The forgotten third of McLuhan's early St. Louis circle, alongside Muller-Thym. Cameron's case in dialogue 73 is that almost nothing in McLuhan's early career happens without him: he got The Mechanical Bride into print and kept the publisher to it, and he supplied the introduction to the Southern critics through whom McLuhan published. He then vanishes from the record after the Pound Bollingen controversy. Start with dialogue 73.
Across the dialogues
Recovered from near-total obscurity into a load-bearing figure — the friend who produced McLuhan's first book and his first publishing network, then disappeared out of both through a prize he had no part in
The premise the section has to overcome — Giovannelli's obscurity is not incidental but the reason his role in McLuhan's career has never been assigned.
"first off, people know almost nothing about him."
The credential that puts him in St. Louis at the right moment, making the friendship with McLuhan a matter of an academic appointment rather than a literary coterie.
"He got his Ph.D. at Illinois in Romance languages, and that was, I think, in either 40 or 41."
The claim the whole page rests on — McLuhan's first book exists because a friend worked the New York publishing circuit for it, which relocates the origin of the book from the author to his network.
"he was primarily responsible for the Mechanical Bride ever being published, going around to all sorts of different people."
The second and larger debt — the Southern critics were McLuhan's route into print, so Giovannelli supplied not one book but the publishing channel that carried the early work.
"he was the one that brought McLuhan together with the Southerners."
Bob registers the recovery as a correction to the record rather than a detail — the standard account of the book has no room for the person who caused it.
"But that's not known, that he made Mechanical Bride happen. That's certainly never said."
Connections
Cameron's central claim — Giovannelli got the book published and held Vanguard to the deal.
The route by which McLuhan reached the Southern critics, and so the Kenyon and Sewanee Reviews.
The Bollingen Prize split him from both Pound and McLuhan.