The
long-awaited Salmieri and Gotthelef, A Companion to Ayn Rand will be out in
January. You can read an excerpt here.
11 comments:
Anonymous
said...
The Salmieri piece which you can read is interesting. He obviously doesn't agree with the editing by Harriman, Mayhew, et al. I wonder what the ARIans will think of that.
He also praises (somewhat) the Burns and Heller bios, which are not all that much different from Branden's.
The crackpots will lose control of Rand interpretation through natural attrition. Then I suspect that people from later generations who study Rand's world view won't find it all that interesting or compelling.
I agree with Mark. That's why I welcome wider study of Rand - it's a belief system that currently has loads of groupies and sycophants but few thorough critics. So it's a relatively easy environment for Objectivism's egregious errors to be sustained. I also agree with Greg Nyquist who once said something like Rand without the madness is just a bore. Once those errors are understood, all that's left will be the kind of crushing mediocrity that Rand dreaded most.
Most of the critics of Rand criticize a caricature of Rand. Objectivists rightly can claim that their critics are to a large extent attacking straw men. More critiques of Objectivism looking at what it actually is are needed. To do that requires refraining from demonizing it.
Lloyd, Greg's book is pretty good. Have you read it? While most websites (and nearly all online comment boards) mostly just horse around, here is a good online look at O'ism as it has developed in actual practice after its founder's death, including analysis of a number of the arguments made by its latter-day proponents: http://ariwatch.com
Anyone ever read The Objective Standard? Its editor Craig Biddle has wound up writing more and more of the articles every issue. That signals a subsidized publication without much of a readership, the product of a private command-and-control economy. An organically popular magazine would attract more writers submitting better quality material for the editors to choose from, even if the magazine doesn't necessarily support itself financially right away.
With respect to The Objective Standard, it appears the Ari Armstrong no longer works there. His writing was poor, but at least he helped fill the pages.
When the McCaskey schism happened, Yaron Brook resigned as "contributing editor" or whatever it was called. Now, no A-list Peikovian writes for the magazine.
"But Ms. Rand, who had left the Soviet Union in the 1920s and feared the Russians might acquire Paramount Pictures to subvert the project, wanted script approval; Mr. Ruddy, as adamant as she was, declined. 'Then I’ll put in my will, the one person who can’t get it is you,' Mr. Ruddy recalls being told by Ms. Rand."
Wow. She really was a crazy old bird.
"He spoke by telephone last week of his plan for a mini-series in which an Internet blackout led by Bezos-like figures might shut down cellphones, banks and almost everything else."
Still the wrong way to do it. "Atlas" is part of a parallel history in which the Depression never ended and World War II was won by the Axis powers. It takes place in some foggy corridor of time between 1940 and 1950, in an America that could have been but never was. And it can work perfectly well if filmed that way by someone who knows how to create a stylized universe populated by stylized characters - think "Brazil" (Terry Gilliam). Or it could work as an animated cartoon in a retro Art Deco-film noir style. Updating it to the world of Jeff Bezos and the World Wide Web is like Dino DeLaurentis updating "King Kong" to the 1970s and dragging in OPEC and the oil shortage.
I doubt Ruddy has the ability to get a project made anyway. Since 2008 the only thing he's produced is "Sabotage" (2014), an Arnold Schwarzenegger flick that went straight to video.
11 comments:
The Salmieri piece which you can read is interesting. He obviously doesn't agree with the editing by Harriman, Mayhew, et al. I wonder what the ARIans will think of that.
He also praises (somewhat) the Burns and Heller bios, which are not all that much different from Branden's.
-Neil
The crackpots will lose control of Rand interpretation through natural attrition. Then I suspect that people from later generations who study Rand's world view won't find it all that interesting or compelling.
I agree with Mark. That's why I welcome wider study of Rand - it's a belief system that currently has loads of groupies and sycophants but few thorough critics. So it's a relatively easy environment for Objectivism's egregious errors to be sustained. I also agree with Greg Nyquist who once said something like Rand without the madness is just a bore. Once those errors are understood, all that's left will be the kind of crushing mediocrity that Rand dreaded most.
Most of the critics of Rand criticize a caricature of Rand. Objectivists rightly can claim that their critics are to a large extent attacking straw men. More critiques of Objectivism looking at what it actually is are needed. To do that requires refraining from demonizing it.
Oh, jeez, not this nonsense again:
Producer of ‘The Godfather’ Lands Rights to ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Novel
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/media/producer-of-the-godfather-lands-rights-to-atlas-shrugged-novel.html
Not. Gonna. Happen.
http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/new-television-fall-season-glut-of-content-1201306075/
Lloyd, Greg's book is pretty good. Have you read it?
While most websites (and nearly all online comment boards) mostly just horse around, here is a good online look at O'ism as it has developed in actual practice after its founder's death, including analysis of a number of the arguments made by its latter-day proponents:
http://ariwatch.com
Anyone ever read The Objective Standard? Its editor Craig Biddle has wound up writing more and more of the articles every issue. That signals a subsidized publication without much of a readership, the product of a private command-and-control economy. An organically popular magazine would attract more writers submitting better quality material for the editors to choose from, even if the magazine doesn't necessarily support itself financially right away.
Yes I read it and yes I agree with your analysis Mark.
With respect to The Objective Standard, it appears the Ari Armstrong no longer works there. His writing was poor, but at least he helped fill the pages.
When the McCaskey schism happened, Yaron Brook resigned as "contributing editor" or whatever it was called. Now, no A-list Peikovian writes for the magazine.
It was never very good, but it's horrible now.
"But Ms. Rand, who had left the Soviet Union in the 1920s and feared the Russians might acquire Paramount Pictures to subvert the project, wanted script approval; Mr. Ruddy, as adamant as she was, declined. 'Then I’ll put in my will, the one person who can’t get it is you,' Mr. Ruddy recalls being told by Ms. Rand."
Wow. She really was a crazy old bird.
"He spoke by telephone last week of his plan for a mini-series in which an Internet blackout led by Bezos-like figures might shut down cellphones, banks and almost everything else."
Still the wrong way to do it. "Atlas" is part of a parallel history in which the Depression never ended and World War II was won by the Axis powers. It takes place in some foggy corridor of time between 1940 and 1950, in an America that could have been but never was. And it can work perfectly well if filmed that way by someone who knows how to create a stylized universe populated by stylized characters - think "Brazil" (Terry Gilliam). Or it could work as an animated cartoon in a retro Art Deco-film noir style. Updating it to the world of Jeff Bezos and the World Wide Web is like Dino DeLaurentis updating "King Kong" to the 1970s and dragging in OPEC and the oil shortage.
I doubt Ruddy has the ability to get a project made anyway. Since 2008 the only thing he's produced is "Sabotage" (2014), an Arnold Schwarzenegger flick that went straight to video.
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