PARC is Out of Print


Robert Campbell

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Aiee, unconscious plagiarism!(I don't recall ever reading Pigs Have Wings but I might have) Hope the Queen's greedy great-grandpiglets do not sue me.

I think it can fairly be said that most plagiarism is unconscious. That, however, doesn't acquit you of your crimes, Dear Daunce. Just be glad you are beyond the reaches of our fair jurisdictions down here, although I would consider a pro bono effort on your behalf if you were not. The problem with pro bono, alas, is that you get what you pay for, proving once again the inherent virtue of life in Galt's Gulch.

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Aiee, unconscious plagiarism!(I don't recall ever reading Pigs Have Wings but I might have) Hope the Queen's greedy great-grandpiglets do not sue me.

I think it can fairly be said that most plagiarism is unconscious. That, however, doesn't acquit you of your crimes, Dear Daunce. Just be glad you are beyond the reaches of our fair jurisdictions down here, although I would consider a pro bono effort on your behalf if you were not. The problem with pro bono, alas, is that you get what you pay for, proving once again the inherent virtue of life in Galt's Gulch.

Oh, I think I could retain you, as cross-border defenders have precedents. Eminent barrister Eddie Greenspan defended our ex-own Conrad Black in Chicago and look how well that worked out - he only got six years in Coleman.

UIn fact in case the worst happens I shall disclose now in confidence that although I don't remember ever reading PHW I did read Blandings Castle , featuring the Duchess of Blandings. Twice.

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UIn fact in case the worst happens I shall disclose now in confidence that although I don't remember ever reading PHW I did read Blandings Castle , featuring the Duchess of Blandings. Twice.

A mere Duchess? Never! “That splendid animal” was first introduced as the Empress (see Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey), and remained so for the 50 years that PGW composed tales featuring her.

Meanwhile, it’s come time to acknowledge that the now contentious phrase Cogito Ergo Slimmo does not in fact appear in the book cited, or any other Wodehouse opus. I made it up, as a way of expressing appreciation for the cleverness of Cogito Ergo Skimmo. To suggest that someone's writing appears to have been cribbed from PGW is generally taken as high praise, however, I’m afraid my comment has since been misconstrued.

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You gotme 9th, and I am delighted to be got. Also to be perusing PHW shortly which I have indeed not read. It's the Empress of course; how i mpertinent of me to mistake her rank. My only excuse is, as part of the Will & Kate Pregnancy Watch I have got duchesses on the brain.

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You gotme 9th, and I am delighted to be got. Also to be perusing PHW shortly which I have indeed not read.

But Cogito Ergo Skimmo means I think, therefore I skim. It implies that the book in question needn’t be read thoroughly, at least not by a thinking person. Clever. Cogito Ergo Slimmo makes no sense, Slimmo was the fictional appetite control product that was mistakenly fed to the Queen of Matchingham by those sinister yet incompetent forces that sought to dethrone the Empress, but who couldn’t tell one fat Berkshire sow from another. Besides, the pigs in the Blandings series don’t actually talk!

You’re in good company having not yet read Pigs Have Wings, Christopher Hitchens once wrote a piece about PGW in which he boldly claimed that nowhere in his immense corpus was there even an allusion to the work of Oscar Wilde, and he went on to hypothesize that this repeat collaborator of Cole Porter was some kind of homophobe. Tut-tut Hitch, in Pigs Have Wings Beach the Butler advises his niece to hide her identity by using the name Mrs. Bunbury, and when asked why that name, he complains incredulously that no one is familiar with The Importance of Being Earnest anymore. But later, Hitchens acknowledged his error.

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I can't imagine that gentle genius being phobic about anything human. When he followed his creative bent to translate the world into comedy, he never approached the black , unlike Waugh and other brilliant contemporaries. Maybe he just did not have enough bile in him.

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I think it can fairly be said that most plagiarism is unconscious.

I suspect deliberately so.

--Brant

Brant:

You have proven once again that brevity is the soul of wit.

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I think it can fairly be said that most plagiarism is unconscious.

I suspect deliberately so.

--Brant

Brant:

You have proven once again that brevity is the soul of wit.

What's funny is I wasn't trying to be funny--or witty. I only now see it for your seeing it.

--Brant

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  • 8 months later...

I am willing to celebrate the anniversary. I just do not yet know what would be appropriate.

Because (despite my teasing) I think a lot of us did some good work to counter the BS of PARC (as well as recognize the value in the trimmed-up journal entries, pre-cherry picked), I reject Burns's rather Black/White division into Orthos and Neos. But we know who she is talking about (with Neos). It is her term and it does not correspond to any other division of the Warring Tribes.

I am going to give her Raritan piece a second look. On first read I thought Robert Campbell (and I to a much lesser extent) read her mind well, in terms of whether she would enter a 'debate' choke cough spit with James Valliant.

Robert knew she would rather pull her hair out than come back to SOLO. I knew (on his intuitions and reasoning) that she was running screaming from Valliant. And I suspect now that me, Robert, Neil, Ellen ... and other warriors can probably take a grain of satisfaction that she was able to say in print what we said in pixels for a long long time ... that Valliant's bound copy of expurgated diary entries plus insane screed was as much a book as the funny papers are art. A sense of proportion is always necessary ...

Forgive me, Robert for pulling your leg. Nowhere do I associate you with the Nutterzone. That was Perigo's sad mirror-reflecting.

The very least important thing about Burns is what she thinks about (me/you/Aunt Irene). That she slagged Valliant most unmercifully as a fraudster (as cough spit choke author) is the take home for all of us, I hope.

I think that we might think about the difference between an anniversary of birth, achievement, reaching the Moon, cleaning out your navel for the first time -- and the anniversary of a death.

We will need to be sombre (while giggling beneath our sober mien), and we will need to speak to the occasion.

What is the date, Robert?

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Yes, Brant. Thanks again for cutting through the cant ... and filling it with fudge.

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What is the date, Robert?

But books don’t go out of print on a particular day, like flipping a light switch on and off, right? You do a printing, and then the copies sit in a warehouse (or in Valliant’s closet) until they’re sold or recycled into toilet paper to save on storage costs. I suppose if we knew the specific date when the last remainders were sent to be pulped we could specify that as the date. But no one publicizes that information. Does anyone know how many printing there were? I recall one of his retorts to Neil was to stop complaining about an error that had been corrected, this implies there were at least two printings. And nowadays, with print on demand...

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ND,

When Valliant says he corrected an error, I believe he is referring to the revised chapters he posted on SOLOPASSION.COM.

If someone at the ARI thought the book was great, it could have been made available by a print on demand service.

-NP

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Does anyone know how many printing there were? I recall one of his retorts to Neil was to stop complaining about an error that had been corrected, this implies there were at least two printings. And nowadays, with print on demand...

Not necessarily. With Valliant, one can never know for sure what he means and what the truth is. If he said that an error had been corrected, it could mean that he merely corrected it in a current discussion or made a note to correct it for future potential printings.

Do you remember how much lawyerly confusion he exhibited and/or tried to cause over the issue of his claim that changes had been made to Rand's play, Penthouse Legend, prior to its opening, and how he seemed to be incapable for quite a period of time of grasping the meaning of the term "opening," and that it didn't mean whatever he wanted it to mean whenever he wanted it to?

J

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Not necessarily. With Valliant, one can never know for sure what he means and what the truth is. If he said that an error had been corrected, it could mean that he merely corrected it in a current discussion or made a note to correct it for future potential printings.

Indeed.

Do you remember how much lawyerly confusion he exhibited and/or tried to cause over the issue of his claim that changes had been made to Rand's play, Penthouse Legend, prior to its opening, and how he seemed to be incapable for quite a period of time of grasping the meaning of the term "opening," and that it didn't mean whatever he wanted it to mean whenever he wanted it to?

Actually no, I don’t remember that. But I’ve spent more than enough time reading the PARC Wars saga, so don’t bother looking this up to provide a link on my account. Reading Valliant is like watching Roderick Spode assault a vegetable.

'Have you ever seen Spode eat asparagus?'

'No.'

'Revolting. It alters one's whole conception of Man as Nature's last word.'

P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

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Jonathan,

You write:

Do you remember how much lawyerly confusion he exhibited and/or tried to cause over the issue of his claim that changes had been made to Rand's play, Penthouse Legend, prior to its opening, and how he seemed to be incapable for quite a period of time of grasping the meaning of the term "opening," and that it didn't mean whatever he wanted it to mean whenever he wanted it to?

Yes, that was funny.

I've been mixing it with Valliant here

http://www.amazon.com/review/RO9O4G9J0XFJF/ref=cm_cd_pg_oldest?ie=UTF8&asin=1573928097&cdForum=Fx6GWBZ9FXUTGD&cdPage=1&cdSort=newest&cdThread=Tx1I4OPDOWLN37P&store=books#wasThisHelpful

He still can't get it right. The play's "text" was changed?!?

Those who changed the play's language did not tell Ayn Rand of the changes, even "that" changes had been made, and even though they knew she had fought a painful battle to preserve each and every word of that play.
This says that Harriman told us only ~ that ~ changes were made, not that he (or any of the others) had described "the nature and extent" of those changes. In sharp contrast to the changes made to Rand's play (the context of the discussion), they were "no secret" -- i.e., like those other changes to that already-published play had been.
The play's text was changed without Rand's knowledge or consent while she still alive, by those who knew the painful history of the play's previous alterations and of Rand's battle to retain its language, and by those who still sought Rand's endorsement for their production.
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After PARC was published, someone contacted Phil Smith, husband of the director Kay Smith. He said he recalled it concerned a line by Guts Regan that always got an inappropriate laugh. I think someone else said it might have concerned the word "gay."

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=373

There is a line by Karen where she refers to a "gay party."

However, George Reisman, on his amazon review of Mayhew's version of Rand's Q & A, says the actor was a male.

Many years ago, there was a young actress to whom Ayn Rand gave the responsibility of directing a production of her play "The Night of January 16th." Toward the close of the play's run, an actor prevailed upon this young woman to allow him to alter one of Ayn Rand's lines in one of the play's last performances. When Ayn Rand learned of this, she was furious and completely ended her relationship with this young woman, who had been in her inner circle for several years. Ayn Rand attached the highest value to her every word and would never agree to her words being altered by anyone, let alone made to represent the opposite of what she said.

-Neil

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WSS,

As ND notes, it's hard to isolate a date for a book going out of print.

I took the change on Amazon from "Temporarily out of Stock" to "No longer available" as my indicator, but obviously I didn't spot it on the exact day, hour, minute.

If no longer being listed at the Ayn Rand Bookstore is the criterion, that change took place later.

We could pick a date in the approximate range for PARC no longer being available new from Amazon. Preferably one with further resonance to suit the occasion...

Robert Campbell

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Ha, well Valliant is right, I must have a reading problem.

Actually, my memory apparently combined the following from that post:

Phil Smith: you would have thought that the Enola Gay had dropped the bomb
Ellen Stuttle: (an example of that sort of thing, various words referring to homosexuals which once upon a time didn't have that reference).

-Neil Parille

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  • 2 years later...

Great! I guess he's going to correct all the mistakes by working off your 81 page critique!

Maybe this time Random House will pick it up and give it the big advertising budget it deserves.

--Brant

why does the world need a restatement of a prosecutor's brief?

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