"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Monday, November 7, 2011

Voicemail from Marshall McLuhan, 1978

Here is a voicemail from Marshall McLuhan to me, left on what we then called our "answering machine," from August 1978.   I had just completed my doctoral dissertation at NYU - but hadn't yet even handed it in to my advisers, Neil Postman and Christine Nystrom.  Instead, I decided to mail it up to Marshall McLuhan in Toronto - we had met after I wrote the Preface to his "Laws of the Media" published in June 1977 in et cetera, and the "Tetrad Conference" I had organized with him, Eric McLuhan, Bob Blechman, and other notables at Fairleigh Dickinson University (where I then was an Assistant Professor) in March 1978.  Tina and I went on vacation right after I sent up the dissertation, and this is the message from Marshall we found on our return...


voicemail from Marshall McLuhan, 1978


See also Levinson re: McLuhan 2011 list of conferences and interviews, 2011

2 comments:

eanbardsley said...

Loved that!!! Thanks for sharing the story and old message from an old answering machine!

Mike Plugh said...

Wonderful! Hilarious! To hear that iconic voice on an answering machine tape is priceless. The beep and the hiss...good stuff.

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