Behnke 1 Adam Behnke COMM 342 Dr. Read Mercer Schuchardt 6 May 2010 Marshall McLuhan and Walker Percy -- Common Artists 1 Pocleost ok lendecnpe : Peery end Preteten as Penrhel te Neteads o£ Zo Goby McLuhan believed that being Canadian, like being a Southerner, helped him to perceive the outlines of a "counter-environment” that lay hidden in the shadows of the hegemonic "world environment" that was being continuously and invasively promoted by the advertisers, politicians, and other debasers of the language menacing the mid-century imagination. (Precoda, 1996) In an article entitled “From New Criticism to Cultural Pluralism: the Southern Legacy of Marshall Mef han,” Karl Precoda explains MeLuhan’s embrace of New Criticism and his subsequent contact with the Southern Agrarian writers of the same vein, who in tum embraced McLuhan as their own. During his time at St. Louis University in the 1940s, McLuhan published at least 7 articles in the Sewanee Review under editor Allen Tate, one of the founders of the Southern Agrarian movement. These essays intertwined deft literary and cultural criticism to combat modem civilization’s utilitarian and fragmented way of life, and the eclectic group of Southern writers -- including Tate, John Crowe Ransom, and Cleanth Brooks among others ~ noticed. Allen Tate retired as editor of the Sewanee Review in 1946, and both Brooks and Ransom strongly recommended the talented McLuhan for the vacant position. They referred to McLuhan as “one of us.”Behnke 2 William Alexander Percy lived and wrote in Mississippi through the tumultuous re- imagining of the South’s identity that was the early 20% century (Tolson, 1994, p. 76-7). He belonged to the last remnant of stoic Southern writers and was a touchstone for the Agrarian movement of Tate and Ransom. These yziters confided in the hospitable Will and he “encouraged these young writéts by praising them and, more important, by publishing poems in their magazines, thus lending them his established name” (Baker, 1983, p. 117). He owned a house in Sewanee, a mountain town where many of the Agrarian writers resided. It was here that Walker Percy, while staying at his Uncle Will’s cabin in the early 1930s, first met Allen Tate and his wife Caroline Gordon, a meeting which would allow Walker to confide in them later in his carly literary career (Tolson, 1994 p. 117, 218-222). Another contemporary of Uncle Will, Walker, and his best friend Shelby Foote was the mysterious William Faulkner. A new sort of Southern writer who embraced the senses and rejected methods or constraints in his prose, Faulkner visited Will Percy’s Greenville home in the 20s and played drunk tennis (Tolson, p. 82). Shelby Foote, a future novelist and historian himself, idolized Faulkner. He forced his best friend Walker to visit Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Mississippi when Walker was in Medical School, and Shelby made sure Faulkner was at the forefront of Walker's mind throughout the rest of their lives through their frequent letters (olson, p. 145; Tolson, 1997). Walker discusses Faulkner frequently in Lost in the Cosmos (1983) and Signposts in a Strange Land (1991). Faulkner appears prominently in McLuhan’s work. The 1945 article “Southern Quality” in the Sewanee Review reveals MeLuhan’s deep understanding of Faulkner and the South’s culture and literature. McLuhan exhibits his vast literary knowledge with hundreds of authorsBehnke 3 and poets referenced throughout the eleven-page analysis. As they are inseparable from any discussion of southem literature during this time, McLuhan evaluates Tate and Ransom’s work alongside Faulkner's, McLuhan was so astute a New Critic, “By 1957, no less a figure in Souther studies than C. Vann Woodward could be found deferring to McLuhan as an authority on Faulkner's work” (Precoda, 1996). Both Marshall McLuhan and Walker Percy were the oldest, but least popular children of their families (Marchand, p. 12-3; Tolson, p. 105) Each had an abusive parent --Walker’s father Leroy and Marshall’s mother Elsie -- yet that parent passed onto their respective son “unusual intelligence” (Tolson, p. 33) and “sophisticated verbal structures” (Marchand, p. 9). Both of their fathers were enlisted during World War 1, but neither was deployed overseas (Marchand, p. 5; Tolson, p. 34). But perhaps most formative in these young men’s lives was their engagement in © Gens hierar and the art of speech. Marshall’s mother Elsie specialized in elocution - clear, distinct, and expressive speech - of which she became a teacher. She was talented at the dying art form, and she maintained students and speaking engagements throughout Marshall’s childhood. The atmosphere of such a figure was influential in forming MeLuhan’s auditory centered mind. Her performances and antics included the recitation of English poetry, and Marshall enjoyed and even participated in this. [He] developed habits of speech that remained with [him] for the rest of [his] days... He ‘memorized immense quantities of poetry and was familiar with the works of the greatest English poets before he entered the university. (Marchand, p. 9)