The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Oh the heroism; the shear brilliance; the drama; the climax!
Just kidding. But I did enjoy digesting some of her philosophies and attempting to put on my environmentalist monocle in lue of her 'resources have no intrinsic value except when man develops them' basis for capitalism.
The novel served as the fundamental inspiration for my first dry point print and, being in a public high school printmaking class, that was the only spark I needed to expunge "The Randian Sandwich Sacrifice"
It was with my flesh and bone that this was assembled. The spirit of the individual guided me to my own boat, where the waters of confusion could not disrupt my train of thought. (Mixed metaphors are key to Objective thought). The pirates that road the waves of other thought did not interfere. They did not attack with their parrots or jolly-rogers, nor did their hooks stick into my thigh to interfere my action of nail on plexi-glass. And like Aquinas, I am able to take responsibility for my ink and my expression-- no law can take that away from me!
And anyways, I'm pondering nightly whether Ron Paul would smile if he were to read this blog. The following Fountainhead excerpts were entirely uncomfortable for me to read. But perhaps I'm over-sensitive...
"(Howard Roark) looked at a tree. To be split and made into rafters...These rocks, he thought are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands give them."
-Ayn Rand (Page 16)"The twilight had washed off the details of the buildings. They rose in think shafts of a soft, porcelain blue, a color not of real things, but of evening and distance. They rose in bare outlines, like empty molds waiting to be filled...The single shafts stood immeasurably tall, out of scale to the rest of the earth. They were of their own world, and they held up to the sky the statement of what man had conceived and made possible. They were empty molds. But man had come so far; he could go farther. The city on the edge of the sky held a question-- and a promise."
-Ayn Rand (Page 199)"Each evening (Howard Roark) walked the two miles from the quarry to the little town where the workers lived. The earth of the woods he crossed was soft and warm under his feet; it was strange, after a day spent on the granite ridges; he smiled as at a new pleasure, each evening, and looked down to watch his feet crushing a surface that responded, gave way and conceded faint prints to be left behind... Far above, the leaves were still green, but it was a thick, compressed green, as if the color were condensed in one last effort before the dusk coming to dissolve it. The leaves hung without motion against a sky of polished lemon yellow; its luminous pallor emphasized that its light was failing. He pressed his hips, his back into the earth under him; the earth resisted, but it gave way; it was a silent victory; he felt a dim, sensuous pleasure in the muscles of his legs."
-Ayn Rand (Page 202)"...There's nothing important on earth, except human beings."
-Ayn Rand (Page 265)
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Thankfully, I've never needed a scholarship enough to read that book and I've never had it assigned to me. From what you posted of it, though, the arrogance seems faintly staggering. The world is full of unbridled possiblities when you lack humility, dignity, and pride in life around you. It's amazing how easy all the big decisions suddenly become. How else could anyone have dropped the atom bomb?
"I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers."
- Kahlil Gibran
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/oraclephoenix
Well Said.
Really. It's so repetitive.
As Robert Noizick once said, "I have philosophical sympathies for Ayn Rand, but she begs too many questions."
My Blog
"We cannot redeem evil, we must combat it." -- Jean Paul Sartre
I'd seen her interviews with Donahue in the 1970s and was keenly interested in reading some of her books. I wish I read the Fountainhead solely for the scholarship, but if I told you that, it'd be a total fib. You're right, she's appallingly Calvinistic, but I dig how she believed literature should be Romantic.
Sustainably yers, Green Underbelly
I just want to say I love Ayn Rand!
My grandmother and uncle really dig her. He's an artist in Chicago and I can see why he would subscribe to her-- why should he sacrifice his own creations to 'art trends' or something like that.
Why do you love her?
Sustainably yers, Green Underbelly
Some of her points have value. Others are just plain arrogant. Talk to our biology - there is no pleasure in man living solely for himself and the pleasures he derives from his work; companionship and the 'mundane' particles of life are necessary also to sustain man's libido. However, I do love the part where John Taggert's wife repudiates the notion that love does not come at a price, and the motto "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."