Wyndham Lewis' 1927 polemic, and in this archive one of the two Lewis books that do the most work — read beside The Art of Being Ruled almost every time either is named. It matters here for two separate reasons: it is the book Innis is known to have read, which makes it a thread between Toronto's two figures, and it is the one Lewis title Cameron thinks McLuhan had read before the two men met in 1943 — a date that constrains the whole influence story. Start with dialogue 69, where that dating is stated.
Across the dialogues
Enters as evidence in a transmission argument rather than as a text — the book Innis is known to have read becomes the thread tying the two Toronto figures together before either wrote what they are known for
A citation is turned into a channel — the books put Lewis inside Innis' reading, and McLuhan inside the room where that happened, which is how the Toronto School acquires a Vorticist ancestor.
"So we know from quotations that Innis read Time and Western Man and The Art of Being Ruled. And almost certainly he would have read those on the recommendation of McLuhan."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 18 (18 Mar 2021), 2:16:35
Given a source and a sequel — the von Hartmann quotation passes through it into McLuhan's hands, which makes the book a relay in a chain rather than an origin
The book is placed mid-chain rather than at its head — a nineteenth-century German formulation reaches McLuhan through Lewis, so what looks like Lewis' insight is itself a relay.
"Wyndham Lewis picked it up and he refers to it in The Art of Being Ruled, and then he actually quotes it in Time and Western Man."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 53 (21 Jul 2022), 33:59
The reading is dated to just after the 1943 meeting and narrowed to a pair, which turns a diffuse influence into something specific enough to check against what McLuhan wrote next.
"then he intensively read Lewis, but especially those two books."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 53 (21 Jul 2022), 34:15
Dated precisely enough to overturn the influence story, and simultaneously credited by the Lewis scholars with an oddity the series prizes — a 1927 book whose particular contents keep fitting the present
Bob relays the Lewis scholars' own puzzlement as corroboration — the people who made Lewis academically respectable notice the same untimeliness the series is built on, and cannot account for it either.
"it's odd what we're reading here, say some book like Time and Western Man, you can see his game, his Menippean satire, but then it's oddly so relevant to today, and particular contents fit today."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 69 (11 May 2023), 47:41
The correction that constrains everything else — if this was the only Lewis McLuhan knew before the meeting, the deep Lewis of the later work is a post-1944 acquisition, not a formative one.
"I don't think he had read any of Lewis except for Time and Western Man before 1944."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 69 (11 May 2023), 49:06
Promoted from source to diagnosis — grouped with the other late-twenties nonfiction as books that describe the present rather than anticipate it
The late-twenties nonfiction is read as description rather than prophecy — which is the series' standing move, and the reason it treats a 1927 polemic as current reporting.
"Those books set out where we are right now today."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 1:01:08
Connections
Lewis' 1927 polemic, the second of the late-twenties nonfiction books.
The two books McLuhan read intensively after meeting Lewis in 1943, and the pair Innis read on McLuhan's recommendation.
Innis read it and The Art of Being Ruled, almost certainly on McLuhan's recommendation and probably through Easterbrook.