Dr. McLuhan – You’ve Hurt My Feelings, Sir:
Dr. McLuhan – You’ve Hurt My Feelings, Sir.
In The Demanding Age: An Anthology of Assorted Contemporary Literature (1970 Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company of Canada Limited), edited by Ronald Side and Ralph Greenfield, there is a letter to Marshall McLuhan with curious notes on the back. In the volume is reprinted The Reversal of the Overheated Image.
The letter is from Irma Coucill, of Toronto, who was apparently connected with the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, according to Eric McLuhan, and reads:
Dr. Marshall McLuhan
Communications Expert
3 Wychwood Park
Toronto
Dr. McLuhan:
I am not a cyclops, nor a one-eyed
monster.
You’ve hurt my feelings, sir.
Yours truly,
Irma Coucill
391 Broadway Ave
Toronto 12
The notes on the reverse are a bit hard to read, but here’s my interpretation:
Turd that turned hairy in idend (identity?) quest
(?) Mrs. Smog-butz went into retrograde (?) and turned turtle
(?) for somatic somnabules in dumpest mud of
quadrangular miasma
The sesquapalan bog of the labyrinth
New grammar for new garbage
Thanks for reading,
Andrew
MM once compared the University, which is blended with the modern service environment of the City, to a Cyclops or Minotaur — because when the figure joins with the ground you get a monster. Perhaps he made a similar remark about the Arts and Letters Club?
Perhaps.
Cheers.