The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man [Paperback]

One can almost think of "The Gutenberg Galaxy" as the "prequel" to Marshall McLuhan's much better known "Understanding Media," because "Galaxy" does for print techology what "Media" does for electronic technology. Basically McLuhan assesses how European civilization went from an ear-touch (listening) oriented mode of receving information to an eye-oriented (that is, reading) mode of receiving information. Recalling that for McLuhan, the medium IS the message, so the invention and dissemination of printing-press technology and the sharp rise in literacy it occasioned therefore brought about a major seismic shift in Western thought and all that goes with it--language, mores, dress, politics, etc.

Another way of looking at this is to say that in McLuhan's view, history is not determined by politics or economics or weather or science per se so much as by our media--the "extensions of man." This book is a must-read followup to anyone who liked "Understanding Media"; it's also a great book to cut one's teeth on before reading "Understanding Media" because it's a more traditional (i.e., formal and linear) type of academic work. And undeniably brilliant. For what it's worth, I was a communications major at the University of Virginia in the mid-1970s when reading McLuhan's work was rougher than it is now; many of his concepts like "global village" have since filtered thru society. But I read all of McLuhan's media-oriented writings, wrote term papers on him, and feel as though I benefited as a result--he's the main reason I'm a writer today.

Allen; charless@ync.net

This book expands on the views of McLuhan's teacher Harold Innis, who distingusihed oral and written cultures. The book argues that oral cultures are synaesthetic and work with synthetic logic, while cultures of writing push the mind toward singulation of senses, logic and 'perspective'.

McLuhan 'glosses' through a wide range of scattered historical pieces of information to show how oral, written and print cultures have different patterns. He ably shows how printing also transformed art, architecture, society and industry.

The book is thoroughly historical, dense and rich in informative detail. It forms the foundation for McLuhan's clearer theoretical articulation of his ideas in 'Understanding Media', but is more accessible to the layman.

This book belongs to a pantheon of books that revolve around similar ideas like Harold Innis's 'Empire and Communications' & 'The Bias of Communication'; Walter J. Ong's 'Orality and Literacy' and William J. Ivins's 'Print and Visual Culture' and 'Art and Geometry'. But this is the most sweeping, convincing, dramatic statement of the common theory proposed by these various writers.

And for those who love theory with a dose of history, this makes for really delightful reading.

Other Amazon readers have commented that this is McLuhan's most accessible early work, and one called it a ' pre-quel' to 'Understanding Media' the work he is best known for. I remember reading this work with a mixture of amazement and bafflement, with a sense that something truly significant was being said without my being sure that I got it. The literary critic McLuhan as cultural critic was making all kinds of connections, and using all kinds of sources I knew nothing about. The whole business of the era of print, being the era of the eye of the spectator and passive audience, and the previous era being one of the ear did really go down well with me. The implication that the activity I most loved, reading. was in some sense about to be put in a lesser place by the new electronic communication did not please me at all. For as I understood it,and in a way still understand it ' reading' is the activity which really requires creative participation if it is to be done right, and the ' electronic watching television' requires much , much less.

But despite my objection I understood that McLuhan was saying startling new( for me anyway) things in a brilliant way. He was connecting fields of endeavor exhibiting a kind of thinking, I could only admire. I might not understand the epigrammatic flashes he scatters throughout the work but I had a sense of them being deep and profound. In another sense it was clear to me McLuhan was the cultural critic who himself is a remarkable kind of creator.

Now it is over forty years since this book was published and we live in an Internet era in which the degree of participation of individuals in producing material for a wider public is far greater than before. This small review is evidence of that for it can conceivably reach any of millions of Amazon readers. In the past I could write such a review for myself and put it in the drawer. Or try to get it into a magazine where it might be read by a few hundred or maximum a few thousand before being forgotten about.

Yet just as it is possible to have great reservations about what has and what is going to happen to the overall intellectual development of Mankind( thanks to the Internet) so it is possible to have reservations for the electronic age global community which produces hate- literature and pornography in vast quantities ( not to speak of millions and millions of mediocre pages which no one should be asked to read )

This book does not as I understand it hold the key to the Age we live in, or to the human future. But it is chucked full of wonderful insights suppositions suggestions connections that the reader can be illuminated and inspired by.