuhan and Thunderwords

We had our meeting tonight, and a very meaty one it proved. But before I get to that, and as we for the moment have several posts to peruse, I thought I'd mention the quote Tom brought on the thunderwords. This is from Eric McLuhan, Marshall McLuhan's son:

"It took months of concentrated effort to begin to winkle out the thousands of words in the thunders; now, several of them have yielded thirty or more pages of words, each word denoting or alluding to a theme in the episode or an associated technology. Prior to our discovery of the thunders and their significance, Marshall McLuhan looked up to Joyce as a writer and artist of encyclopedic wisdom and eloquence unparalleled in our time.... After, he recognized in Joyce the prescient explorer, one who used patterns of linguistic energy to discern the patterns of culture and society and technology." -- Eric McLuhan

Although I'm ever hopeful that Tom and those who haven't posted here will do so, meanwhile, I thought I'd post this as representative of Tom's sense of the Wake, at least so far, as he has been quite consistent in impressing upon us the idea that language is all we have by way of apprehending reality. More on that, I will leave to Tom to say.

2 comments:

  1. Glad to see this blog really starting to take off.

    Eric McLuhan has a book all about the ten thunders, I haven't read it yet but it's among the many Wake studies I'm eager to read.

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  2. Yeah, me too. I think we've reached some kind of critical mass. Hope we can sustain it. Tom wasn't sure how Eric was related but I did look into and he is definitely Marshall's son--although I'm sure you already knew that.

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