Tuesday, November 14, 2006

A Media Friend

The media maven Marshall McLuhan was a GKC friend. In June of 1932, the twenty-year-old Marshall McLuhan wrote his parents back in Winnipeg with a practical suggestion. He urged them to enter a newspaper's "Believe It or Not" contest with Chesterton's A Short History of England, a history book that contains not one single date. [Letters of Marshall McLuhan, Oxford, 1987, p. 11]


A Chestertonian points out to me, though, that McLuhan was quite wrong. Chesterton's Short History contains seven dates: 878, 1397, 1399, 1750, 1832, 1850, and 1914.

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1 comment:

  1. Nick Milne5:00 PM

    McLuhan was wrong about a lot of things. Though he seemed to admire Chesterton's philosophy and theory (or, at least, find them interesting or novel enough to write a thesis about them), the thought of anyone seriously enjoying Chesterton's work - particularly his poetry - seemed to cause him to blanche.

    This is one of the very few useful things I gleaned from Garry Wills' (curses upon his name!) book about Chesterton.

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