Forsdale: I agree with you, it’s not all that early, but—

McLuhan: No, it’s what—12, 14 years old? You were asking what I’ve been up to. I’ve been working on the history of Menippean satire.

Forsdale: The history of who?

McLuhan: Menippean. That is, as I mentioned it earlier, apropos the Dostoyevsky book, Bahktin. Menippean satire includes Lucian, the dialogues of Lucian; it includes the Petronius, the world of funny stories including The Thousand and One Nights . These are all Menippean satires, and they come on down through the Boccaccio’s Decameron ; they come down through our Western world in various forms including Don Quixote , I mentioned. The world