How the Gutenberg Galaxy cured my existential self-doubt

“I just don’t know.”

Almost every other sentence I utter tends to be this or some variation. Such are the woes of being a fully paid up member of the existential society. I didn’t join voluntarily, but then again I didn’t put up much of a fight when I signed on the dotted line! I thought it was going to be a lot more hip but obviously I got landed with lots of the self-doubt rather than the cool detached, looking into the distance gaze, mannerisms.

It all began back in ‘86, when I was studying painting at Leicester Polytechnic. The art history brief for the first term focused on existentialism and boom, that’s when it hit hard. Ever since then making any decision is a bloody nightmare. Basically, I’m not a big fan of choice, never have been. A or B is my limit, if C is in the equation I start to feel very low.

I think Giacometti has a tough time too, listen to this:

“For a long time I’d had in my mind the memory of a Chinese dog I’d seen somewhere. And then one day I was walking […] in the rain, close to the walls of the buildings, with my head down, feeling a little sad, perhaps, and I felt like a dog just then. So I made that sculpture.”

— Alberto Giacometti, quoted in A Giacometti Portrait (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980) by James Lord, p. 34. Originally published in 1965 by the Museum of Modern Art.

To be fair I’ve never made a dog sculpture but I guess he’s pretty much captured the visual essence of existentialism in that bronze! Well done Mr G.

Dog (1951 [cast 1957]) by Alberto Giacometti

Anyway, enough existential wallowing. When I recently came across The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man in the Sutton House secondhand bookshop I held onto it for about 10 mins while I browsed, constantly umming and ahhing as to whether I should splash out £2 on this ex-library reprint or have another cup of coffee before heading home.

I’m really glad to say that after a further 10mins of mental anxiety I decided to skip the coffee, buy the book and walk home, saving my bus fare in the mix to help balance my crazy shopping spree.

I can now reveal that this book was a great purchase because in a roundabout way, it’s virtually cured all my existential anxieties when it comes to buying books. How so, I hear you cry! Well, as I explored the text further I stumbled upon a great technique that Mr McLuhan has for deciding whether or not to buy a book that might grab one’s attention while out and about.

Here it is: turn to page 69 of the book in question, read it, if you like it, buy the book, if not, put it down. It’s as simple as that. Apparently, McLuhan had some strange ideas about number theory and multiples of three.

“Marshall McLuhan, the guru of The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), recommends that the browser turn to page 69 of any book and read it. If you like that page, buy the book.”

— John Sutherland 2006

“Such apparent arbitrariness fits with picking a particular piece (or part) of a mosaic and deciding if you like it. Certainly the McLuhan test can be applied to the Gutenberg Galaxy itself. Doing so will reveal a further insight into the purpose of his own book”

— "To show by exactly what historical process ["modern man has desacralized his world and assumed a profane existence"] was done is the theme of The Gutenberg Galaxy." McLuhan 1962, p.69

So here is, page 69 of Marshall McLuhan’s book and it doesn’t disappoint:

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Eliade is under a gross illusion in supposing that modern man “finds it increasingly difficult to rediscover the existential dimensions of religious man in the archaic societies.” Modern man, since the electro-magnetic discoveries of more than a century ago, is investing himself with all the dimensions of archaic man plus. The art and scholarship of the past century and more have become a monotonous crescendo of archaic primitivism. Eliade’s own work is an extreme popularization of such art and scholarship. But that is not to say that he is factually wrong. Certainly he is right in saying that “the wholly desacralized cosmos is a recent discovery in the history of the human spirit.” In fact, the discovery results from the phonetic alphabet and the acceptance of its consequences, especially since Gutenberg. But I question the quality of insight that causes a human voice to quaver and resonate with hebdomadal vehemence when citing the “history of the human spirit.”

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The Gutenberg Galaxy is concerned to show why alphabetic man was disposed to desacralize his mode of being.

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The later section of this book will accept the role declined by Eliade when he says: “It does not devolve upon us to show by what historical processes … modern man has desacralized his world and assumed a profane existence.” To show by exactly what historical process this was done is the theme of The Gutenberg Galaxy. And having shown the process, we can at least make a conscious and responsible choice concerning whether we elect once more the tribal mode which has such attraction for Eliade: …

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Ok, not the best and most exciting page but the skill in this process is to extrapolate. Like a holographic image, mull it around ponder the content and think beyond this one page.

It’s as simple as that my Le Document friends! Who would have thought that this would be the answer after all these years! So, now I’m free of all existential anxiety when it comes to buying books, unfortunately the rest of my life is still just as fucked!

Vive la France!

Vive l’existentialisme!

Vive le Document!

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Who ever put that black strip in the horizontal ‘G ‘ need to really think about their design skill …

Page 69, here it is. (I didn’t include the footnotes above and below the text.) The large asterisk that starts each chapter behaves like a pilcrow. Beautiful.

Book size: 235 x 150 x 20 mm
Paper: White uncoated
Pages: pp 295
Cost: £2
Source: National Trust secondhand book shop in Sutton House

Text © Chris Tosic, 2020