McLuhan's 1944 essay on Wyndham Lewis, written in St. Louis months after he submitted his doctoral thesis and met both Lewis and Giedion in the summer of 1943. In this archive it is the dated document that lets the pair say what McLuhan knew and when: already in 1944 he can see that Lewis has named a new kind of matter with a new kind of law, and he cannot yet say what its elements are. The elements arrive in the next decade, as media. Enter through episode 76, where Cameron reads the essay's central paragraph — McLuhan quoting Lewis quoting nobody — and spends an hour on two of its words.
Across the dialogues
Promoted from evidence to text — read aloud at length and treated as the earliest dated moment at which McLuhan knows a New Science is needed and does not yet know what its elements are, which makes the essay the archive's fixed point for dating the media idea's prehistory
The essay's genre, and the reason its enthusiasm is not evidence of naivety — a tribute is written to place a debt, not to keep a distance.
"Which is McLuhan's tribute to Lewis."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 21:50
The pledge behind the essay, which McLuhan did not keep in the letter but arguably kept in effect — the twenty years produced The Mechanical Bride and Understanding Media instead of Lewis criticism.
"He said he's going to dedicate the next 20 years of his life spreading the word on Lewis."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 21:52
The essay's opening move, and Cameron's reading key — "matter" is not filler but the essay's technical term, so the sentence is already asking after a substance rather than an intention.
"It is therefore, politically and humanly speaking, a matter, the word matter being very important here in my view, a matter of the utmost concern for us to know from what sources and by what means the rulers of the modern world determine what they will do next."Marshall McLuhan, read by Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 30:02
McLuhan's gloss on the Lewis quotation, and the essay's political payload — power is not a conspiracy of the informed but an immersion of the uninformed, which is why the remedy has to be perceptual.
"That is to say, the rulers of the modern world are not detached or critical. They do not reflect. They do not consider ends. They are wholly immersed in the matter which they utilize without understanding its character."Marshall McLuhan, read by Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 31:05
The essay's dated significance — 1944 is the earliest point at which McLuhan is on record wanting a New Science, eleven years before he has anything to call its elements.
"what McLuhan is saying here in 1944 is that there is a whole new matter that we need to look at that is the subject of a New Science."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 32:18
The essay's limit is what makes it useful — it catches the media idea in the interval between knowing a field exists and having a name for what it is made of.
"And McLuhan does not yet know how to identify those elements. That will come in the next decade with media."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 32:54
The two-part shape of everything McLuhan will build — a matter and its laws — is in place decades before the Laws of Media that finally state it.
"But already in 1944, he knows that what Lewis is suggesting is a new kind of matter that has a new kind of law."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 33:09
Cameron's reason for reading a 1944 essay into a session about p.160 of Bob's book — the AP is treated as another attempt on the same new matter, which sets up his late refusal to call it post-McLuhan.
"And I believe it relates closely to your ideas about the Anthropomorphic Physical."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 76 (2 Nov 2023), 33:22
Connections
McLuhan's 1944 essay on Wyndham Lewis, written in St. Louis within months of receiving his doctorate.
The essay quotes Lewis' page-111 sentence on art and science as "the very material" and builds its argument on it.
McLuhan's tribute essay, written after the St. Louis year — the point at which he declares himself a Lewisite.