Anthony McCarten: Brilliance

Reviewed by LAURENCE JENKINS

Thomas Alva Edison - T.A.E. in modern foreshortening - is an awe-inspiring, iconic name. Judging by the number of books about him aimed at the youth market, he might have been the original role model for the American Dream. In fact, he was one of the authors of that now-shattered hallucination, as well as one of its unwitting deconstructivists.

Anthony McCarten was perhaps wise to mark this extraordinary life with a novel, rather than competing with, among others, established Edison chronicler Robert Conot's 1986 work and the later (2001) biography by Neil Baldwin.

The thing is, McCarten knows his market. Ladies' Night and Via Satellite made him a popular success both on stage and screen, and he's now back in New Zealand to location-scout and then direct a film of his acclaimed debut novel, Spinners (1998), produced by David Parfitt of Shakespeare in Love fame.

Brilliance is a book for consumption, and if education is a byproduct, so much the better. That's the mark of all good historical novels.

Here we have the story of a true genius, a man possessed. Where would we be without his 1000 patented creations, which include the phonograph, the cinema projector, the electric light bulb, duplex telegraph, and many more? Sadly, the list includes the electric chair as well, and the story of that enterprise is pure theatre of horror.

McCarten's authentic account of the first electricide rivals the execution scene in the film The Green Mile. Both make convincing arguments against capital punishment. Ironically, Edison's invention prolonged that era because the public had by then been programmed to believe that electrocution was more humane than hanging.

This novel assumes (no surprise here) a cinematic form. Opening with the octogenarian inventor entrained en route to receive the homage of presidents and other VIPs (Marie Curie and Henry Ford put in appearances), the ensuing flashback seems inevitable, after which McCarten returns cyclically to the opening scene.

Edison and United States President Hoover make a splashy entrance astride the cowcatcher of a locomotive. Edison, deaf, reacts to the ceremonial switching on of a giant incandescent lamp and to his lip-reading of the crowd chanting "Let there be Light! Let there be Light!" with equanimity, as though he deserved the credit as much as God had in the Beginning.

McCarten avoids the temptation to lionise the inventor and paints a severely flawed god-figure. If his inventions were stupendous, so were his mistakes. The legendary, megalomaniacal and, finally, futile battle to prove the safety margins of direct current superior to George Westinghouse's alternating variety, sees Edison condoning the very public slaughtering of purloined, cheaply bought household pets in an attempt to prove his point and beat the competition.

But the blow that almost finished him was the electrocution of William Kemmler, convicted murderer, on August 6, 1890, at Auburn Prison, New York. The man died such a horrible and repulsive death because of the failure of equipment that it is a wonder there was ever another execution by this allegedly civilised method. Despite the elaborate scheme Edison formulated, to attribute the invention to Westinghouse, in the end the public associated only his name with it.

Reading about Edison's callous treatment of his two wives and his children, not to mention his labourers and colleagues, chips doggedly away at those feet we now know to be made of clay. First, Mary Stilwell Edison, and then later, Mina Miller Edison became virtual prisoners in their own houses, caring for Edison's children, left to their own devices, sometimes for months on end. When he slept, if at all, the great man was prone to do so on a table in his workshop or a pile or coal rather than in the marital bed.

Mary, who had married at 16, was dead before 30, worn out by her marriage. Edison was absent from Mary's bedside when she died. McCarten is merciless. Standing by her corpse, T.A.E. thinks: "What will I do now?"

The author admits to artistic license, but his Thomas Edison may not, after all, be far off the mark. How many men of greatness have behaved thus? The seductive character of financier J. Pierpont Morgan is brilliantly drawn and makes a convincing Mephistopheles to Edison's Faust.

Theirs was a symbiotic entanglement - Morgan providing the endless funding Edison needed to create products that allowed the billionaire to corner market after market and construct a fortress of monopolies.

Finally, though, Edison does reclaim his soul and returns to some measure of domesticity after virtually deserting Mina, his second wife, and his appositely named teenaged (by then) children Dot and Dash, both born when he was still a telegrapher.

After hearing that litany - "Let there be Light!" - McCarten's protagonist thinks "the sound will echo in his head for an eternity". T.A.E.'s reputation, in spite of his defects, seems certain to endure for at least that long.

Random House, $26.95

* Laurence Jenkins is a Northland-based writer, reviewer and arts columnist.

* We have five copies of Brilliance to give away. Just write your name and address on the back of an envelope and send to McCarten giveaway, canvas, Weekend Herald, P O Box 3290, Auckland, to reach us by June 6, 2003.