The Gutenberg Galaxy by Marshall McLuhan
Published 1962 · 331 pages · 70,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · History, Media & Technology, Nonfiction, Philosophy
How hard is The Gutenberg Galaxy to read?
The Gutenberg Galaxy scores 32 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
- Wide-ranging literary and philosophical references.
- Sentence structure: 48 out of 100
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- High-level cultural theory.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense with allusion and argument.
- Narrative indirection: 28 out of 100
- Non-linear, mosaic construction.
- Symbolic density: 22 out of 100
- The printing press as transformation of consciousness.
- Ironic distance: 18 out of 100
- Playful, provocative stance.
- Resolution withholding: 20 out of 100
- Probes rather than concludes.
- Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
- Mosaic of short sections. No conventional chapters.
How The Gutenberg Galaxy is regarded
The Gutenberg Galaxy holds a literary regard score of 60 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.