of readers and their relations to the novel are 
ignored. Visual man likes to assume a merely 
neutral transportation process as between the 
figure  and the ground , ignoring the complex 
changes that take place in both figure  and ground  
during all communication [handwritten addition: 
except for H.A. Innis’ Empire and  Communication ].

 Marshall McLuhan to Barbara Ward, Feb. 9, 1973, 
Letters of Marshall McLuhan , (Toronto, 1987), 
p. 467.