Hmm, I did not intend to be provocative. I thought your post was
interesting (and timely for me, since I'm trying to incorporate O'Neill
and Cheney into my dissertation in what I hope is a responsible way).
I have more questions than answers about the historical value of these
books. I think the question of how ethnicity factored into their
relationship is a good one. In both O'Neill and Cheney, this difference
is oddly absent in the descriptions of the Twain/Tesla relationship. And
yet Neil Baldwin in EDISON: INVENTING THE CENTURY is clear about how the
professional rivalry between Edison and Tesla had a strong racial
component, with Edison casting Tesla as an outsider. In O'Neill's account
of the AC (Tesla, whose ideas were purchased by George Westinghouse)
versus DC (Edison) debate, O'Neill pretty clearly draws the exploitation
of Tesla by Westinghouse in terms of a foreigner who is unable to compete
without insider aid, despite Tesla's superior imaginative powers. One of
Cheney's critiques of O'Neill is that he portrayed Tesla as a solitary
loner, and one of her goals is to restore an understanding of Tesla as a
social being, which perhaps explains why she narrativizes their
relationship by writing dialogues between them--to "humanize" Tesla and
render him as a less remote figure than her predecessor O'Neill.
So inter-ethnic conflicts are at the center of these interactions (also
very evident in many of the representations of Tesla which I have dug out
of old magazines), which, in my own view, makes the lack of this dynamic
in the representation of the Twain/Tesla relationship a bit suspect. It's
a very good question, though.
All speculations, no conclusions--
Meryem Ersoz
University of Oregon
On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Mike Pearson wrote:
> At 02:30 PM 1/20/97 -0800, you wrote:
> >The images of Twain cavorting in Tesla's lab which Cheney includes in
> >TESLA: MAN OUT OF TIME are certainly brimming with possibilities.
> >
> >I picked this book up from the library, not realizing that Cheney borrows
> >pretty generously from John O'Neill's material in PRODIGAL GENIUS
>
> Thanks for the reference. It is of course cited in Cheney's reference notes
> in Tesla: Man Out of Time.
>
> on the
> >Twain/Tesla relationship. I've seen the Cheney work cited on this list a
> >number of times, by several different people,
>
> searched Twain-L data base, got no" Tesla " -- i make a booboo?
>
> I believe, and I am
> >wondering why Cheney has received most of the recognition and attribution
> >for this material.
>
> Agreed? The question now is not "What is the meaning of the information"
>
> but "What is the meaning of the controversy over the meaning
> about the source of the information, which that rookie cited like he was
> just some
> hard liquor-swilling white-male smoker from the 19th Century?"
>
> > I thought maybe Cheney had new material which O'Neill
> >might not, but, in comparing their works, I don't see much evidence that
> >this is the case, at least in the Twain vignettes. Cheney's are a bit
> >more imaginative and narrativized, but I don't necessarily consider this
> >a strength because it converts what might be factual into a series of
> >apocryphal stories.
>
>
> >Any thoughts about these differences? Any ideas on why Cheney's work is
> >cited instead of O'Neill's? (besides that hers is more recent)
> I am grateful you felt
> my post was not so trivial you
> would respond tonly off-list.
>
> You are cordially invited
> to embarrass me in private too;-)
> >
> >I'm quite interested in how people might be using these references.
>
> >
> >Meryem Ersoz
> >University of Oregon
> >
>
> In-com-prehensile-ly,
> Mike
>
> I was also wondering, since it is a mystery to me
> ( While I await my interlibrary loan of
> _Mark Twain A to Z_)
>
> 1) Was this friendship inter-ethnic?
>
> 2) In cited book, descriptions about Tesla's boyhood psychology
> are fascinating
> -- would Twain's be similar in some ways?
>
> Citations might be O'Neill's too, or might be someone else's.
> I await any scrap of knowledge you can share with me down here.
>
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