[Still Thinking]

Buzzy Watts, Chick Morrison, Tinky Holloway and Kip Chalmers. What a collection of names! There is a sense that Rand is playing with the reader here, but in fact she is making a point. Nicknames like this – along with Muffy and Buffy – are common at Ivy League schools and especially at Yale University. You can be sure that at Patrick Henry University, nobody was called Tinky!

Without being obvious about it, it is clear that Rand held the Ivy League in low esteem. As the story progresses, the reader sees the disasters caused by the hubris of Ivy League dilettantes with no experience of the real world. One turns to humorist Art Buchwald’s 1974 comment that the Harvard Business School should be shut down as a threat to national security.

Fascinating. I thought Rand just had a thing for goofy names or was trying to tell us they were all dorks. I had no idea there was an actual real world allusion there.

[CottonBall]

Same here.