Just about done reading Doug Coupland's biography of Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan fascinated me as a child, as I began thinking for myself in the dim light of my Hockey family's black and white television screen living room. I have some of his books in my library. I must return to them soon and to others in libraries much larger than my own.
As I have been reading, however, the words within George Orwell's "Coming Up For Air," the great pre-war read which I just finished, keep interrupting Coupland's entertaining look at one of my rocking country's great men.
"The world is very large, that's a thing you notice when you're driving about in a car, and in a way it's reassuring." One can only wonder at how large Orwell would have thought his world was if he had driven across Canada in 1939. Maybe something like, "The world is motherfucking large, that's a thing you notice when you are driving across Canada, and in a way it scares the shit out of you."
We do not get a lot of reassurance in this world. I wonder if that has something to do with how much I love to drive? Or is my love of driving a car more closely related to the promised sexual satisfaction of car ownership advertised by automobile manufacturers - something McLuhan observed real early? Or maybe I just like having the shit scared out of me.
Large world or global village? Reassurance, sexual promise or shit-scare?
I am going to have to think about that.
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