I discovered Marshall McLuhan’s ideas via Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. It’s a good thing, too. McLuhan’s writing is so convoluted, I’m unsure whether I would have stuck with it.

It turns out McLuhan had good reason to be different. Physiologically, he had two arteries instead of one at the base of his skull, a rare occurrence in humans. As a result of this he suffered many strokes throughout his life, one of which finally killed him. Coupland writes, “sometimes in front of a classroom of students, … he’d suddenly gap out for a few minutes and then return to the world.” He quite literally thought differently than the masses.

Douglas Coupland is the perfect person to write McLuhan’s biography despite a couple flaws. I can’t think of an author who better represents what McLuhan discovered. (“The medium is the message,” anyone?) Coupland uses a variety of linguistic features in the biography, with some pages containing lists of nonsensical variations on simple syllables and others containing sales sheets from second-hand bookstores. The effect is jarring! McLuhan would have approved.

As for the flaws Coupland’s treatment was self-aggrandizing at times. For instance, Coupland included a complete short story of his own from an earlier collection in someone else’s biography! That said, this just underscores McLuhan’s influence. My second beef with Coupland was his easy dismissal of the significance of McLuhan’s Catholicism. Coupland misunderstands the formative depth of religious habits. Biographers from within religious traditions treat this aspect of McLuhan’s life differently. It’s unsurprising that when rendered non-verbal near the end of his life by a stroke, McLuhan could still occasionally belt out the lyrics to a hymn played on the radio. This is not to say that McLuhan was an exemplary Christian, but a Christian he was.

If you’re considering reading McLuhan you may want to begin with this volume from Coupland. He set the stage and evokes the ethos of the extraordinary Canadian.

Coupland, Douglas. Marshall McLuhan. Penguin Group, 2009. Extraordinary Canadians 13.