American poet and mixed-media artist of the USCO group — not to be confused with Gerald Emanuel Stearn, editor of McLuhan: Hot & Cool. In Dialogue 38 Bob threads him through the Brockman story: Stern "turned [Brockman] on to the New Art movement," and years later, when Bob reached Brockman in 1993, Brockman sent him to Stern — "the guy you want to talk to about McLuhan" — a contact Bob calls "really important." Stern is named on p.198 of McLuhan's From Cliché to Archetype for the mixed-media art. In Dialogue 52 he returns as the key to a decades-old blank: reading Greg Betts's Finding Nothing, Bob names Alvin Malkind as the man who brought Stern — and McLuhan — to the 1964 Vancouver festival, and recalls Stern, "the Forrest Gump of the art world," startled by Don Theall's The Virtual Marshall McLuhan into seeing McLuhan as a poet.
Across the dialogues
Enters inside the Brockman story as the mixed-media artist who bridges the New York art world to McLuhan — and, for Bob, the contact that "turned out to be really important"
Stern enters as the art-world node in Brockman's formation — the mixed-media artist who opens the "New Art movement" to the future literary agent, and later Bob's own line to McLuhan's circle.
"and he met Gerd Stern, and Gerd turned him on to the New Art movement."
Turns from a Brockman footnote into a primary witness and a solved mystery — the 1964 Vancouver encounter, and the "Forrest Gump of the art world" whose own blank memory Bob finally fills in
Bob closes a mystery older than the recording — filling a blank in Stern's own memory by identifying, from Betts's documents, the man who invited Stern (and McLuhan) to the 1964 Vancouver festival; Stern's "bingo, that's the guy" confirms it.
"So I figure out it's probably a guy named Alvin Malkind,"
The 1964 Vancouver deflation — after Stern's wholly McLuhan-inspired performance, McLuhan himself fails to recognize his own influence, a report Cameron insists must be "interrogated," not taken as fact.
"it's interesting what you guys do, but what's this got to do with me?"
Stern — himself a concrete poet who knew Ginsberg's circle — is startled by Theall's book into seeing McLuhan as a poet; Bob calls the belated recognition "ridiculous," Cameron defends it as no accident.
"I never knew McLuhan was a poet,"