After McLuhan’s brain surgery in 1967, while he was gradually recovering from it in 1968, Hayakawa wrote him a note:
July 7, 1968
Dear Marshall —
I heard to my sorrow that you have been ill, and I heard more recently that you are well again. I hope you have received an invitation from St Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Ind., to take part in a philosophical symposium. They wanted me, and I accepted in the hope that you too would accept so that our paths might cross again.
What’s this I hear about a McLuhan Newsletter? How do I get on the mailing list?
Best wishes, as always.
Yrs etc1, Don
I was in Winnipeg June 13-19. My 1st visit in 35 years! My gosh, how we have all changed!
- Hayakawa was the founding editor of ‘etc’, the journal of the International Society for General Semantics. And he remained the editor for almost thirty years (1943-1970). He named the journal during WW2 after the WW1 poem (published in 1926) by e.e. cummings (given here without cumming’s complex spacings):
my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent
war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting
for,
my sister
isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds) of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers
etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that
i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my
self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et
cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera) ↩