Obituary for Wilford Stanton Miller, author in 1926
of the Miller Analogies Test —
Marshall McLuhan writing to Ezra Pound on Dec. 21, 1948—
"The American mind is not even close to being amenable
to the ideogram principle as yet. The reason is simply this.
America is 100% 18th Century. The 18th century had
chucked out the principle of metaphor and analogy—
the basic fact that as A is to B so is C to D. AB:CD.
It can see AB relations. But relations in four terms are still
verboten. This amounts to deep occultation of nearly all
human thought for the U.S.A.
I am trying to devise a way of stating this difficulty as it exists.
Until stated and publicly recognized for what it is, poetry and
the arts can’t exist in America."
A line for W. S. Miller, taken from "Annie Hall" —
"You know nothing of my work."