American literary critic of modernism and an early conduit for McLuhan's engagement with Joyce. Cameron credits talks with Kenner — chiefly about Ulysses — with warming McLuhan to Finnegans Wake by 1951, and notes McLuhan wrote to Kenner in the late 1940s about turning his focus to Wyndham Lewis.
Across the dialogues
The conversations — chiefly about Ulysses — that warmed McLuhan to Joyce and the Wake by 1951
McLuhan came late and reluctantly to Finnegans Wake; talks with Kenner are what warmed him to it by around 1951.
"I don't think that he even read Finnegans Wake before the late 1940s, and when he did, he wasn't very happy with it. And then through talks, especially with Hugh Kenner, he came to appreciate it more. By 1951 or something like that, he was doing what you're talking about, translating Joyce's insights into something that people could chew on."
By Kenner's own account, his McLuhan conversations were about Ulysses — not the Wake McLuhan would become known for.
"I think Kenner says that he only talked about Ulysses with McLuhan."
It was to Kenner that McLuhan announced, around 1948–49, his intended turn from Eliot to Lewis.
"He writes, I think, to Kenner saying, I've been doing Eliot, but I'm going to focus on Wyndham Lewis now."
The UC Santa Barbara connection — Kenner likely behind McLuhan's ~1960 lectureship, though the two never overlapped there
Cameron suspects Kenner — then on the UC Santa Barbara faculty but away in Europe — arranged McLuhan's ~1960 lectureship there, though the two never overlapped on campus.
"Or there may have been an ongoing lecture series at the university, and Kenner suggested that McLuhan could be that year's lecturer. I'm not sure exactly what the mechanism was. It's hard to believe that Kenner wasn't involved in it in some way, but I do know that Kenner wasn't there."
His Lewis book becomes the occasion for McLuhan's account of nihilism — the 1955 review supplies the force Cameron uses to explain identity-building as armament
The review turns into a general theory of the session's subject — if history is driven by an impossible unification, then the "nuclear armaments of personality building" are what people reach for once the One fails, which is the endless identity-making Bob describes.
"For McLuhan, the great sort of force in history is the attempt to establish a One, with a capital O, O-N-E."
Connections
Conversations with Kenner — chiefly about Ulysses — helped warm McLuhan to Joyce and the Wake by 1951.
McLuhan talked Joyce with Kenner — primarily Ulysses, not Finnegans Wake.
Kenner also did his Yale PhD under Brooks — part of the New Critical line that read McLuhan's own dissertation.
The Santa Barbara connection — McLuhan lectured at UCSB c.1960 while Kenner was on sabbatical in Europe.