An American rock critic, author of The Aesthetics of Rock (1970), whom Bob invokes as the postmodern figure who abandoned rock journalism for pro wrestling around 1970. He works as a foil in the Trump-book reading: where Meltzer "picked wrestling" as a new avant-garde, McLuhan goes a step further to say the avant-garde is "the media themselves." New to the figure — start with dialogue 51, where his full arc frames the Forces 1973 quote.
Across the dialogues
Enters as an example — the early-70s figure Bob says McLuhan had already grasped
Meltzer's first appearance — cited as one of the early-70s figures whose move Bob says McLuhan had already grasped "at the time it was happening."
"Richard Meltzer was one of these guys who did this."
Fleshed out as the foil — the rock critic of The Aesthetics of Rock who quit journalism for wrestling, "picked wrestling" as a new avant-garde that McLuhan tops with "the media themselves"
The full arc laid out — a rock critic "almost the first one," a Yale graduate whose 1970 The Aesthetics of Rock marked his disgust with the industry before he "dropped out of rock journalism" and took up wrestling.
"And he put out a book called The Aesthetics of Rock in 1970,"
Meltzer as the foil for the Forces quote — a "postmodern" figure who located a new avant-garde in wrestling, the exact move McLuhan surpasses by placing the avant-garde not in any spectacle but in "the media themselves."
"But some postmodern people like Meltzer was on to that, and he picked not hockey but wrestling."
Connections
The wrestling-as-avant-garde figure McLuhan surpasses — Meltzer picks wrestling, McLuhan goes further to "the media themselves."