I am a member of the Ong Project here in my dept. at SLU, where Fr. Ong was
longtime chair, former president of MLA, and where he still occasionally
shows up (he still lives here on campus).

Fr. Ong probably deserves a little more attention as premiere theorist of
literature and communications.  His impact is quite interdisciplinary,
affecting diverse areas such as media, the medical professions, and computer
theory.  His unpublished correspondence, which to my knowledge nobody has
ever tried to document, is known to include many of the 20th-century's great
intellectuals, such as Marshall McLuhan, who was here in St. Louis for a
while.

To take a look at our just beginning attempt to create an electronic
database on Ong's work, and to find out more about some of his ideas,
including orality, check out our website (still under construction):

www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/ENG/ong/index.html

Ps--Tom Walsh, co-author of the article cited earlier, is just down the
hall!



Harold K. Bush, Jr.
Dept. of English, Saint Louis University