Modern Language Association

Abstract

In 1884, Mark Twain joined the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) with a letter expressing his fascination with thought-transference. As Twain describes it, this “mental telegraphy” manifests as “powerful impulses” during writing, feeling as if someone is “supplying the thoughts to me, and that I am merely writing from dictation.” Although this “telepathy” would today be considered mere pseudoscience, Twain’s narratives of the experience point to an equally remarkable phenomenon: the transference of ideas via textual narratives. Research from reception theory, affect theory, and present-day neuroscience explores how ideas developed through reading are not passively absorbed from a text, but rather formed in the “gap” between text and reader. My paper explores Twain’s relation to turn-of-the-century psychology—his acquaintance with William James; his influence on Sigmund Freud—to demonstrate how Twain’s later speculative mode of writing reveals aspects of reading then unknown to psychological science. Focusing on his late, incomplete novel, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, I argue that the speculative mode is particularly apt for creating textual gaps that readers are encouraged to fill. Thus, I suggest that Twain contributes to turn-of-the-century psychology while exposing its limits: a lesson that we can bring to contemporary scientific approaches to reading.