“Like Joyce, McLuhan is more interested in the fun than the pun. The pun itself is simply one of many weapons in a mammoth arsenal of verbal stunts; puns frequently become basic building blocks for more elaborate structures. For example, when McLuhan wrote, ‘Boldness of print created boldness of expression” he was not simply contrasting two meanings of one word; he was (1) using those related meanings to upset the reader’s expectations and (2) employing the identical words, ‘boldness’ and ‘boldness’ to perfectly balance a formally symmetric sentence. Placing such a tight, rhythmic sentence at the close of a more complex, verbally acrobatic paragraph adds a musical punctuation of contrast and completion. In composition, McLuhan knows the score.”
Thomas W. Cooper