Poet, critic, editor of the Kenyon Review and a central figure among the Southern agrarians. He enters the series at one hinge: when Allen Tate left the Sewanee Review, Ransom wrote back recommending McLuhan for the editorship — a post McLuhan never took, and whose refusal Bob reads as the fork that sent him toward Carpenter and Explorations instead.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the author of a road not taken — the recommendation that would have made McLuhan a literary editor instead of a media theorist
The recommendation that makes the counterfactual concrete — McLuhan was not merely a candidate in principle but was actually named by the most established critic in the network.
"The review got in touch with people and asked, you know, who should take over the editorship because we don't have an editor now. And Ransom wrote back that he thought McLuhan should be."
The placement that explains the recommendation — Ransom is inside the agrarian-fugitive circle McLuhan had entered through Giovannelli, so the offer runs along the same channel as the early publications.
"Ransom was part of the Southern group."
The prior relationship that made the recommendation possible — Ransom knew McLuhan as a contributor before he proposed him as an editor.
"He published his Hopkins essay, I think, in the Kenyon Review."
Connections
Put McLuhan's name forward for the Sewanee Review editorship after Allen Tate resigned.