You will notice that in this thread, I advocate a book that does not think much of Maslow: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=834873#post834873 I am still growing on these aspects myself and not sure where I stand. nitro
I don't think people understand. We are never going to have a pure libertarian society. Nor will we ever have a pure socialist society, or communist or capitalist. Why this escapes so many on this thread is beyond me. The idea is to take the positives out of each of these and leave out the negatives. Easier said then done, sure. All these attacks on Ayn Rand serve no purpose politically or otherwise. Nor do the attacks on George Bush, Bill Clinton or Ralph Nader. This thread was about a movie. Not about changing the American way of life. The point was, perhaps Hollywood could start making films that are interesting and different. We have seen 50 years of films that for the most part push the leftist agenda. Some of these films were very good. Others were laughable. The point being, I believe Hollywood has been stretched to its creative limits by force feeding us plots and storylines that push the liberal agenda and the quality of cinema today has really hit new lows. Perhaps, a film such as this one, might tap into a new creativity that Hollywood is in such a need of.
The question remains, how do you make a good movie out of a mediocre novel and still remain true to it? My earlier criticism was not only of Rand but of her novel as well. If the movie remains true, then it will be stilted, contrived, shallow and overlong, and its cast will comprise two-dimensional caricatures. Oh, and it will preachify. Just my opinion, of course.
A better question would be: How do you take one of the greatest epic novels of all time, all 1000+ pages of it, and condense all that into a 2 1/2 hour screenplay?
Many of your criticisms are true, yet undeserved. What you must keep in mind, is that Rand's novels aren't really novels at all, but philosophical works <i>written in novel form</i> in order to make them more readable. Complaints that the characters follow a very narrow band of conduct, and the writing is far too didactic, would be appropriate for a Stephen King book (were one written in the same fashion as Rand). How many people of the MTV generation are willing to voluntarily read through Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard or Rousseau? On the other hand, notice the wide readership of Camus, Rand and Orwell. Also labeling Rand as 'Far Right' is just silly. Her stance against any sort of government intervention in abortion rights, drug prohibition, and interventionist wars- combined with her firm rejection of all forms of mysticism...would make any true member of the 'Far Right' crap their pants.
I really tried to read Atlas Shrugged, but found it to be (as Mark Twain said of the Book of Mormon) chloroform in print. m
You have no idea how ironic that statement is to me, because I personally am actually immune to inhaled chloroform. (Can anyone here explain to me how that is even medically possible???) For Thunderdog: While the characters in A.S., Fountainhead and Anthem are indeed one-dimentional, you would probably still enjoy "We The Living". <b>Much different</b> than the rest of her fiction, even some Communist thugs turn out to have a great measure of human decency in them after all.
Admittedly, not a bad comeback. However, I find it interesting that you recognize the book's many weaknesses from a literary perspective and yet regard it as one of the greatest epic novels of all time. Perhaps I, too, would be more forgiving if I shared her views.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005 Great Con Artists of the 20th Century #5 Ayn Rand posted by tas at 3:43 PM 6 Comments: swac said... I want to find the teacher that made me read Anthem and kick her. August 23, 2005 7:00 PM tas said... Back when I was young and foolish, I actually semi-bought into her Objectivism bullshit; mainly as a result of reading The Fountainhead, which has the dual distinction of being a rocketing narrative (she was clearly paying attention all those years she worked for DeMille) and having just the right amount of Us vs. Them, Integrity vs. Phillistinism, to attract any halfway credulous adolescent. Kid stuff. August 23, 2005 7:11 PM Vanwall said... I'm sooooo glad I wasn't force-fed that crap. I read a few of her "works", but found her pretty tiresome. BCNU August 23, 2005 11:35 PM slyboots2 said... Scary factoid of the day- Alan Greenspan was a friend of Ayn's and is an old adherent to Objectivism. This puts a chill all along my spine. I have to bite my tongue every time one of my acquiantances starts ranting about how wonderful Rand is...especially if I'm at work. August 24, 2005 10:15 AM tas said... slyboots2 wrote: Alan Greenspan was a friend of Ayn's and is an old adherent to Objectivism. This puts a chill all along my spine. ***** Same here. He was very close to Rand and was long a member of her inner-circle (those weekly soirees in Manhattan with the rest of her coterie yakking away into the dawn . . . and her poor husband playing butler) and had a ringside seat for the deranged soap opera of her loony affair with Nathaniel Branden. He never talks about her publicly, to the best of my knowledge, but I doubt if her ideas are very far from his thoughts. August 24, 2005 10:24 AM Petunia McGillicuddy said... I love her work as fiction. So she was shortsighted and egotistical and fallible. So aren't we all. I don't so much mind calling her a con artist, but I don't think it's really accurate. Don't con artists know what they are doing when they are perpetrating a con? She herself was completely blind and bamboozled by her own logic. Has she really had so much influence? Don't most people dismiss her? I don't know. I didn't know Greenspan liked her. August 28, 2005 12:45 PM Post a Comment Go Home http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2005/08/great-con-artists-of-20th-century-5.html