McLuhan's closest interlocutor in the early 1950s. Theall arrived from Yale in 1950, met McLuhan almost daily through 1953, brought him the cybernetics literature (Wiener), and — with McLuhan — ran the 1950–51 Finnegans Wake reading group that Cameron credits as decisive in McLuhan's turn to the Wake. The page follows that collaboration from its start to the mid-50s Tennyson study McLuhan co-wrote with him.
Across the dialogues
Arrives from Yale in 1950 and starts the Finnegans Wake reading group with McLuhan
Theall's arrival in 1950 launched the Finnegans Wake reading group that produced McLuhan's early breakthroughs.
"When Theall comes in 1950 and they start doing a Finnegans Wake reading group."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 1 (20 Oct 2020), 16:15
Theall left Lewis out of his doctoral thesis — Lewis' paintings were sealed in Ottawa — to McLuhan's lasting annoyance.
"Marshall was mad at him because he didn't include Wyndham Lewis in his PhD on communication theories of Pound, Eliot, Yeats and Joyce. Don said he couldn't do Lewis because his paintings were locked up at the National Archives in Ottawa, and he felt he couldn't do justice to Lewis without access to the painting."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 1 (20 Oct 2020), 19:57
Becomes McLuhan's daily interlocutor — brings him cybernetics and serves as the group's secretary
Theall brought McLuhan the cybernetics literature (Wiener) — turning him toward cybernetics and MIT.
"Don shows up in 1950 and gives McLuhan The Human Use of Human Beings, or Cybernetics — can't remember which. Don said that he turned McLuhan on to cybernetics and MIT."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 3 (19 Nov 2020), 27:38
Theall served as secretary on the McLuhan–Carpenter Ford grant application of 1952–53.
"As Carpenter gets involved with McLuhan, Don is the secretary for the two of them when they make their application to the Ford situation in '52–53 — the Ford grant."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 3 (19 Nov 2020), 39:37
By Theall's account, he and McLuhan were reading "the world of kook" and looking into alchemy in the early 1950s.
"Like Don said, they read this, the world of kook in the early '50s, and they're looking into alchemy."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 3 (19 Nov 2020), 54:38
Co-authors the Tennyson epyllion study — the collaboration McLuhan later left unattributed
Two Theall readings surface — his Menippean/Varronian typology sorting Lewis, Joyce and McLuhan by temperament, and his image of McLuhan as "a canary in the mine" who acted out everyone's life in advance
Theall's summary reading of McLuhan — "a canary in the mine," going through in advance what everyone would go through — which Bob enlists for his own eschatological case that people now confront their emptiness faster, exactly the point Cameron refuses.
"Don Theall said that McLuhan acted out our lives."Donald Theall, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 24 (29 Apr 2021), 1:01:01
The star student turned adversary — his too-wide thesis reread as a "clue" to McLuhan's early classes, and his life's work reframed by Cameron as a deliberate misunderstanding born of a personal grievance
Cameron's verdict on Theall's doctoral thesis — covering "Joyce and Eliot and Pound and… everybody but Lewis," it was "way too wide to be useful," since "all of those people require a lifetime of thought."
"I think everybody but Lewis, it's way too wide to be useful."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 30 (15 Jul 2021), 1:56:36
Bob's countervailing read — the thesis still "gave a clue of what Marshall said and what a smart student picked up in Marshall's classes in the early 50s," and Theall was "the brightest student," "a good mime" and "a good absorber" — yet he "dedicated his life to misunderstanding McLuhan, because he was pissed off at McLuhan in some way, personally."
"He dedicated his life to misunderstanding McLuhan, because he was pissed off at McLuhan in some way, personally…"Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 30 (15 Jul 2021), 1:58:15
Recast as McLuhan's loyal double agent — the schizoid (not schizophrenic) diagnosis Bob turns into quadrophrenia, the hospital-written Rear View Mirror, the Grierson camaraderie, and a fidelity to McLuhan that outlasted his own grievance
Theall's diagnosis of McLuhan defended and extended — Bob insists Theall called McLuhan "schizoid," a slang word for the way he "seems to contradict himself," not the clinical "schizophrenia" Cameron half-remembered; it is this schizoid reading Bob says he "goes further" into as quadrophrenia.
"no problem saying schizoid. It's a slang term. It's not even the disease of schizophrenia."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 49 (19 May 2022), 1:24:14
The accidental origin of Theall's first McLuhan book — hospitalized around 1970 after the drinking-heavy camaraderie with John Grierson, Theall wrote The Medium Is the Rear View Mirror only because he was "laid up," having had no interest otherwise in "writing a book on McLuhan."
"and that's when he wrote The Medium Is the Rear View Mirror while he was in the hospital."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 49 (19 May 2022), 1:32:59
Supplies both a technical pair and a piece of Toronto mythology — his synaesthesia/coenaesthesia terms are borrowed for the Tech Body, and his Illuminati story is told and then doubted
Bob retails the lineage as a fantasy he nonetheless keeps — Cameron doubts Carpenter or McLuhan took it seriously, and the disagreement is really about whether the Toronto group knew what it had.
"And that's where Don Theall said the historical fantasy of the Illuminati, you know, was way back in Babylon, and then in Greece, then Rome, then... Venice maybe, and then England, then America, and then he said, then Toronto."Donald Theall, quoted by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 64 (2 Feb 2023), 1:39:52
Credited with the distinction the session's central page turns on — Bob attributes the affect/effect split to him and dates it, so a term Bob had been using as his own is given a source inside the Toronto circle
The distinction Cameron cannot parse on Bob's page is given an author and a date — Theall's, not McLuhan's, which is why the word sits oddly in a McLuhan reading and why Bob has to capitalize it to keep it straight.
"Theall started talking about affects versus effects in the late 80s, and people weren't using affects. They were using effects when they were dealing with McLuhan, because that's what he said."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 69 (11 May 2023), 1:41:26
Promoted from a cited scholar to the session's reading apparatus — his thunder count, his coenaesthesia, and his verdict on McLuhan each carry a stretch of the Book IV reading
The debate's closing "thud" is read as an eleventh thunder past the canonical ten — thunder with the -ner condensed out, which is what lets the whole Berkeley passage count as a replay.
"Don Theall pointed out that thud is the 11th thunder."Donald Theall, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 72 (13 Jul 2023), 1:08:34
Coenaesthesia is the digital successor to the sixties' synaesthesia — where the Global Theater surrounded you, the digital surround seats you at its controls.
"Co-anesthesia, as Theall points out, is gradually putting you at the center of the driving mechanism."Donald Theall, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 72 (13 Jul 2023), 1:21:54
Theall's verdict becomes Bob's own self-description — McLuhan did not stand outside his period diagnosing it but performed its symptoms slightly early, which is the drama Bob then enrols himself in.
"Theall said that Marshall acted out his time."Donald Theall, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 72 (13 Jul 2023), 2:05:33
Cited for his largest claim and hedged in the same breath — the Illuminati lineage is kept as evidence for Canada's moment while its author's stake in it is named
Theall's most extravagant claim is repeated with its discount attached — Bob keeps the lineage from Egypt to Canada while noting Theall was inside the story he was telling.
"McLuhan's center was the new Illuminati, inheriting the whole tradition of the Illuminati going back to Egypt."Donald Theall, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 73 (27 Jul 2023), 1:07:27
The loyal double agent becomes the exhibit — Theall is used twice in one session, first as the source of the reading that keeps Joyce comic, then as proof that even a first-hand student read McLuhan through the rear-view mirror, so his fidelity and his misreading are made two faces of one thing
Theall is credited with the reading that keeps the session's pun from turning solemn — Joyce as satirist of alarm rather than prophet of it, which lets Bob treat the panic in the Wake as the object of the joke rather than its mood.
"Don Theall used to say that an aspect that's not discussed too much was that James Joyce was making fun of people who became apocalyptics, who thought things were coming to an end or dramatic turmoil that could lead to a lot of problems."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 75 (28 Sep 2023), 41:24
The 1971 book is produced as evidence that even the closest reader missed the point — which is a sharper charge than the ones the page has recorded, since it comes from the student who knew the argument first-hand.
"This thing that even Don Theall says in his Medium Is the Rear View Mirror in 1971, his book on McLuhan, he says the big value of McLuhan is he drew attention to the artist as an important person in analyzing sociological situations."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 75 (28 Sep 2023), 1:24:05
Bob's correction inverts the compliment — McLuhan was not promoting the artist as a sociological instrument but retiring the role, which puts Theall on the wrong side of the very obsolescence he was best placed to see.
"That's not McLuhan's message. He was pointing out the artist was no longer available."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 75 (28 Sep 2023), 1:24:24
Credited twice over in one session — as the source of the coenaesthetic and as the man who handed McLuhan cybernetics, so his standing shifts from rival interpreter to upstream supplier
Bob insists on the distinction against the more familiar term, because the whole force of the coenaesthetic is that it seats the user rather than merely blending the senses.
"The individual is now at the center of everything, what Don Theall calls the co-anesthetic, not the synesthetic, the co-anesthetic, which means more and more technology puts you in the driver's seat."Donald Theall, quoted by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 77 (9 Nov 2023), 1:12:28
Theall placed at the source of a decisive input rather than downstream of McLuhan's work — the transmission runs student-to-teacher, which is the reversal the page keeps circling.
"Don Theall, coming out of Yale, gave him cybernetics in 1950, and McLuhan wasn't aware of that."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 77 (9 Nov 2023), 2:39:52
The career acquires its second act and its limit — a role rebuilt out of somebody else's book, and a death dated to the arrival of the media he could not follow, so the figure the archive keeps crediting with decisive early input is finally given the shape of a life that ran out of environment
Theall's role in the McLuhan Institute is named as advisory rather than operational, which fits the pattern the page keeps finding — decisive input from a position with no visibility.
"After 9-1-1, with some movers and shakers in Toronto, but Theall was our eminence grise in it."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 42:36
The late return is sourced to a book about somebody else — Stewart Brand's The Media Lab shows Theall that MIT is using McLuhan and Finnegans Wake, and he retrieves his own Joyce expertise as a new position.
"So he read Stewart Brand's, the Media Lab, saw that they were using McLuhan and Finnegans Wake,"Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 2:09:28
The obituary is written as a failure to make a transition rather than as an ending — social media arrives in 2005–06 and Theall, then Zingrone a year later, do not cross into it, which closes the analog-media era the page has been tracking.
"He dies in 2008."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 2:09:56
Connections
Daily intellectual exchange 1950–53 — Theall brought McLuhan the cybernetics literature and served as secretary on the McLuhan–Carpenter Ford grant application.
Theall's 1950–51 reading group is what Cameron credits as decisive in McLuhan's serious turn to Finnegans Wake.
The mid-50s Tennyson epyllion study Theall co-wrote with McLuhan makes no mention of Havelock, whose epyllion work preceded it.
McLuhan and Theall were reading "the world of kook" and looking into alchemy in the early 1950s.
Theall hung out with Grierson in Montreal and got ill from the drinking; the camaraderie that Bob says Don survived and Grierson did not.
Miller's 1971 attack and Theall's 1971 book came out together; the dialogue rates Theall's engagement far above Miller's.