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Considering the Last Romantic, Ayn Rand, at 100
The NY Times ^ | 02/02/05 | EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

Posted on 02/02/2005 10:51:31 AM PST by Borges

What did Ayn Rand want?

Today is the centennial of her birth, and while newsletters and Web sites devoted to her continue to proliferate, and while little about her private life or public influence remains unplumbed, it is still easier to understand what she didn't want than what she did. Her scorn was unmistakable in her two novel-manifestos, "The Fountainhead" (1943), about a brilliant architect who stands proud against collective tastes and egalitarian sentimentality, and "Atlas Shrugged" (1957), about brilliant industrialists who stand proud against government bureaucrats and socialized mediocrity. It is still possible, more than 20 years after her death, to find readers choosing sides: those who see her as a subtle philosopher pitted against those who see her as a pulp novelist with pretensions.

She divided her world - and her characters - in similarly stark fashion into what she wanted and what she didn't want. Here is what she didn't want: Ellsworth M. Toohey, "second-handers," Wesley Mouch, looters, relativists, collectivists, altruists. Here is what she did want: Howard Roark, John Galt, individualism, selfishness, capitalism, creation.

But her villains have the best names, the most memorable quirks, the whiniest or most insinuating voices. At times, Rand even grants them a bit of compassion. Toohey, the Mephistophelean architecture critic in "The Fountainhead," could be her finest creation. And when she argued against collectivism, her cynicism had some foundation in experience: she was born in czarist Russia in 1905, witnessed the revolutions of 1917 from her St. Petersburg apartment and managed to get to the United States in 1926. Her sharpest satire can be found in some of her caricatures of collectivity.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: aynrand; aynrandlist; happybirthday
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To: FreeKeys
I agree with you on there political leanings.
so they would kinda taint the movie.
Woods would be great I for some reason never thought of him. Also Heather would be a great Dagny, which is also the name of my cat.
41 posted on 02/02/2005 2:51:10 PM PST by since1868
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To: everyone

Ayn Rand was a vicious bytch who had no understanding of either conservatism or humanity. She hated the communists, sure. So did Hitler.


42 posted on 02/02/2005 2:51:15 PM PST by California Patriot
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To: California Patriot
I do like her economic view, I am a devote Christian. and I do like achievers, they inspire me.Just like so many people in the Bible
43 posted on 02/02/2005 3:08:20 PM PST by since1868
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To: since1868

In 1965 I had a cat I named Dagny!


44 posted on 02/02/2005 3:16:55 PM PST by FreeKeys (Happy 100th Birthday, Miss Rand!)
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To: Borges
Find links to excerpts of some of Ayn Rand's writings on the web HERE.
45 posted on 02/02/2005 3:34:12 PM PST by FreeKeys (Happy 100th Birthday, Miss Rand!)
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To: FreeKeys

Thats funny my cat was born in 1965


46 posted on 02/02/2005 3:37:54 PM PST by since1868
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To: since1868

Wow! That's one old cat! On the 9th life, I presume?


47 posted on 02/02/2005 3:40:51 PM PST by FreeKeys (Happy 100th Birthday, Miss Rand!)
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To: maine-iac7
to add to my post #33

One thing Rand knew was how Communism gets a foot hold in a country - having lived the Bolshevik years and escaped as a young girl.

Not many years later, she was working as a screen writer in Hollywood - and a contemporary of Reagan, than a young star - and not a right-wing ideologue, but a lib-dem!

But, He came to realize that the film industry was being swallowed up with the evil of Marxist communism> and the libDem closeness to it - and became a conservative republican,

Rand, I believe, was an expert tutor in the machinations and dangers of Communism.

Reagan, to stop this take over of films, accepted the position as Pres. of the Screen Actors Guild and spearheaded the fight to stop it. He and Rand both testified in the House Un-American Investigations, so vilified by the successful smearing of the left. Reagan had many threats on his life and he had to start carrying a gun - indeed, as I remember, he had a Molotov cocktail or some such lobbed thru' the window of his home (when married to Jane Wyman and with a baby in rehouse.)

Since "The Wall" came down, KGB and Soviet archives, give evidence that the commission was right...that Soviet infiltration was permeated into all aspects of American life. .

Reagan's last year as Pres. of the Guild was 1960 - it didn't take long for the communists in Hollywood to regroup!

But I often ponder the phrase " the Lord moves in mysterious ways..." Was it more than 'luck' that a young girl who escaped from Russia during the revolution ended up a peer of Reagan's and worked with (educated?) him to stop the encroachment of communism - which eventually resulted in the collapse of the U.S.S.R and the fall of the wall?

48 posted on 02/02/2005 3:44:28 PM PST by maine-iac7 (...but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Lincoln)
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To: FreeKeys
unfortunately
49 posted on 02/02/2005 3:47:52 PM PST by since1868
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To: jim_trent

I actually believed this when I first started reading your post. Consider yourself smacked.


50 posted on 02/02/2005 3:48:09 PM PST by ShadowDancer (Vivere est cogitare)
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To: FreeKeys
LOL

absolutely right.

Over the decades I have learned to use, as a litmus test of people to steer clear versus becoming a friend with -

Can this person enjoy a good belly laugh at life - including on themselves? and

Does this person listen as well as talk and do they look you IN THE EYE when talking?

If the answers come up "no", I give them a wide birth.

Just look at the faces and screaming demeanors of the scary lefties! - versus the smiling, laughing - even when laying someone out in lavender - conservatives...

51 posted on 02/02/2005 3:50:41 PM PST by maine-iac7 (...but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Lincoln)
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To: Borges

Have you ever considered that, maybe, just maybe, Ayn Rand's novels were truly great literature?
Oh. But of course you haven't.
Never mind.


52 posted on 02/02/2005 5:35:53 PM PST by dAnconia (The government cannot grant rights,but it can protect them. Or violate them.)
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To: Uncle Fud
Be honest, now. If you saw this picture without knowing who it was

what would you surmise about the subject's sexual orientation?

53 posted on 02/02/2005 5:38:22 PM PST by Uncle Fud
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To: FreeKeys

Thanks for the ping.


54 posted on 02/02/2005 5:49:39 PM PST by PGalt
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To: Borges

"Atlas Shrugged" - One of my all time favorite books.


55 posted on 02/02/2005 5:51:17 PM PST by Dan from Michigan (Republican Party Reptile)
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To: Dan from Michigan
One of my favorite books too. Ayn Rand's books continue to sell at a pace of about 500,000 per year, which means approximately 12,000,000 have been sold just since her death. I guarantee you that the earth-shaking mind-blowing changes it can wreak in former socialist-liberals such as I used to be have changed this nation for the better. I estimate that in the 2004 election alone, 4 million people who read Atlas Shrugged voted for GWB, whereas without having read it they would have voted for pukeface instead. Read the results and do the math. Giving credit where credit IS due: she saved the world.
56 posted on 02/02/2005 6:30:50 PM PST by FreeKeys (Happy 100th Birthday, Miss Rand!)
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To: atomicpossum; FreeKeys
Vidor's direction isn't the problem, it's Rand's absolute refusal to adapt her words to the screen, plus her insistance on Cooper as leading man. It's her 'Ed Wood' moment:

When Hollywood "adapts words to the screen," that's when all the trouble starts.

Anyway, if you want to see a movie of an Ayn Rand novel that was extremely close to how it was written (and Ayn not even on the set) look for a copy of the Italian film Noi Vivi, the adaptation of he r novel We the Living.

57 posted on 02/02/2005 11:05:36 PM PST by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)
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To: FreeKeys
I estimate that in the 2004 election alone, 4 million people who read Atlas Shrugged voted for GWB, whereas without having read it they would have voted for pukeface instead. Read the results and do the math. Giving credit where credit IS due: she saved the world.

I'll drink to that!

58 posted on 02/02/2005 11:23:17 PM PST by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)
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To: since1868

Fair enough, but I hope you're aware that Rand hated all religion, and said so.


59 posted on 02/02/2005 11:23:50 PM PST by California Patriot
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To: California Patriot
Fair enough, but I hope you're aware that Rand hated all religion, and said so.

I don't remember her using the words hate, hated or hating or any other variation of that word in regards to religion. If you can give us the source for your allegation, I would appreciate (and probably could use) the edification. Or were you just being a little (forgivably) flippant?

Rand did sometimes speak of religion in somewhat semi-respectful terms from time to time, as in this quote:

As to Kant's version of the altruist morality, he claimed that it was derived from "pure reason," not from revelation -- except that it rested on a special instinct for duty, a "categorical imperative" which one "just knows." His version of morality makes the Christian one sound like a healthy, cheerful, benevolent code of selfishness. Christianity merely told man to love his neighbor as himself; that's not exactly rational -- but at least it does not forbid man to love himself.
-- from this lecture
Whatever, I AM aware of Rand's antipathy to religion in general, her lack of appreciation of how prayer feels good and can be healing, how religion helps build communities, etc., but for me that doesn't diminish the valuable concepts she did have to teach. My favorite authors and teachers have ALL had their quirks and their flaws, but I'm not one to disregard EVERYTHING because of them.
60 posted on 02/02/2005 11:46:40 PM PST by FreeKeys (Happy 100th Birthday, Miss Rand!)
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