Surfing on Finnegans Wake & Riding Range With Marshall McLuhan

Rating:
Summary: Hang Ten!
Review: Pretty good stuff. This 2 hour, 2 cassette set, recorded at California'sEsalen institute, is a pretty good primer (or refresher, depending on whatyou bring to it) for both Joyce's Wake and McLuhan's theories. McKenna, while managing to stay well clear of a full-blown rant, shines an interesting psychedelia-flavored, history-along-with-human-consciousness-is-compressing-itself-into-a-nutshell light on the whole thing. So what exactly is here? On the Joyce side: a pretty in-depth analysis of the Wake's first five pages (much of this a distillation of Joseph Campbell's Skeleton Key). On the McLuhan side: a bare bones what-did-he-say-and-what-did-he-mean, with a little boy-did-we-drop-him-faster-than-we-embraced-him lament. The last word? It's about Joyce and by McKenna. How bad could it possibly be?