I, for one, had no idea Canadian author Douglas Coupland was writing a biography of Marshall McLuhan. Medium theory anoraks must have known for months. Well, the biography has arrived, and the Canadian media has entered into one if its wild yet rare fervours of Canadian intellectual commemoration to mark the occasion. The biography sounds interesting, actually, giving some picture of the connection between wild-and-crazy-McLuhan and media-thinker-McLuhan. Here is an extract:

Most anyone who attended or audited his classes or went to any of his speeches will agree that Marshall became random quickly. He was tangential and self-contradictory, and could really piss people off. With his protective oblivious coating, it all bounced off him. He was out to stimulate people into making up their own minds and stimulating their own ideas, using his thinking as a catalyst. If they became wrapped up in a specific, it meant they’d lost sight of the big picture. He almost felt sorry for people who took him the wrong way.

A longer excerpt can be found on the Maclean’s website.