Avant-garde American composer, taken up in Dialogue 29 as a test case for McLuhan's distinction between conscious and unconscious artists. Bob relays that McLuhan ranked Cage among the "20th-century artists" beside himself, yet insists Cage worked without understanding the effects he was producing — "a totally unconscious 20th century artist." The occasion is a passage Cameron found in Kostelanetz's collection of Cage's "table talk," where Cage implies he grasped something McLuhan missed — a claim Cameron dismisses.
Across the dialogues
Enters as McLuhan's ambiguous near-peer — dignified by the "20th-century artist" ranking, then demoted to an unconscious one who "knew something McLuhan didn't" but "was wrong about that," a case study in the artist as an effect he cannot read
McLuhan's own ranking, told to Bob — Buckminster Fuller a 19th-century artist, McLuhan and Cage 20th-century ones, which places Cage unusually close to McLuhan himself.
"and he and John Cage were 20th century artists."
Bob's demotion of that ranking — Cage produced the right effects without grasping them, "a totally unconscious 20th century artist" who never handled his own art the conscious way McLuhan did.
"Cage is nowhere near McLuhan on that level."
The Cage passage Kostelanetz preserved — a late self-assurance that Cage understood something McLuhan didn't, which Cameron flatly overturns ("But he was wrong about that").
"he knew something that McLuhan didn't."
Connections
McLuhan told Bob that Buckminster Fuller was a 19th-century artist and that he and Cage were 20th-century artists — placing Cage close to himself, though Bob judges Cage an "unconscious" one.
Cage's scattered remarks about McLuhan survive in the "table talk" Kostelanetz assembled from obscure interviews.