Joseph Heller's novel, invoked here only through the sentence McLuhan built on it in Take Today: "in Catch-22, the figure of the black market and the ground of war merged into a monster presided over by the syndicate." Bob makes this line the centerpiece of his instruction to "update McLuhan" — the economic, war-and-money McLuhan he wants readers to carry instead of the worn "medium is the message." New to it — start with dialogue 28.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the vehicle for Bob's "update McLuhan" program — the novel whose black-market-and-war monster Bob wants to displace "the medium is the message" as the line people carry
Bob promotes the Catch-22 passage into his pedagogy — the line readers should memorize and deploy, displacing the cliché McLuhan with the one who "was dealing with corrupt money world."
"and then I say make this quote about Catch-22 more famous than the medium is the message."
The novel supplies McLuhan's figure-ground monster in economic form — market as figure and war as ground fusing under "the syndicate," the image Bob uses to read money and violence as one thing.
"the figure of the black market and the ground of war merged into a monster presided over by the syndicate."
Connections
The passage Bob memorializes is from McLuhan and Nevitt's Take Today (1972), page 211.
Catch-22's black-market/war fusion is McLuhan's figure and ground merging into a monster.