McLuhan: Hot & Cool
Stearn, Gerald Emanuel (Ed.). McLuhan: Hot & Cool. Signet Books, 1969 (1st Signet Printing). Softbound. A brief defense statement from McLuhan begins this record of a bygone era populated by public intellectuals engaging in unrestrained media critique: 'Jacques Ellul says that propaganda begins when dialogue ends. I talk back to media and set off on an adventure of exploration.' One page later, Stearn's introduction launches a volley of pithy excerpts from McLuhan's detractors, and proceeds to divide the thinker into 'two Marshall McLuhans': the 'rather donnish, slightly eccentric professor' and the 'wild idiosyncratic Popster who is on to a good thing'. Wonderful cover to this mass-market edition, which, three years before the release of Pong, anticipates the Atari age with cyber-type against a Pac-Man yellow background, with a fore-edge dyed to match and a list of contributors like a high-scores list.
