Q:  Do you have any insight into where McLuhan’s 
ideas came from, into what kind of young scholar 
he might have been?

A:  I have no evidence, but I can imagine him as a 
young student. I can imagine him being high-minded 
the way he really was. He was born that way and I 
think his mother helped him to stay that way. She 
would read to him the whole of English literature in 
little bits every morning. That must have helped. He 
was bred on high-minded thinking. He would be at 
University of Manitoba and at Oxford, he would be 
constantly questioning the moral underpinnings of 
any decision, of any event. He started out very