Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06679_Field_TCUM T244.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 952b | 16 lines

first seeing Manhattan: “It is hot-jazz in stone.” It appears
again in the artist Moholy-Nagy’s account of his visit to a San
Francisco night club in 1940. A Negro band was playing with
zest and laughter. Suddenly a player intoned, ÒOne million and
three ,” and was answered: ÒOne million and seven and a half .”
Then another sang, ÒEleven ,” and another, ÒTwenty-one .” Then
amidst “happy laughter and shrill singing the numbers took
over the place.”

     Moholy-Nagy notes how, to Europeans, America seems to
be the land of abstractions, where numbers have taken on an
existence of their own in phrases like “57 Varieties,” “the 5 and
10,” or “7-Up” and “behind the 8-ball.” It figures. Perhaps this
is a kind of echo of an industrial culture that depends heavily
on prices, charts, and figures. Take 36-24-36. Numbers cannot
become more sensuously tactile than when mumbled as the