{"id":736,"date":"2012-04-15T17:50:47","date_gmt":"2012-04-15T17:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=736"},"modified":"2012-10-22T17:10:38","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T17:10:38","slug":"brilliance-by-anthony-mccarten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=736","title":{"rendered":"Brilliance by Anthony McCarten"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>Published by Alma Books 12 April 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

224 pp, hardback, \u00a314.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Did inventor Thomas Edison and banker J.P. Morgan first meet in a bath in Saratoga Springs? Did Morgan possess, indeed cultivate \u2018a postulated, bulbous magma of warty tissue with the texture of a cauliflower\u2019 instead of a nose? Yes and yes if New Zealand novelist, playwright and film director Anthony McCarten\u2019s affably ironic new novel is to be believed. His use of such eloquent details and imaginings add pleasing texture to the story – a parable on Wall Street\u2019s tendency to co-opt and corrupt idealism \u2013 notably in the case of Edison, whose wives used Morse Code to counter his deafness; who existed on a mono-diet of milk; and who often appeared blind to the creative flair of others.<\/p>\n

Given his experience of theatre, there\u2019s also no surprise in McCarten\u2019s inclination toward two-handed set-piece confrontations for the ongoing debate between his twin giants of history. Shuttling back and forth between the inventor\u2019s cusp of creativity in 1878 and the wounded insularity of his octogenarian years in 1929, Edison is presented as Dr Faustus to \u2018the world\u2019s banker\u2019 Morgan\u2019s Mephistopheles who rescues him from debt, sets him up in business with the aim of bringing electricity first to Manhattan and then the whole USA, then deserts him for Westinghouse who has discovered cheaper manufacture of electric current.<\/p>\n

While the central tussle of the book is Edison\u2019s efforts to expand electric light into an affordable, widely available commodity, it\u2019s his role in the development of the electric chair that carries the greater moral focus. The appalling development of this device, first\u00a0tested on animals, including a wretched orangutan, and then used to execute a criminal, the murderer William Kemmler, is horrific for the scientist and the reader alike. It is this experience as much as any which destroys Edison\u2019s last vestiges of optimism in his work and his sponsor. Efforts to be a businessman have drained the inventive brilliance from a person whose ambition was to do good and whose heroes were Michael Faraday, who turned down knighthoods, and Tom Paine.<\/p>\n

Joining a growing group of fictional considerations of the role and effect of banking, Brilliance<\/em> is short and simple in its didacticism, increasingly using Edison as a mouthpiece for the author\u2019s insights, as in this comment made to an engineer during the gruesome electric chair experience: \u2018I\u2019ve got a new name for this chair: The Wall Street chair. This chair is meant for us, Harold, have no doubt, for you and for me \u2013 fool servants of a master whose only aim is to remove the last barriers holding greed at bay.\u2019<\/p>\n

In 1912, a year before his death, Morgan himself was cross-questioned during congressional hearings into the monopoly practices of various bankers and banks. By now he was reported to head an empire comprising 341 directorships controlling some $22 billion in resources and capitalization. The committee accused him of presiding over a banking system \u2018that has seen this country exposed to two decades of brutal mergers and a carnival atmosphere on Wall Street which has triggered booms and busts in insane succession\u2019 and pronounced him guilty of a kind of treason: Morgan and five other houses were found to be running the US economy for their own benefit, crushing anything that threatened their relentless growth.<\/p>\n

Very evidently a case of plus ca change.<\/em><\/p>\n

And as Morgan, a glass of Pommery in one hand, a redhead in the other, is glimpsed promising stupendous wealth – the Edison General Electric company, capitalized at a value of twelve million dollars \u2013 to the inventor, he simultaneously confirms to Edison money\u2019s deathless grip on world-changing possibilities and the people who generate them: \u2018You\u2019re my best invention.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/p>\n

Did inventor Thomas Edison and banker J.P. Morgan first meet in a bath in Saratoga Springs? Did Morgan possess, indeed cultivate \u2018a postulated, bulbous magma of warty tissue with the texture of a cauliflower\u2019 instead of a nose? Yes and yes if New Zealand novelist, playwright and film director Anthony McCarten\u2019s affably ironic new novel is to be believed. […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2883,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions\/2883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}