The poet and critic whom Bob and Cameron treat, in dialogue 24, as a formative pressure on McLuhan. Bob credits to Eliot McLuhan's habit of turning autobiography into an impersonal language — "trying to be impersonal" by making a diary into a style. Cameron names Eliot first among the serious "we" — Eliot, Richards, Empson, McLuhan, Leavis — the small party of exacting readers set against "the regular we" of the crowd, the "we" Pound refused when McLuhan told him "I am not of the 'we' party."
Across the dialogues
Enters as McLuhan's model of impersonality and the head of the serious "we" — the small party of readers Cameron sets against the crowd
Eliot is the source of McLuhan's impersonality — the technique of covering the personal by "making a language out of" a diary, so the autobiographical becomes an impersonal style, is one McLuhan took from Eliot.
"That's what he got from Eliot."
Eliot heads Cameron's serious "we" — the exacting minority (with Richards, Empson, McLuhan, Leavis) whose "we" is categorically unlike the crowd's, the distinction on which Cameron rests his answer to who could retrieve the Greek world of contemplation.
"There's a very big difference between the we of Eliot, Richards, Empson, and McLuhan."
Repositioned against Pound — no longer only the head of the serious "we" but the "background schema for understanding literally anything," the frame Pound's eclecticism then forced McLuhan to make "more precise and more capacious"
Eliot as McLuhan's interpretive frame rather than his catalyst — the "background schema… especially the Four Quartets" through which McLuhan read anything, which Pound's eclecticism then "forced… to become more precise and more capacious," so the two poets are "not directly comparable."
"Eliot provided a kind of background schema for trying to understand literally anything."
Brought in to show that Bob's five-in-four chart structure was already achieved in verse — Cameron matches the fifth quadrant to the five sections of each of the Four Quartets
Cameron's parallel does more than decorate — it makes Bob's "four that is five" a recovered form rather than an invention, which is why Bob concedes "he did it for books, for literacy" and claims only a different medium.
"Eliot's four quartets, each one has five sections."
Connections
Bob credits McLuhan's impersonality — the diary made into an impersonal language — to Eliot.
Cameron files Eliot with Richards, Empson, McLuhan and Leavis as the serious "we," against the crowd.