Counterblasting Canada

Gregory Betts is the Chancellor’s Chair for Research Excellence at Brock University, the Director of Canadian Studies, and an Associate Professor in English. He is the author of Avant-Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations (UTP 2013). Paul Hjartarson is Professor Emeritus in English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. His most recent book, co-authored with S.C. Neuman and EMiC UA, is The Thinking Heart: The Literary Archive of Wilfred Watson (UAP 2014). Kristine Smitka teaches in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. To better understand the relationship between print and digital forms of publishing, her research focuses on the paperback book as a medium that defies the old vs. new media binary.

• XI AcknowledgementsXIII Introduction // Gregory Betts, Paul Hjartarson, and Kristine SmitkaAnalepsis1 Remembering McLuhan // Leon SuretteThe Art of Being Read2 The New Canadian Vortex: Marshall McLuhan and the Avant-Garde Function of Counter-Environments // Gregory Betts3 Watson, McLuhan (& Lewis): Conscious (Modernist) Solitudes, Challenging Canadians // Elena Lamberti4 Excellent Internationalists: How Sheila Watson and Marshall McLuhan Made Wyndham Lewis Influential // Adam HammondII The Antennae of the Race5 Dispatches from the DEW Line: McLuhan, Anti-Environments, and Visual Art across the Canada–US Border, 1966–1973 // Adam Welch6 Wilfred Watson, Playwright: Writing (to) McLuhan // Paul Tiessen7 Marshall McLuhan, General Idea, and Me! // Philip MonkIII Art and Anti-Environment8 Sheila Watson, Wyndham Lewis, and Men without Art // Dean Irvine9 “His Name Is Felix”: Artist as Catalytic Agent and the Counter-Environment in Sheila Watson’s The Double Hook // Linda M. Morra10 Magic, Monstrosity, and “the Mechanization of Death”: Sheila Watson and Marshall McLuhan’s Dialogue on Photography // Kristine SmitkaProlepsis11 Marshall McLuhan as Vanishing Mediator // Darren Wershler277 Works Cited293 Contributors295 Index

"Reading Counterblasting Canada one has the impression that this quartet—Lewis, McLuhan, and Wilfred and Sheila Watson—and their thinking about culture touched just about every discipline and genre available in the mid to late twentieth century…. Finally, then, these collections not only open up new critical conversations about Watson and others, they remind us that our provocative predecessors are also mentors who might help us reimagine the liberal arts in the neo-liberal university." [Full review at http://www.thebullcalfreview.ca/sheilawatson.htm]