The Medium & the Light: Reflections on Religion, published by Stoddart Publishing in Toronto (1999), provided the inspiration for The Medium & the Light Award. It was edited by Eric McLuhan, who wrote the Introduction & Notes, & Jacep Szklarek.
By Alexander Kuskis, PhD
University of Toronto
I started to publish the Weblog or blog which I titled the McLuhan Galaxy in 2010 in anticipation of the expected plethora of festivities in 2011 to celebrate the centenary on July 21 of the birth of Marshall McLuhan in 1911: there would be conferences, lectures, new books about McLuhan, exhibitions, reassessment articles, both online and in print, and many other activities. It was a busy year, replete with McLuhan-related events and activities. I knew beforehand that a good way to keep track of everything happening and then being able to remember it all would require some kind of documentation, not just for myself, but also for others. Indeed, I thought that others who shared my media and cultural interests would also like to know what was happening in the media studies field as it relates to Marshall McLuhan. Weblogs or blogs were then a popular Internet activity, which I thought would be worthwhile to understand and learn by actually doing it. So, that’s what I did, never expecting to be still working at it 14 years later. I also thought that a digital blog would be a good way of extending my earlier 10-year career in book publishing, which I saw being impacted by the new digital Internet medium. Indeed, the reason that I left book publishing in Canada in 1988 was my sense that the new Electronic and digital technologies would affect print culture negatively, indeed I saw abundant evidence that it was already happening.
I selected the title McLuhan Galaxy for my blog as a reference to McLuhan’s publication in 1962 of the important book, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Having worked in the book publishing industry myself for 10 years for major companies like Penguin Books, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, and John Wiley, I knew that the McLuhanism of the new media era would be entirely about the making of Electronic and Digital humanity, representing a new media era that was already transformational.
After 2011, I continued the blog to track the increasing recognition of McLuhan’s ideas and relevance in our Internet Age, and to detail explorations of his work and legacy. My postings in the McLuhan Galaxy have slowed down now, but they still continue. They now in May 2024, number 1,522 postings.
I have sought to republish worthy articles relating to the work of Marshall McLuhan, along with conference announcements, news, research papers, reviews, calls for papers, quotations collections, links, etc. and lots of relevant photographs for the benefit of the worldwide Marshall McLuhan community of interest. My Weblog or blog has grown in its readership worldwide through its direct subscribers, presently over 900, but far more through social media such as Facebook (over 2600 members in my Marshall McLuhan Group), Twitter, now called X, the Toronto Area McLuhan Google Group, and its inclusion in the Official McLuhan Estate website where its latest postings are repeated at https://www.marshallmcluhan.com/ (scroll down). And last year it was added to the recently established McLuhan Foundation website directed by David Nostbakken, PhD at https://mcluhanfoundation.org/about. Where appropriate, I also post it on the Media Ecology Association listserv and other media-related online publications.
It is in this Electronic and Digital media era, specifically 2011, that I started to cover Howard Engel and Richard Osicki’s Marshall McLuhan Initiative (MMI) of annually rewarding selected scholars, clergy, women, and media personalities for their accomplishments related to and in recognition of the religious dimensions of the life and work of Marshall McLuhan.
**********
The Four Most Influential Winners of The Medium & the Message in their Respective Spheres (In My Opinion)
1. Father Pierre Babin, OMI
The first award was introduced at the McLuhan Legacy Network Festival, St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, Sunday, July 24, 2011.
See shortlink URL for this post on the McLuhan Galaxy: https://wp.me/pWYA6-rw
Father Pierre Babin, OMIgoogle.com/imgres
The inaugural award in 2011 was presented to the late Fr. Pierre Babin, OMI (1925-2012) in Lyons, France; he was a religious member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI France), a pioneer of group media, an expert in psychology-pedagogy, explorer of social networking, author and researcher. He had taught at universities in France, Switzerland, as well as St. Paul’s University, Ottawa, Canada, and two universities in the United States. Internationally, he is renowned for his innovative vision for defining a new approach to catechesis in a media age.
The unique Medium and Light obelisk statuette representing the award was unveiled by Dr. Eric McLuhan during Toronto’s McLuhan Centenary celebrations that summer. Originally conceived by the late Director of the Marshall McLuhan Initiative, Richard J. Osicki (1946-2012), and inspired by the book The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion by Marshall McLuhan and edited by Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek (1999) was designed by The Initiative in collaboration with artist Matthew McMillan of Prairie Studio Glass, Winnipeg who uniquely recreates the glass obelisk for each year’s recipient.
“Babin acknowledged Marshall McLuhan’s influence, “Originally, I had regarded media as external instruments. Little by little, my conventional understanding of media and audiovisual methods changed. The more I contemplated this new revelation, the more aware I became that people were audiovisually oriented, so that we could no longer speak to them as we had spoken in the past.”
There were three characteristics of modern life in the younger generation that Babin felt the Church needed to realize: (1) the resurgence of the imagination; (2) the importance of affective relationships and values and (3) the dissolution of national and cultural frontiers. McLuhan had inspired him to re-examine the function of communication, including the communication of faith. For Babin, the new awakening “was an insistence that was sometimes difficult to bear.” McLuhan managed to help him understand that technology, or more specifically the audiovisual medium of communication, is the key to understanding our contemporary culture and the evolution of a new human consciousness”…(See https://wp.me/pWYA6-rw and also https://wp.me/pWYA6-A7)
2. Dr. Eric McLuhan
Dr. Eric McLuhan was the recipient of the third annual Medium and Light Award, in recognition of the religious dimensions of the life and work of Marshall McLuhan, which was presented to him on Thursday, October 24 in Toronto.
Written by Michael Swan, The Catholic Register – Friday, 01 November 2013
TORONTO – When Marshall McLuhan woke up on a typical work day he didn’t immediately grab a New Testament. He grabbed three. One in the original Greek, the Vulgate Latin translation and then a version in another language he felt a need to work on – German, Portuguese, maybe Italian. His son Eric McLuhan remembers it as a process of linguistic triangulation. By looking at various translations his father could deepen his sense of the original and full meaning of the text. “It would give him something to meditate on,” said Eric. The morning sessions with Scripture would give McLuhan “ideas, thoughts, approaches that were sufficiently outside the box.”
Morning meditation often led McLuhan to new insights about what it meant to communicate, to listen, to see and to read. Insights such as “The medium is the message” — probably his most famous aphorism. While McLuhan always resisted any attempt to reduce his sayings to a single meaning, there is no doubt the first sense he had was the sense of Christ as the medium who is also the message, said Howard Engel, the director of the McLuhan Initiative at the University of Manitoba’s St. Paul College. Engel awarded Eric McLuhan with the third annual Medium and the Light Award at a celebration of the 50th anniversary of McLuhan’s famed office and classroom in the coach house behind the University of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto Oct. 23. The event saw more than 50 scholars in the tiny old coach house including many of his students of 40 years ago. The younger scholars got to sit on the floor, just as their elders had done in the 1960s and ’70s. The Medium and the Light Award is given to thinkers who have done extraordinary work researching, extending and amplifying McLuhan’s religious insights.
“A lot of people don’t associate religion and Marshall McLuhan’s Catholicity with communications theory,” Engel said. But you don’t really get Marshall McLuhan if you don’t consider his profound religious commitment, said his son. Eric McLuhan’s own work in communications theory and criticism includes editing the 1999 book The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion by Marshall McLuhan, after which the St. Paul’s College award is named.
In the 1950s McLuhan left the University of Manitoba, MA in hand, to pursue advanced studies at Cambridge University in England. The colonial boy was told he would have to re-do his BA and MA before he would be ready for doctoral studies at the prestigious English university. It was during that period of re-examination that he became a Catholic. “He wasn’t born into the Church,” said Eric McLuhan. “He worked his way in, almost kicking and screaming. He was a very skeptical, very pragmatic man. He wanted proof before he would accept anything. His conversion was of that character as well.”
Eric recently donated 6,000 of his father’s books to the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. The books are prized by McLuhan scholars for the many notes the great man made in the margins as well as personalized indexes he would compile on the end pages. But the Fisher Rare Book Library didn’t get the Bibles. “I’m still using them,” said Eric.
3. Dr. Derrick de Kerckhove
Dr. Derrick de Kerckhove was the recipient of the ninth annual Medium and Light Award, in recognition of the religious dimensions of the life and work of Marshall McLuhan, which was presented to him on Thursday, June 18, 2020 in Toronto.
By Howard R. Engel
The Medium and the Light Award for 2020
The recipient of the ninth Medium and the Light Award, in recognition of the ecumenical dimensions of the life and work of Marshall McLuhan, was presented on Thursday, June 18 online as an integral part of the 21st Media Ecology Association (MEA) Conference hosted by Adelphi University, Garden City, New York with the overall theme “Communication Choices + Challenges”. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, organizers decided to pivot from the original face-to-face format, which would have been an impossibility, to mounting the MEA Conference entirely online, for the first time ever.
Dr. Derrick de Kerckhove is the recipient of the 2020 Award. He is a longtime media ecologist, McLuhan studies scholar and researcher on the effects of media on the human being. He received it for his longstanding, indefatigable enthusiasm and energy in extending McLuhan’s work by probing our ever-changing world from his point-of-being that invites all of us to think about the effects of media technologies on all of us as human beings and for his ongoing “indepth research on the ability of the media to influence human perceptual and cognitive experience, starting from the assumption that the mass media can be defined as psychotechnologies, i.e. technologies that affect and modify ways of thinking and feeling.”
The Award is usually given annually by The Marshall McLuhan Initiative that was affiliated for its first decade (2007-2017) with St Paul’s College, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. The University of Manitoba is Marshall McLuhan’s first post-secondary alma mater, where he earned the Gold Medal in Arts for 1933 and an M.A. in English literature (1934).
4. Dr. Robert K. Logan
Dr. Robert K. (“Bob”) Logan was the Recipient of 12th Medium & the Light Award, 2023, in recognition of the religious dimensions of the life and work of Marshall McLuhan, which was presented to him on Thursday, June 22 as a concurrent session of the 24th Media Ecology Association (MEA) Convention held in person at Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus.
The Medium and the Light Award for 2023 by
Howard R. Engel
The recipient of the twelfth Medium and the Light Award, in recognition of the ecumenical dimensions of the life and work of Marshall McLuhan, was presented on Thursday, June 22 as a concurrent session of the 24th Media Ecology Association (MEA) Convention held in person at Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus with the overall theme of “Arts/Symbol/Context/ Meanings”. This was the sixth time that The Medium and the Light Award was conferred at a MEA Convention, the other years being 2014, 2017, 2020, 2021, and 2022.
Dr. Robert K. Logan is the recipient of this year’s Award for so effectively and faithfully inviting others to join him in probing the many effects of our mediated world on human beings through a lifetime of work inspired by his friend Marshall McLuhan’s own explorations. McLuhan mentored him to understand particularly the figure/ground effects of technologies, especially communication media, on human beings. According to Award nominator, Alex Kuskis, “Since McLuhan’s passing in 1980, Bob Logan has done the most to support McLuhan’s reputation and legacy than any other scholar, except perhaps for Eric McLuhan, who I contend did the most.” [Interestingly, Bob was the one who nominated Eric for this award back in 2012!]
“Having published nearly 100 analytical essays explaining aspects of McLuhan’s media thinking and over a dozen books that are fully or at least partly concerned with McLuhan’s thought, Bob Logan is worthy of recognition for his work…” The Award is usually given annually by The Marshall McLuhan Initiative that was affiliated for its first decade (2007-2017) with St Paul’s College, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. The University of Manitoba is Marshall McLuhan’s first post-secondary alma mater, where he earned the Gold Medal in Arts for 1933 and an M.A. in English literature (1934).
The shortlink URL for this McLuhan Galaxy post is https://wp.me/pWYA6-3NM.
Alex Kuskis (L) & Howard Engel (R) on July 15, 2024 when Howard personally delivered The Medium & the Light Award to me at my home in Fergus, Ontario
Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed
Alexander Kuskis, PhD (University of Toronto)
By Howard R. Engel, Founding Director & C.E.O.
The Marshall McLuhan Initiative Inc.
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
The recipient of the thirteenth Medium and the Light Award, in recognition of the ecumenical dimensions of the life and work of Marshall McLuhan, was presented on Thursday, May 30 as the first item in the program of “Winnipigeon Homecoming: Marshall McLuhan in Winnipeg 2.0” Symposium held at the Archives & Special Collections Department, the University of Manitoba.
Dr. Alexander Kuskis is the recipient of this year’s Award for, in the words of his nominator, Dr. Robert K. (“Bob”) Logan, his “incredibly important work as the creator and editor of the blog, McLuhan Galaxy, which has been instrumental in the preservation of the Marshall McLuhan legacy and has contributed to the maintenance of the community of McLuhan scholars.” Kuskis’s insightful anthology of posts so thoroughly explores the reach and import of McLuhan’s work, ideas and HMM’s under-recognized role as an educationist. Just as McLuhan once said “I don’t want them to believe me. I just want them to think”, Kuskis’s blog invites the reader to think. Alex Kuskis brings people together by having us reach beyond ourselves through his rich, diverse, and life-supporting explorations on the effects of digital technologies on our lives. Through his medium of the McLuhan Galaxy blog, he so effectively invites all his readers into a relationship with each other, a message of encounter and belonging that we need to hear more now than ever in our over-mediated and increasingly fragmented world.
This year, the award will be accompanied by a $1,000 cash prize from the Roland R. and Doris M. Engel Family Fund at the Winnipeg Foundation.
The Award is given annually by The Marshall McLuhan Initiative Inc. that was affiliated for its first decade (2007 – 2017) with St Paul’s College, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. The University of Manitoba is Marshall McLuhan’s first post-secondary alma mater, where he earned the Gold Medal in Arts for 1933 and an M.A. in English Literature (1934).
[Editorial comment: Incidentally, Alex’s first university teaching job was in the English Department of the University of Manitoba starting in September, 1972, where he was the Theatre specialist, teaching dramatic literature, theatre history, and other courses, and directing at least one stage production each year in the small theatre in the basement of University College, which is still there.]
(The picture below is of Howard Engel & his wife, Esther Juce)
The award consists of:
a crystal-clear soda-glass obelisk (measuring ca. 2 x 2 x 8inches and 3 pounds in weight)
embedded in a piece of opalescent dichroic glass.
- on which the pebble-in-the-pond logo of the Marshall McLuhan Initiative has been etched.
- This dichroic glass has a very thin multi-metal coating that refracts light in many different colours.
- Both the award and recipients’ names are etched horizontally on the obelisk’s surface.
History of The Medium & the Light Award
Originally conceived by the first co-Director of the Marshall McLuhan Initiative, Richard J. Osicki (1946-2012), and inspired by the book The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion by Marshall McLuhan and edited by Eric McLuhan and Fr. Jacek Szklarek (1999), the prize was designed by The MM Initiative in collaboration with artist Matthew McMillan of Prairie Studio Glass, Winnipeg, who uniquely recreates the glass obelisk for each year’s recipient.
The inaugural award, in 2011, was presented to the late Fr. Pierre Babin, omi (1925-2012), in Lyons, France. This unique obelisk statuette was unveiled by Dr. Eric McLuhan during Toronto’s McLuhan Centenary celebrations that summer.
In 2012, the award was presented to Dr. Thomas W. Cooper, the distinguished professor of communications at Emerson College in Boston during the international conference “McLuhan: Social Media Between Faith and Culture” held at the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto.
None other than Dr. Eric McLuhan (1942-2018), world renowned author, lecturer, and prober into “all things media ecology”, was given the award during the 50th Anniversary of the Opening of McLuhan’s Centre for Culture & Technology, University of Toronto in 2013.
The 2014 award was presented to Fr. John J. Pungente, S.J. (1939-2023) and The Jesuit Communication Project (JCP), which he directed, both internationally known and award-winning media literacy leaders on the occasion of JCP’s 30th anniversary and the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Marshall McLuhan’s seminal work, Understanding Media during the Media Ecology Association’s Convention in Toronto.
In 2015, The Medium and the Light Award was presented posthumously to the man who conceived the prize, the late Richard J. Osicki (1946-2012), journalist, broadcaster, and media educator. Osicki had explored a theology of communications through a comparison of the thought of McLuhan and Canadian Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan. Osicki’s work and passion were recognized in Winnipeg at the “McLuhan’s Faith and Works Conference”, jointly held by the Initiative and the International Institute for the Study of Technology and Christianity, Wheaton, Illinois.
The 2016 recipient was Sr. Angela Ann Zukowski, MHSH, D. Min., Director of the Institute for Pastoral Initiatives, Associate Professor in the Dept. of Religious Studies, and founder of the worldwide Virtual Learning Community for Faith Formation at the University of Dayton. A media scholar and educator, Zukowski received the award at the closing Gala Awards Dinner of the international conference, “The Toronto School: Then, Now, Next”, held at the University of St. Michael’s College, the University of Toronto.
Fr. Paul Soukup S.J., professor in, and head of, the Dept. of Communications and Theology at Santa Clara University, media ecologist, scholar, educator, and practitioner was presented with the prize in 2017. Soukup is known particularly for his long and fruitful exploration into theology and communications that help us understand what it means to be both Christian and human in the 21st century.
There was no Medium and the Light Award in 2018, just in time for a well-deserved sabbatical. This break allowed us to build up for the special presentation of the award to Rosanna Deerchild at the symposium, “Winnipigeon Homecoming” hosted by Archives & Special Collections, Elizabeth Dafoe Library, The University of Manitoba in 2019. Deerchild is a longtime storyteller, published author, poet, broadcaster and host of CBC Radio’s Unreserved. This program brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous people the world over in a spirit of truth and reconciliation by reflecting the rich, diverse, and life-supporting experiences of Indigenous peoples back upon Indigenous and Settler alike.
The 2020 award was presented to Dr. Derrick de Kerckhove, a longtime media ecologist, McLuhan studies scholar, and researcher on the effects of media on the human being. The Award recognizes de Kerckhove’s ongoing “in-depth research on the ability of the media to influence human perceptual and cognitive experience, starting from the assumption that the mass media can be defined as psychotechnologies, i.e. technologies that affect and modify ways of thinking and feeling.”
The MMI conferred the 2021 award on Nora Young because of her indefatigable probing into the many effects of our mediated world on human beings through her program Spark on CBC Radio (often enhanced with HMM audio clips), and through her book The Virtual Self: How Our Digital Lives are Altering the World Around Us (2012). Both endeavours recall McLuhan’s explorations to understand technologies (especially communication media) so that we can still shape them, even as they shape us.
The 2022 award was presented to B.W. Powe for his overall body of work as award-winning author, poet, storyteller, writer, professor, and teacher who so masterfully and imaginatively captures the restless spirit of McLuhan probing “an unsuspecting media ecology that he wears like his own skin, a membrane integral to his own being.” Powe sheds so much light on the media of his observed worlds that can help lead us out of the vortex of technological determinism.
Dr. Robert K. (a.k.a. “Bob”) Logan longtime McLuhan scholar, prolific author, teacher, editor, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Toronto, public intellectual, and media ecologist was the recipient of last year’s Award for so effectively and faithfully inviting others to join him in probing the many effects of our mediated world on human beings through a lifetime of work inspired by his friend Marshall McLuhan’s own explorations.
Accompanying this release are seven other resources: a portrait of Alex, presumably with his personal library in the background (credit to Beverly Lee); a photo of MMI Board member-at-large Esther Juce and myself after unveiling this year’s award (credit Mike Latschislaw); three images of the Medium and the Light Award for 2024 by itself (credit Howard R. Engel); the text of Alex Kuskis’s acceptance speech; and the 2024 PowerPoint about the history and recipients of the Medium and the Light Award since its inception. (Note: Both of these final two items will be published in the McLuhan Galaxy separately.) For further information about the award and its recipients or about the MMI in general, please contact the current C.E.O. and Founding Director of the Marshall McLuhan Initiative Inc.,
Howard R. Engel
[email protected]
The Medium & the Light Award
Filed under: Academic, Announcement, Award, Education, Ideas, Influenced by McLuhan, Media Ecology, Press Release, Religion, Remembrance, Scholars, university | Closed
The Medium & the Light (1999) book, the title of which was chosen to be the name of The Medium & the Light Award
Although he died in 1980, he had foreseen the Internet and had warned against the excesses of technologies that could divorce from our material existence and threaten our very humanity, technologies that we now call artificial intelligence and social media. This prophet, pioneer of media ecology, and world-class public intellectual was , Marshall McLuhan who spent his formative years (1915 – 34) in our own fair city of Winnipeg. To celebrate this incredible Canadian, The Marshall McLuhan Initiative (MMI) is holding a Symposium & Banquet entitled “Winnipigeon Homecoming: Marshall McLuhan in Winnipeg 2.0” on Thursday, May 30th, 2024 at the University of Manitoba.
University of Manitoba Administrative Building
The free Symposium will be from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Archives & Special Collections, 330 Elizabeth Dafoe Library, U of M. Noted speakers will include Andrew McLuhan, grandson of Marshall and founder of The McLuhan Institute, which appeals to the common person; and local McLuhan authority and academic, Dr. Jaqueline McLeod Rogers of the University of Winnipeg. The ticketed Banquet, held at Cross Commons at St. John’s College, U of M, will begin at 7:00 p.m., and will feature presentations by MMI board members, Dr. Jonathan Slater of Montreal and novelist William Jefferson of Missouri, as well as live jazz music by Winnipeg’s Danny Carroll Trio. The purpose of The Marshall McLuhan Initiative is “To honour, celebrate, and extend the life’s work of Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911 – 1980), who grew up in Winnipeg; graduated from Gladstone School, Kelvin Technical High School, and the University of Manitoba; was a devout Catholic, a beloved professor of English literature, prophetic poet, satirist and the renowned communications theorist/visionary and media guru that we recognize today.” The raison d’être of the MMI is to promote Marshall McLuhan’s prairie (and especially Winnipeg) roots and his Catholic faith. For more information on McLuhan, see https://www.marshallmcluhan.com/ . Come and witness how Marshall McLuhan, the 1933 U of M Gold Medalist in Arts, who coined the house-hold expressions of “The medium is the message,” and “The new electronic independence re-creates the world in the image of a global village,” (emphasis ours), bears relevance today in our daily lives in our modern world. All are welcome.
For more information, please see https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/symposium-banquet-homecomingmarshall-mcluhan-in-winnipeg-20-tickets-883749417297?aff=oddtdtcreator
MMI Logo
Filed under: Academic, Andrew McLuhan, Announcement, Conferences, Education, Invitation, Manitoba, Religion, university | Closed
Michael Tad Edmunds (Nov. 5, 1941 – Jan. 13, 2024)
Michael Tad Edmunds, husband, father, grandfather, friend, colleague, neighbour, singer, photographer, student of McLuhan, and the builder and first director of The Information Commons, died at Mt. Sinai Hospital on Saturday, January 13, 2024, from Small Cell Lung Cancer (SCLC). He was 82. The doctors said that even though he had quit smoking almost fifty years prior, this cancer was caused 100% by smoking (he had grown up with lots of second-hand smoke and smoked as a teen until into his thirties before he finally quit forever). He was diagnosed with stage four cancer in March 2023 and given the difficult news that the aggressive cancer was not curable. Nevertheless, Michael maintained an attitude of optimism and managed to enjoy himself in the time he had, and even be happy. His hope was to gain as much time to live and be with his family and friends as possible. He was especially grateful to wife Carol who accompanied him on each step of his journey, Cousin Frank and neighbour Mike who drove him to and from most of his appointments, and Bernie who made many Sunday night dinners for him and his family.
Michael was born in the USA (Detroit, Michigan) to Gertrude (nee Sterbenz) and Charles Edmunds who had migrated from the coal mines of California, Pennsylvania to the assembly lines of the Ford Motor Company in Detroit. His father was of Welsh ancestry and his mother of German.
Michael was predeceased by his younger brother Terry Oliver, whom he greatly missed. Michael in turn is terribly missed by his wife of 58 years, Carol, his sons Roland, Matthew, and Jason, and his partner Danni Dickson, and his grandchildren Madelyn Rose, Rowan Lark, and Leif Parker Llewelyn.
Michael grew up in southwest Detroit. His difficult childhood became more challenging when his father died of a heart attack when Michael was only eleven. Michael and Terry lived with an aunt for six months in California, Pennsylvania and attended school there; in the summer, they returned to Detroit. Since money was scarce, Michael got a job selling newspapers on a corner and called out “News, Times, Free Press” every night until he sold out, and then went home with a box of cookies for himself and Terry.
After high school, Michael attended Wayne State University (WSU). To pay the tuition, he did various jobs, and got government loans. He worked as a house painter with an uncle, a shipping clerk, an assembly line worker at Ford Motor Company, and did some lighting for Wayne State University T.V. productions. While he was at the Ford Motor Company in the summer, another worker heard him singing on the line and said, “If I had a voice like that, I wouldn’t stay here,” but Michael would not explore his musical talent until later in his life.
Michael majored in speech and media and graduated from WSU with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and a Teaching Certificate; he got a job teaching English and Speech in a high school in southwest Detroit. After a day of teaching, he and some other teachers would regularly play basketball with the students. Michael always said that in another life, he would have loved to have been a basketball player.
While studying at WSU, Michael met Carol Schultz and on September 24, 1966, they married. They lived on campus and experienced firsthand the racial unrest of the summer of 1967, hearing machine gun fire all night and seeing tanks roll by their front windows. They were both working as teachers and decided to save their money and move to Toronto, Canada, where they had visited Carol’s Cousin Frank. On August 1, 1971, they packed up their two cars, a Plymouth Valiant and a Dodge van, and drove to the border and immigrated. Michael got a job at the Media Centre at U of T. He had a keen interest in U of T because Marshall McLuhan worked there.
Michael and Carol began their family in 1972 with the birth of Jason, and then Roland in 1975, and Matthew in 1980. During those years, Michael got a Master of Education at OISE (now part of U of T). Michael yearned to do something more challenging and to make a better income for his family, so he regularly applied for jobs at other institutions. In 1981, he was offered a position at the University of Victoria in B.C., which interested him because they planned to build a production studio to augment their Media department. He and his family moved to Victoria, but a sudden budget cut removed the planned production unit that had been the main attraction for Michael. After four months, they returned to Toronto.
Michael was able to negotiate a return to the Media Centre and eventually started working at a new position as a producer/director in the production centre (something he had wanted to try); however, they would not find stability yet. Soon there was a big re-org at the university and Michael lost his job because the production centre was going to be cut, but eventually Michael was chosen to become the Director of the new Media Centre. Michael said he spent several anxious weeks and did a lot of running with his gym friends to stay calm between the time of losing his job and getting a better job.
During the time he worked at U of T, Michael usually spent his lunch hours working out with weights with a small group of friends. On alternate days, they would run or do circuits. Afterwards, they would have soup and sandwich together. Michael enjoyed this a lot, and it was a good mid-day break.
He enjoyed his new job and had his own style. Colleague Robert Fysh said that “as a boss, he recognized the skills, talents, and interests of his staff and once we were assigned a task would let us achieve the set goals with only the necessary supervision.” Antonio Mendonca echoed that when he said, “His style of management was hands-off, delegating things rather than micromanaging. He saw the big picture ahead of others, always keeping a critical eye on perspectives and perceptions as challenges came along.” He was flexible and his confidence in people helped them to work with enthusiasm and creativity.
Michael gradually became interested in computers and electronic classrooms. According to colleague Robert Fysh, “…Michael had the vision to recognize that emerging technologies would be a force for change in the educational environment. He promoted and instituted the use of technologies that we take for granted…” He applied what he learned as well as his knowledge of the work of Marshall McLuhan to this field. In the summer of 1994, he was working with a small, new committee, TFELS, The Task Force on the Electronic Library System and made many important contributions, as shown by internal emails and memorandums. Many reports and meetings led to the decision to create an information common.
Michael was chosen to lead a team to build an information common in the library. The project was called Get It Done. Michael would be the Director of the new Information common, of which there was only one other in North America. As he had no real models to look at, he would have to make it up as he went along, but that is what he had done for most of his life, so he was the right person for this job. It began one of the most intense periods of his career.
Finally, in September 1995, The Information Commons opened, and Michael began his work. Sian Meikle and Marcel Fortin, current directors said, “Michael led the formation of the Information Commons, and he provided wonderful vision as its founding director, from 1995 to 2010. His leadership guided the university community through the suddenly burgeoning role of technology in our lives, and what a herculean task that was! In those early days of the internet, we all had everything to learn, and nothing to use…” (Marcel also commented on Michael’s “great sense of humour”, which he would appreciate.) Michael enjoyed the work immensely; it was interesting and creative and allowed him to see some of his ideas come to life. The Information Commons changed many things and was a huge contribution to the life of the university.
Besides work, Michael enjoyed spending time with his family and friends, going to the cottage in summer, fall, spring, and even winter. He was also fascinated by the work of Marshall McLuhan – he had met him, taken a course with him, and read books and articles. However, what gave him the most joy was music, and particularly singing. As a child he had loved music, singing, and dancing. At school, he was chosen to learn the violin, but his father could not stand to listen to him practicing and made him quit. Later, as a teen, he and his friends often gathered in storefronts (for the acoustics) and sang harmony, and popular doo-wop songs. In his thirties he took guitar lessons and sang, but in his early fifties, after a friend who played the violin for the Canadian Opera Company heard him sing and noted his unique timbre, he began taking voice lessons and performing as a solo singer, in musicals, operettas, and choirs with a community theatre group, or sang popular music in various venues. He was especially good at singing rhythm and blues type songs. Various professionals praised his musicality and rich, warm tenor voice. When he auditioned for Opera in Concert, Robert Cooper listened to him and then asked, “Who are you?” surprised that he had never heard of him before. He loved to perform and connect with people in an audience. One can see/hear him sing Spring Is Here with the Mississauga Brass Band by googling Michael Edmunds Spring is Here, or on his YouTube channel – Mepicks/youtube/Spring Is Here (which leads us to another one of his interests).
While at U of T, Michael was Producer/Director of hundreds of educational, archival, and promotional videos for many departments, like the Centre for Medieval Studies and the Department of Italian Studies, and some for science, such as one on the discovery of penicillin. After retirement, Michael continued to explore his interest in images, and was inspired to make and post videos of Jason’s band, The Lazy Devils. Michael filmed, edited, and enhanced the videos and posted them on his Mepicks/youtube channel.
Shortly before Michael retired, he and Carol bought a house at the northeast edge of Peterborough near Trent University. They started going there every weekend and for weeks at a time over Christmas and in the summer and were able to be with family and grandchildren. They all (adults, grandchildren, and dogs) often walked on the Trent Trail with its varied terrain of meadows with swallows, to ponds with beavers, to forests with porcupines – fields, hills, ridges, valleys, and thick forests made for a challenging hike, especially in winter. Later Michael and Carol took over the care of Danni’s dog, Mick, and back in Toronto, they often walked in the forest at Cedarvale.
Michael was a positive, joyful, optimistic, fun-loving, and flexible person. He was very accepting of different ways of doing things, felt deeply and usually with kindness, and understanding. After Michael’s diagnosis of cancer, the life he had known exploded, but his bravery and leadership regarding it, helped his family to navigate their new present and future. Toward the end of his life, he said several times that he was amazed and happy with what he and Carol had created. He had time to say important things to everyone in his family, and in the end, he showed his Welsh ancestry; and as per the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, he did “not go gentle into that good night.” He had things to do, and he wanted more time, as who would not? His family loved him, and he is deeply missed every day.
There will be a celebration of Michael’s life in the spring. Email Carol ([email protected]) to be notified. If you wish to donate to a charity in Michael’s name, please contact Princess Margaret Foundation, by calling 416-946-6560 and donate to Lung Cancer Radiation Therapy Research Fund where Michael’s very kind doctor (Dr Rahman) and another doctor are involved in research on SCLC. Carol selected this charity because only 15% of all lung cancers are caused by this very aggressive small cell lung cancer, so not much research has been done on it.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed
Tags: communication, culture, education, McLuhan Centre, media, Obituary, Toronto, university
By Jodesz Gavilan
2023 Marshall McLuhan Fellow
Notes from her Lecture in Canada 2024
Last year, I met a mother who lost three loved ones in one night. Her husband, son-in-law, and brother were killed by unknown men inside their own home. They were begging for mercy for them to be spared, but they were repeatedly shot at close range.
This all happened while the women and children in the family were held hostage in one of the rooms. They heard everything, the screams, the cries, the gunshots, and then the silence. She had no choice but to leave everything behind. The house she lived in for close to five decades, the community she knew all her life. The livelihood that supported her family. She packed her bags and took her surviving relatives to a settlement area two hours away from their former home.
And since then, she has had to find ways to come up with money for rent, food, and other necessities for seven people. She has not even dealt with the trauma, or even thought of getting justice for her slain loved ones. The mother’s story is not unique. Their experiences reflect what thousands of other families went through because of Rodrigo Duterte’s violent war on drugs.
At least 6,000 people were killed in police operations alone. If you include those killed vigilante-style, or whose bodies were found on the street, the death toll is estimated to reach 30,000.
This has been my job for the past seven years or so as a human rights reporter for Rappler. I go to the families after the killing, after the death anniversaries to see how they are doing, how are they coping in the aftermath, or how they are trying to find justice.
I do this because I want to put on record that the impact of Duterte’s drug war did not stop when the body was buried. The impact manifests itself in the form of thousands of orphaned children forced to drop out of school, or on mothers left with no choice but to seek greener pastures and leave their children behind.
This is how I view my work as a journalist. While I have to also cover policies and institutions, I make sure that I put people at the center of my stories. For me, that is what human rights reporting should do. At the end of the day, a reader’s main takeaway should be how the policies affect the vulnerable communities.
I do not see it as giving voice to the voiceless, because the families of victims have the agency to do their own talking. Instead, I just amplify their calls and their stories. This is where I see my role now as a journalist. I am a part of a community committed to bring forward the issues, and not some sort of a messiah that would magically fix things.
This was not an easy thing to do. It took years and years of practice to do it. And these are the lessons I’ve learned along the way.
- Building trust is part of journalism.
A huge part of journalism is building trust on different facets. There is the part that you have to make your audience trust you as a credible source of news. There’s also the fact that you have to earn the trust of your editors.
But I’d like to focus on one aspect: Ensuring that the people at the center of your stories see you as someone trustworthy. This is important not only because you need to get the story of them, but because they have to see you as someone not just as a journalist, but as a human who wants to listen to their stories. Journalism, especially human rights reporting, is not just a one-off thing. You just don’t go to a community, get your soundbite or quote, and then leave. It is not only lazy, but a disservice to the people who are willing to tell you their stories.
Before you could get to them, you have to go through layers to establish your credibility and build trust. I first experienced this when I was starting out as a journalist back in 2014, even before the Duterte years. I covered the issue of hunger and malnutrition in the country’s poorest neighborhoods. My work led me to connect with various civil society organizations that implemented projects in these areas, and in turn, also to the people they are helping.
Fast forward to the Duterte presidency, some of the groups I previously worked with are also the ones involved in helping drug war victims’ families. Unfortunately, some of the families I talked to before also became victims themselves. So because I already have that level of trust built, I was able to write about them. But in cases where I have no prior connection to, I start from the beginning.
Why is this important? You have to remember that what you’re getting from human rights victims are not just a random opinion on a general issue. You are asking them to remember what could be the worst experience they’ve had in their lives, and that would entail…[unfinished thought.] It is through this that we see beyond the walls they built in response to the traumatic events that they experienced.
- It is okay to feel about your story.
The second lesson I’ve learned is that it is vital that we feel strongly about our stories, or the issue we are reporting on. Being apathetic, or being too far removed, leaves a sense that you’re just there to write and nothing more. When you let yourself feel things in the process, it radiates in the way you handle everything. That includes from the interviews to the writing itself. With so much sensitivity, respect, and that intense desire to give justice to the trust given to you by the families.
- The journalism process does not stop when a story is published. It is just (almost) the beginning.
Stop thinking that once the story is published in the newspaper, or on the internet, that it is out of our hands. That is something that Filipino journalists have long grappled with. But fortunately, many are embracing the value of seeing journalism as bigger than published stories.
So what usually happens is when a story is published, I make sure that I make derivatives out of it. I make videos or even Tiktok because these target certain generations that my articles alone cannot reach.
You also have to ensure that the readers know what to do. And it’s sometimes as simple as putting action points in your stories. An example is this is how I placed information on how people donate to an organization that helps families of drug war victims exhume their loved and give them a proper burial.
Here is another example. I did not explicitly say in my story that people should donate. But I included how important support from communities is for those left behind. Someone got that cue and reached out if I could connect them to the victim so they could give them a scholarship.
You should also see how to elevate or increase the discourse on the issues raised in your stories. And this could be done by simply partnering with groups and idea-based communities where they could discuss among themselves.
You also need to acknowledge the huge role the government could do if it plays its cards right. So as a journalist, we have to shed that automatic animosity and just reach out to them and hope for the best.
By doing all of these, you highlight the role of the community in bringing forward more discussion points on the issues you’ve written about. To acknowledge that you do not have all the answers is not an admission of failure, but a door opening to greater community building.
- Remove the barrier between journalists and readers.
Speaking of doors, a good step towards community building is to remove barriers between journalists and readers. You have to make readers feel and see that you are not on your ivory tower, you are part of the community they could easily give feedback to, or even throw at story ideas.
At Rappler, we recently launched an application where readers could easily talk to us journalists. You just download the app, join the issue-based community you want to be a part of, and Rappler journalists covering those issues are always there to answer any question. When you do these, you make the readers feel that they are part of the community. That they too could do something about the issues they are also seeing.
- Know your limitations, as a journalist and a human being.
Because at the end of a day, a journalist could only do so much. And it takes a village, a community, to spark change. I went into journalism believing that I could change the world. But I came to realize that you can’t save everybody. That doesn’t make me less of a journalist.
I’ve come to base my worth on the simple things. When my story leads to a family receiving necessary support, that is already a huge thing. The feeling I get when that happens is similar to what I feel when you find out that the stories I’ve written were cited in various legal documents at the International Criminal Courts and the United Nations.
So what can you do?
You have to see yourself as a member of the community. You’re not just a spectator. The issues I’m writing about as a human rights reporter will mostly affect people outside of the usual communities. And lastly, please support journalism.
Thank you.
ABOUT JODESZ GAVILAN
Jodesz Gavilan is a writer and researcher for Rappler and its investigative arm, Newsbreak. She covers the human rights and impunity beats, producing in-depth and investigative reports, particularly on the quest for justice of victims of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs and war on dissent. She also closely follows international bodies such as the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed
Tags: articles, communication, culture, education, ideas
The group, which calls itself the Marshall McLuhan/Finnegans Wake Reading Club, in Venice, California, started the difficult James Joyce book in 1995. They reached its final page during last October. What’s the connection between Marshall McLuhan and James Joyce’s writing? McLuhan was fascinated with the writings of James Joyce at a time that few in North America knew much about Joyce and his few great books. McLuhan was especially intrigued by Finnegans Wake. He wrote: “Nobody could pretend serious interest in my work who is not completely familiar with all of the works of James Joyce and the French symbolists.” – Marshall McLuhan
By Lois Beckett
For a quarter century, Gerry Fialka, an experimental film-maker from Venice, California, has hosted a book club devoted to a single text: James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, one of the most famously difficult texts in literary history.
Starting in 1995, between 10 and 30 people would show up to monthly meetings at a local library. At first they read two pages a month, eventually slowing to just one page per discussion. At that pace, the group – which now meets on Zoom – reached the final page in October. It took them 28 years.
That amount of time “could well be a record”, said Sam Slote, a Joyce expert at Trinity College, Dublin, and one of the editors of How Joyce Wrote Finnegans Wake. His own weekly Wake group in Dublin, which is made up of about a dozen Joyce scholars, is on track to read through the text in a brisk 15 years.
The California reading group spent longer reading Finnegans Wake than Joyce spent writing it: the 628-page experimental text took the author 17 years to complete, Slote said, including a four-year stretch of near-complete writer’s block.
Fialka, who started the group in his early 40s, is now 70. “I don’t want to lie, it wasn’t like I saw God,” Fialka said, of reaching the book’s end. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
While Joyce’s Ulysses has a reputation as a difficult novel, Slote said, Finnegans Wake is “a whole different level”, with ongoing debate over basic points such as where and when the novel is set, or who the characters are. It is written in a mishmash of reinvented words, puns and allusions, with references to roughly 80 different languages.
“When people hear you’ve been a member of a book club that reads the same book every time you meet, most people go, ‘Why would you do that?’” said Bruce Woodside, a 74-year-old retired Disney animator who joined Fialka’s reading group in the 1990s. Though “it’s 628 pages of things that look like typographic errors”, said Woodside, who has been reading and re-reading Finnegans Wake since his late teens. “There’s a kind of visionary quality to it.”
Fialka leans into that visionary aspect, describing his group as “more a performance art piece than a book club”, and also referring to it as “a living organism”, a “hootenanny”, and a “choir”.
Woodside found the club’s early atmosphere “kind of chaotic”. The first impression of most readers is that Finnegans Wake is “gibberish”, Woodside said, and he recalls that “a lot of commentary on it was gibberish”, too.
Woodside dropped out of Fialka’s group for about two decades, but after he retired, he decided to go back. He had sampled other book groups, including a Proust reading group that had pivoted to reading Finnegans Wake, but it was hard to find anyone “who was really delivering a lot of intelligent commentary on the book”.
“Gerry’s group was just fun,” Woodside said. In the 20 years he had missed, he said, the group had advanced from chapter one to chapter 15.
Peter Quadrino, 38, joined Fialka’s group around 2008 or 2009. He would drive up three hours from San Diego, where he lived, to attend the meeting. “If you’re really interested in Finnegans Wake, it’s kind of hard to find people who will talk about it with you”…
READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE HERE: http://tinyurl.com/4zaymney
SEE ALSO: https://people.well.com/user/abs/Cyb/archive/mcluhan_joyce.html
One of Marshal McLuhan’s copies of Finnegans Wake showing his abundant marginalia, now in the Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto
Filed under: Academic, Articles, Books, Computers, Education, Ideas, Influenced by McLuhan, Literature, Uncategorized | Closed
Tags: academic, articles, books, communication, culture, ideas, literature
From Paolo Granata, Media Ethics Lab, University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto
Registration (free) is required: https://jgavilan.eventbrite.ca
See also Rappler’s Jodesz Gavilan named 2023 Marshall McLuhan Fellow for Excellence in Journalism in the Philippines
here
http://tinyurl.com/ykmt2ed8
Filed under: Announcement, Articles, Award, Commentary, Education, Influenced by McLuhan, journalism, Lectures | Closed
Father John Pungente, SJ
Fr. John Pungente died December 6, 2023 in René Goupil Residence, Pickering, Ontario. He was in his 84th year and a Jesuit for 66 years. He was born in Port Arthur, Ontario, but grew up in Brandon, Manitoba. He was the son of John Pungente and Mary Wikien. John entered the Jesuits in 1957 and was ordained in 1971. He was then missioned to St Paul’s High School, Winnipeg, as a teacher and film guide, all the while serving as Chair of the Manitoba Film Board from 1972 to 1976. He was appointed Principal of St. Paul’s High School in 1976, a post he held for seven years. In 1985 he moved to Toronto to become Director of the Jesuit Communication Project, a role he fulfilled for thirty-four years. While holding that position he co-authored Media Literacy: A Resource Guide (1989), Meet the Media (1990), the award winning teaching kit, Scanning Television (1996), More than Meets the Eye: Watching TV Watching Us (1999) and Finding God in the Dark: The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Go To The Movies (2004).
In 1997, John created and hosted the award-winning television show: Scanning the Movies, and produced the video: A Heart to Understand. He was also president of the Canadian Association of Media Education Organizations. In 2018 he moved to Lourdes Parish, Toronto, doing pastoral ministry and editing the online Jesuit blog, IgNation. In early 2022, in diminishing health, he moved to La Storta Jesuit Community and subsequently to René Goupil Residence in Pickering.
Visitation: Manresa Chapel, Pickering, Monday, December 18 from 7 to 9 p.m., with Vigil Prayers at 8 p.m. Funeral: Manresa Chapel, Tuesday, December 19, 2023 at 10 a.m.; followed by burial at 2 p.m. in the Jesuit Cemetery, Guelph. Family and friends may also join the mass via live webcasting at: https://pickartphoto.com/stream/
FrJohnPungente/
Donations to the Jesuit Advancement Office, 43 Queen’s Park Cres. E., Toronto, ON M5S 2C3, (416-962-4500) would be appreciated as your expression of sympathy.
Condolences: www.rosar-morrison.com
As published in Winnipeg Free Press on Dec. 16, 2023.
************
A Remembrance by Howard R. Engel –
Dear Jesuit Fathers and McLuhan friends:
I was most saddened to learn of the untimely falling asleep in the Lord of the late Fr. John J. Pungente in the Winnipeg Free Press Passages section from this past Saturday, Dec. 16/23.
In addition to his accomplishments mentioned in his aforementioned obituary, Fr. John and his Jesuit Communications Project was the joint recipient of the Marshall McLuhan Initiative-sponsored Medium and the Light Award for 2014. See: – https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2014/07/09/2014-medium-light-award-goes-to-father-john-pungente-sj-media-educator/
On a personal note, Fr. John was my high school principal for nearly my whole time I attended St. Paul’s High School in Winnipeg, 1975-1979. I have fond memories of him from this
formative time.
As the Brazilian liberation theologian, Leonardo Boff, wrote in his Way of the Cross – Way of Justice, “Human beings are not born to die; they die to be resurrected.” (Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 1980, p. 122)
May God bless John for the good things he has done, forgive his sins and grant him repose with the just. May Fr. John rest in peace and may God grant his memory to be eternal! May what is offered be holy, and may what is broken be healed. May Fr. John’s memory be a blessing.
Sincerely,
Howard R. Engel
Founding Director & C.E.O.
The Marshall McLuhan Initiative
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
************
See also: – “2014 Medium & Light Award Goes to Father John Pungente SJ, Media Educator,” In the McLuhan Galaxy, July 9, 2014: https://tinyurl.com/3rduk89u
Father John Pungente, S.J., with the Medium & Light Award presented to him by the Marshall McLuhan Initiative (Photo courtesy of the Marshall McLuhan Initiative)
Filed under: Academic, Announcement, Commentary, Influenced by McLuhan, Manitoba, Media Ecology, Obituary, Religion, Remembrance | Closed
Tags: academic, communication, culture, education, religion, university
Professor Robert Logan asked me to circulate his announcement that: –
The final and corrected version of <i>New Explorations</i> Vol 3 No 2 (2023) is now available at: – https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/nexj/issue/view/2787.
For those not familiar with New Explorations journal, it is a revival of the journal Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, created in 1953 by Marshall McLuhan and Ted Carpenter. New Explorations reaffirms and continues the theoretical perspectives of Explorations, which so profoundly influenced the Toronto School of Communication and media studies worldwide. Just as the first Explorations probed the emergent media technologies of McLuhan’s “electric age” in the latter 20th century; New Explorations continues that voyage of discovery into the digital age of our new millennium.
Bob Logan
Filed under: Academic, Announcement, Articles, Education, Ideas, Journals, Media Ecology, New Media, Scholars, Technology | Closed
McLuhan Galaxy 
B.W. Powe’s Tribute to Alice Munro on Her Passing, May 13, 2024
Alice Munro (1931 – 2024)
By B.W. Powe
And now I’m meditating on Alice Munro’s passing. She left us at age 92, after a long period in dementia.
One of the greatest short story writers. I’ve wanted to say something about her for years.
You know—weird thing—I didn’t read her closely for a long time. Then I began reflecting on her writings when I was living in Spain. Suddenly, there, reading her when I was far away from Canada, the power of her stories and the style she embodied burst over me, occupying my thoughts.
Alone on a train, going from Barcelona to a town outside the city, reading Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, not comprehending the Castilian and Catalan spoken by other passengers, her words and sentences, her voice and characters became uncannily vivid, somehow lucidly enigmatic. What did this mean?
When I read her in Canada, she seemed a realist writer, reporting on lives in small town Ontario. When I read her in Spain, the hermetic side of her work struck me in my rootless state: I saw and felt the strangeness, how intensive her observational stances were—her narrators standing by, always outside (alone in their thoughts and contemplations) yet recording without blinkers or screens, illuminating how people and their worlds don’t and can’t abide or comprehend realities.
She was one of The Watchers—one who sees, hovers close. Her hermetic undercurrents: she never moralized, never prized style above all; the situations and conditions of lives came to her without ideology, didactic agendas, transcendental imperatives or religious creeds, satiric demolitions, or lyric exaltations. And yet she saw, and saw more, and contemplated and caught many lives unfolding. The short story was her fragment of the splendor; but the form’s condensations and strict practice meant much had to be omitted, or hidden, including any reference to that splendor.
When I was in Cordoba, I imagined a debate between Alice Munro and Don Quixote: The Watcher talking to the Mad Knight of Sorrows.
Who’s to say what’s real? Suffering imprints us with what we call reality; and the imagination provokes us into figuring there must be a transcendental or idealist purpose, somewhere.
This would be the crux of the Munro-Quixote debate. A writer from historical time arguing with a mythic character.
One who records illusions, one who champions illusions.
They could express and counter how the observer changes the observed, and how the observed changes the observer.
One saying, “Here are false hopes”, one saying, “A false hope is at least something…”
Maybe both would say, “Show me your despair, I already know about love…”
I could never imagine anything but a stalemate in their argument.
Munro evaded large metaphysical questions in story collections with titles like The Moons of Jupiter, Dear Life, The Progress of Love, and Something I’ve been Meaning to Tell You that appear to suggest the presence of those questions. Still the poetic spirit, in the ambiguities between the lines of her stories, seemed to me to be speaking of them.
I said in Canada she’s understood to be a realist; but when I continued to read her in Spain—where she’s also taken to be a realist—I sensed the mythic implications in the crucial small scale of the lives she envisioned. The ordinary doesn’t become miraculous in her writings. The ordinary becomes an intensified locus of the inexplicable, a place where our inner lives are describable but finally unknowable. The Watcher recognizes and documents how our notions of the real are wounds. Her writer-surrogates acknowledge how detached they are from…life, and yet implicated in it.
To this day I prefer reading Munro in Spain (and primarily in Andalusia, the southernmost province). This is because in another place her accomplishments seem even more memorable. Her stories, where vastness and scale implode (compress), become microcosms of an uncovering, and we witness people living in their thwarted, secretive conditions. She invites us to quieten our roaring selves, to concentrate on details and gestures we miss. The Watcher sees the turmoil of the surface and the lives within surging, leaving their traces in poised fictional expressions.
And we should recognize this sublime paradox: her seemingly real town, based on Wingham, in southern Ontario, her keenly sketched people, belong to fictive domains. She imagined it all, all of them—the historical locales and the locals themselves were subsumed into her imagining. This means her stories (always condensed to the point of almost becoming splinters—moving toward abrupt glimpses) endure in the mythic dimension where her town aligns with Flaubert’s Yonville, Joyce’s Dublin, Borges’ Buenos Aires’ streets, Hemingway’s Michigan lakeside towns and Paris arrondissements, Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Dinesen’s Ngong Hills, Ferrante’s Neapolitan suburb, Cohen’s Montreal, Atwood’s downtown Toronto, and Carson’s El Camino. We’ll remember the town and the people because Munro dreamed them well and then wrote and revised them into being. In this way, her creations will, and must, stay ahead of her interpreters and biographers.
Munro with McLuhan, Frye, Cohen, Carson, and Atwood—the central imaginative poets and storytellers, mythographers, and Watchers of our climate…
And with our world environments overheating to extinguish us one day—burn us down, burn us out—I propose Munro’s collections should be set in protected sites. Like cairns. So that future entities (whatever the hybrids of AI and flesh may be) will find her work. When they do, and they’ve learned to decode her nuanced writing, they could read deeply into her stories’ brevities, and be altered by their depths. They would surely find how they show our humanity in the way it once thrived, before the extinction or before the digital transfigurations of being, in our bewildering complexities, in our gasps of living and inwardness.
The fascination with her enigmas. How her books can be easily absorbed in the immediacy of reading, when we respond to her agile and surprising stories, and yet never can we reach complete understanding. And why should we? The strangeness is all.
Post-Script to A Tribute to Alice Munro
By B.W. Powe
Once I met Munro at Albert Britnell’s Bookstore on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. Briefly. I’d been asking the bookseller about Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, which had just been published. I wanted to know how it was selling at the store. I knew his books had long languished in overlooked or forgotten margins. She said, “This one’s doing well.”
Then I turned around and saw Munro. Very affable. She said
she knew McCarthy’s books, admiring his strange eloquence and harrowing honesty. Sometimes I think she said “stranger,” not strange. And then she was gone.
Alice Munro holds one of her books as she receives her Man Booker Prize International
Short link for this post: https://wp.me/pWYA6-3TP
Filed under: Books, BW Powe, Commentary, Fiction, Publishing, Remembrance, Writers | Closed