"WE HAVE ELECTROCUTED YOUR GOD. DON'T BE A FOOL"

O'NEILL, Eugene. Dynamo. New York: Horace Liveright, 1929. Tall octavo, original blue cloth, uncut, original dust jacket. $450.

First edition of O’Neill’s 1929 play, an important early exploration of the relationship between a mother and son, “material he would fully develop in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

Dynamo was intended as the first of what O'Neill "would privately call his God Is Dead trilogy, or, more formally, Myth Plays for the God-Forsaken… The thesis of Dynamo was that people deprived of God or gods will make gods of scientific icons" (Black, 535-4). The play premiered in New York in a Theatre Guild production on February 11, 1929, earning praise for its staging and production design but poor overall critical response. O'Neill later reflected that the play was not actually about a conflict between spirituality and pseudo-science. Rather, "he thought the essence of the play lay in the relationship between the mother and the son and in the betrayal of each by the other… Later critics have noted this element and its importance as an exploration of material he would fully develop in Long Day's Journey Into Night [1956]" (Shafer, Eugene O'Neill, 133). Precedes the signed limited edition of the same year. Atkinson A31.I.I.a.

A fine copy.