More relevant McLuhan

[Mark Kohut]

TRP takes a jab or three at some 'avant-garde' or experimental art, if that label
applies,  in his fictions...Slab and abstract expressionism and Marinetti's futurism,
to think of two off the top...the second occasioned by these words from 
Understanding Media:
 
After speaking of the 'violence' of the modern age, McL sez that this can produce
a 'counter-irritant' that artists try to express BUT
 
'the counter-irritant usually proves a greater plague [of violence] than the intitial
irritant.'
 
"And it is here that the artist can show us how to "ride with the punch,"[He was Canadian, remember]
instead of 'taking it on the chin".  It can only be repeated that human history is a record of
'taking it on the chin'". 
 
Cf. Life is a State of Siege---from Against the Day