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.