The Big Fib


caroljane

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The "Atlas Shrugged is the second most influential" urban myth is never going to die, but not because of me if I can help it. The latest perpetrator is that well-known empiricist Lindsay Perigo citing the "famous study" that Rand is second to the Bible in influencing people. He well knows, or ought to, that the "famous study" was in fact an informal survey, a publicity stunt,by the Book-0f-the Month Club, in which about 800 people named Rand next to the Bible as most influential on their lives.

All 800 of them. Are you familiar with Book-of-the-Month Club members, then and now? I was, and am.

I am willing to believe that they were all serious intellectuals or at least Eddie Willerses. But it is more likely that they were and are (as has been researched) primarily people who wished to appear well-read without taking the time to read, or people whose friends and relatives gifted them with memberships. It is highly likely that most who responded to that survey had not actually read any of the books they were asked about, or only read one or two.Undoubtedly many did read Atlas Shrugged. If they had also read the Bible --who knows? And who knows how many other books they had ever read, at that point in their lives And if we asked those 800 today would they say the same thing

I know that many who have read innumerable books, and yet have found Atlas Shrugged the most influential in their lives, will read this. But they should also deplore the shoddiness of the pr which is still being spun,long past its empirical sell-by date.

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Carol:

As Maxwell Scott, said at the end of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, in answer to Ransom Stoddard's question, "You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?"

"No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

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Carol:

As Maxwell Scott, said at the end of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, in answer to Ransom Stoddard's question, "You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?"

"No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

You got it Adam. Like I always say, Gene Pitney rules!

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Carol:

As Maxwell Scott, said at the end of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, in answer to Ransom Stoddard's question, "You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?"

"No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

You got it Adam. Like I always say, Gene Pitney rules!

Yep...even in a town without pity!

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Actually, the first time I ~saw~ a copy of an Ayn Rand book (Fountainhead) was because my mother belonged to said club. I never read the thing. I thought it was a romance novel. It was sitting next to some other stuff. Wish I had nabbed it, but you know how it goes when empires burn and new ones emerge.

It is the stuff of myth, and that is good in a certain way--story being the strongest form, and all that.

Of course, it makes one wonder why a hardcore cult-of-personality Randian would think that impressive, what with it being compared to the Bible, and all.

Just biz-as-usual in O-world, as far as I can tell. Why would it change now?

Good point, enjoyed the read!

rde

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Actually, the first time I ~saw~ a copy of an Ayn Rand book (Fountainhead) was because my mother belonged to said club. I never read the thing. I thought it was a romance novel. It was sitting next to some other stuff. Wish I had nabbed it, but you know how it goes when empires burn and new ones emerge.

It is the stuff of myth, and that is good in a certain way--story being the strongest form, and all that.

Of course, it makes one wonder why a hardcore cult-of-personality Randian would think that impressive, what with it being compared to the Bible, and all.

Just biz-as-usual in O-world, as far as I can tell. Why would it change now?

Good point, enjoyed the read!

rde

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The "Atlas Shrugged is the second most influential" urban myth is never going to die, but not because of me if I can help it. The latest perpetrator is that well-known empiricist Lindsay Perigo citing the "famous study" that Rand is second to the Bible in influencing people. He well knows, or ought to, that the "famous study" was in fact an informal survey, a publicity stunt,by the Book-0f-the Month Club, in which about 800 people named Rand next to the Bible as most influential on their lives.

A publicity stunt? On behalf of Atlas Shrugged? I think not, and I must withhold my usual enthusiastic contrafibularities to the denizen of Canuckistan. Here’s a fair summary of the facts:

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/books/rand/atlas/faq.html

6.4 Is it true that Atlas Shrugged is the second most influential book ever written?

No one knows exactly how influential Atlas Shrugged is, because there has never been a proper study done to check. The "second most influential" claim comes from a Survey of Lifetime Reading Habits conducted in 1991 by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Library of Congress. Printed surveys were sent to members of the Club, asking them what books had most influenced their own lives. A little over 2,000 responses were received. The Bible ranked first, and Atlas Shrugged ranked a distant second. Because the survey targeted an audience of book lovers (members of the Club) and an active effort was required to mail in a response, it is likely that the results were skewed towards people who were influenced especially strongly by a particular book. Such a result cannot be reliably interpreted as reflecting the entire US population, although enthusiastic promoters of the novel sometimes make such claims. (The survey is also often inaccurately described as a "poll" or "study," and various incorrect sources are cited for it.)

Similar concerns affect a more recent list to an even greater degree. In 1998, book publisher Random House ran an online vote asking readers to name the "best" English-language novels of the 20th century. Atlas Shrugged placed first in this vote, with Rand's other novels placing high on the list as well. However, there was a considerable amount of campaigning by special-interest groups to promote particular authors and books. There were also only limited controls to prevent repeat voting and other "ballot stuffing" techniques. In the end, the results probably reflected the intensity of feeling among the most highly motived voters as much or more than the breadth of support for any of the top vote-getters.

Because of the limitations of these surveys, some critics attack them as "invalid" or "unscientific," but that isn't entirely accurate. The survey results are legitimate as long as one understands their biases and limitations. They reflect the strength of influence that the books listed have had on the specific groups involved in the surveys. What is invalid and unscientific is to attempt to generalize the findings beyond those groups without accounting for the skewed participation.

Oh my, he’s shaved, and looks like he may even have plucked his chest hair!

“The extraordinary thing was, for all the unremitting hatred poured upon it by all branches of the Establishment, the novel became a run-away best-seller, cited in one famous survey as being the second-most influential book after the Bible.”

Lindsay “Jabba” Perigo

He calls it a “famous” survey, and famous it is, having been referenced over and over by Rand fans. The fact that it isn’t as meaningful as they often imply, well, that’s called puffery in the marketing classes. At least he acknowledges, albeit without stressing the fact, that it was only one survey.

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Thanks, Ninth, for the non-frasmotic eluctrifaction. I once hunted down the details of the Famous Study when Perigo raised his trumpet a few years back, and of course have seen the many chinese-whispers re-renderings.

The New York Times had a wee report in one of its book notes back in the day, it seems, and reported these additional details:

The survey was financed by the book club and conducted by the Information Analysis System Corporation of Mansfield Center, Conn., which sent its survey to 5,000 Book-of-the-Month club members, 2,032 of whom responded, the corporation said.

Beating book-reading in general, however, even among avid readers, was television. Respondents said they spent an average of 12 hours a week watching television, but only 9 hours a week reading books.

Here is the survey's list of the most influential books:

1. The Bible.

2. "Atlas Shrugged," by Ayn Rand.

3. "The Road Less Traveled," by M. Scott Peck.

4. "To Kill a Mockingbird," by Harper Lee.

5. "The Lord of the Rings," by J. R. R. Tolkien.

6. "Gone With the Wind," by Margaret Mitchell.

7. "How to Win Friends and Influence People," by Dale Carnegie.

8. The Book of Mormon.

9. (tied, in alphabetical order by title) "The Feminine Mystique," by Betty Friedan.

"A Gift From the Sea," by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

"Man's Search for Meaning," by Viktor Frankl.

"Passages," by Gail Sheehy.

"When Bad Things Happen to Good People," by Harold S. Kushner.

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Another thing I had always wondered was what Atlas Shrugged's continuing book sales actually meant in context. In other words, if AS sold some number between 200 and 400 grand every year, were there other books from yesteryear that came close to its numbers? What do you find out if you compare its sales to other books? I had got the impression that the year after year sales of AS was a singular phenomenon, but also thought it might be one of those lack-of-comparative-data factoids that are easy to trumpet and hard to interpret without more info.

I will rerun the query if I can remember how I did it at Amazon, but I found out that there were many classic books that topped the Amazon sales-ranking list ahead of AS.

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Thanks, Ninth, for the non-frasmotic eluctrifaction.

I'm pleased to have inspired so much anaspeptic compunctuousness.

For some reason this makes me think of the study, also about 20 years ago, that showed that playing a particular piece of music by Mozart before a college level math test correlated with higher scores. Very soon you had a marketing push to the effect: play Mozart to your infant, it will improve later IQ scores.

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Another thing I had always wondered was what Atlas Shrugged's continuing book sales actually meant in context. In other words, if AS sold some number between 200 and 400 grand every year, were there other books from yesteryear that came close to its numbers?

There are books like Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby that everyone reads in High School, so they must have comparable sales. A lot of people read The Fountainhead in High School (I didn’t, but I was sentenced to a Catholic school), but I doubt Atlas Shrugged is assigned, if so very rarely.

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I personally find these survey results embarrassing.

Objectivists are known for campaigning in these things to skew results in Rand's favor. I have no idea what they expect to gain if reality is their standard.

The embarrassing thing is that I don't think it is their standard. I think lying to the public is.

Once in a while we get someone here on OL who wants people to vote in mass on a popularity survey to misrepresent actual public perception. They call it "activism." I try to discourage this because I call it "bullshit."

Rand's sales numbers decades after her works were published are all the activism anyone needs in showing her actual influence on the public. Immediate sales surges are not really an indication of influence, but the lasting high sales figures are.

I have been studying copywriting (sales writing) and all of the great direct-response copywriters agree that verifiable proof is one of the fundamental elements in a lasting sales message. When falsehoods are included, they ultimately discredit the product itself. You can easily verify Rand's sales figures. You can also easily verify the campaigns Objectivists organize to skew poll results.

So I will never understand why the self-appointed "advocates of reason" generally choose the lie over the truth in these matters--especially considering that the truth here is a far, far more powerful tool of persuasion.

Friggen' idiots...

Michael

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Yup.

The people who keep flaunting that Book of the Month Club survey are making a public exhibition of their foolishness—or of their desperation.

Richard Lawrence throws some cold water on the thing, maybe not enough.

A comparison of the long-term sales of Atlas Shrugged, compared with other literary classics, would actually be interesting.

Even after deducting the books given away free by ARI and such, the latter-day sales figures for AS look impressive. But maybe I'm not familiar enough with the competition.

Robert Campbell

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Rand's novels stay in print and keep on being read by many who at least like a good read. They influence all kinds of people in myriad ways. I'm primarily concerned with my relationship with her work, past, present and future. I found the Book-of-the-Month Club so intellectually embarrassing I stopped all dealing with it in the 1970s.

--Brant

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Thanks, Ninth, for the non-frasmotic eluctrifaction. I once hunted down the details of the Famous Study when Perigo raised his trumpet a few years back, and of course have seen the many chinese-whispers re-renderings.

The New York Times had a wee report in one of its book notes back in the day, it seems, and reported these additional details:

The survey was financed by the book club and conducted by the Information Analysis System Corporation of Mansfield Center, Conn., which sent its survey to 5,000 Book-of-the-Month club members, 2,032 of whom responded, the corporation said.

Beating book-reading in general, however, even among avid readers, was television. Respondents said they spent an average of 12 hours a week watching television, but only 9 hours a week reading books.

Here is the survey's list of the most influential books:

1. The Bible.

2. "Atlas Shrugged," by Ayn Rand.

3. "The Road Less Traveled," by M. Scott Peck.

4. "To Kill a Mockingbird," by Harper Lee.

5. "The Lord of the Rings," by J. R. R. Tolkien.

6. "Gone With the Wind," by Margaret Mitchell.

7. "How to Win Friends and Influence People," by Dale Carnegie.

8. The Book of Mormon.

9. (tied, in alphabetical order by title) "The Feminine Mystique," by Betty Friedan.

"A Gift From the Sea," by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

"Man's Search for Meaning," by Viktor Frankl.

"Passages," by Gail Sheehy.

"When Bad Things Happen to Good People," by Harold S. Kushner.

Thanks for this list - I remember seeing the titles on bestseller lists -Influential!?! I have actually read all or part of all these books except the Peck and Kushner ones. Can't remember the Lindbergh at all except a blandness.

The Feminine Mystique influenced me pretty adversely. At 18 I was a feminist in that I was smart and had no domestic skills and was considered capable of doing "a man's job".Then here was this book revealing hordes of equally equipped other females who also were capable of cleaning a whole house in one morning and looking after a family as well as doing the men's jobs, it was very depressing to see all that competition coming my way.

Friedan later admitted that she skewed the survey on which the book was based to create the "problem that had no name" (it had a name of course, underemployment, but that was hardly the stuff of bestselling titles). Her survey was of alumnae of her college, Vassar I think. I still think that lady with the four sons who claimed she cleaned the whole house and then was bored by noon because there were no bridge games was just lying, or had a maid. I have to think so, for my own sanity.

I read the Carnegie classic when I was 10. My mother saw me reading it and remarked, "You can't learn to make friends by reading books." She had more friends than anybody in town so I believed her.

The Book of Mormon is a silly sci-fi pseudo Old Testament.

The Victor Frankl book, and Frankl himself, I read as an adult and they remain with me, stars to steer by.

GWTW I have read three or four times. It is simply terrific.

The others I have nothing new to say about as they are so universally known and read --but the q of actual continuing sales is a fascinating one to pursue later.

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I read the Carnegie classic when I was 10. My mother saw me reading it and remarked, "You can't learn to make friends by reading books." She had more friends than anybody in town so I believed her.

[ . . . ]

The others I have nothing new to say about as they are so universally known and read --but the q of actual continuing sales is a fascinating one to pursue later.

I will attempt to reproduce the rankings for the dead-author classic titles as ranked by Amazon. I seem to recall I had to find some kind of list wherein Atlas ranked (some kind of rubric/classification header) in some way, and then drilled around until another rubric fetched up a long numbered or ranked list. It might have been an estimate of actual sales for the year that excluded new authors and living authors. Like I said, I will try . . . the only thing I do remember was that A Christmas Carol was way up the list above Atlas Shrugged . . . along with the titles that you can find in any chain bookstore. Perennial bestsellers? Classics?

Argh.

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In the same tradition, you may have read that Walter Cronkite ranked as the most trusted man in America. The real story, accoring to an article that ran (in Slate, I think) at the time of his death, is that some organization ran a survey in the early 70s in which they asked people to rank various political figures for trustworthiness. They added one non-political name (Cronkite's) as a control, and indeed he outranked them all. But when you consider that the competition included Nixon and McGovern, that doesn't mean much.

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GWTW I have read three or four times. It is simply terrific.

For the personal revelation and the accompanying well founded aesthetic judgement I can re-extend enthusiastic contrafibularities. I’ll even throw in a little Brian Blessed, for good measure.

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GWTW I have read three or four times. It is simply terrific.

For the personal revelation and the accompanying well founded aesthetic judgement I can re-extend enthusiastic contrafibularities. I’ll even throw in a little Brian Blessed, for good measure.

In excelsis, gloria. Was there ever a better adaptation? Graves surely would have loved it. Only the GTWT movie was as good at showing what the author told. Sian Phillips (is she a Dame yet? she should be) - reaming out the gladiators for being unprofessional and trying to save their lives -- the whole cast should have been ennobled if you ask me. Here's to Baron Blessed, KBE!

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In excelsis, gloria.

Amen.

Was there ever a better adaptation [than "I, Claudius]? Graves surely would have loved it. Only the GTWT movie was as good at showing what the author told. Sian Phillips (is she a Dame yet? she should be) - reaming out the gladiators for being unprofessional and trying to save their lives -- the whole cast should have been ennobled if you ask me. Here's to Baron Blessed, KBE!

"And I won't have any more of these cheap professional tricks for staying alive!"

She was wonderful.

Another great line was delivered by the whore who was bested by Claudius's wife -- by then the Empress -- in a fornicating contest.

"What the Empress does for a hobby, I do for a living. My hobby is growing roses."

I've always wondered if the line was anachronistic. Did people cultivate roses back then? I've never gotten around to checking it out.

I think the movie of "Doctor Zhivago" also ranks as a great film version of a great book. There's of course much more in the book than could possibly be compressed into a movie -- a somewhat similar difficulty to doing Atlas as a movie. However, I thought the spirit was conveyed. I was scared to go see the movie -- I didn't want the memory of a bad film adaptation sullying my pleasure in the book. So I waited a long time until I'd heard enough people in whose aesthetic judgments I placed some trust give the movie good marks before I risked seeing it.

Another movie I was afraid to see but went to at a small theater on the Trinity campus this last Saturday was the remake of "Jane Eyre." The remake hasn't outranked the original in my affection, but I liked it equally well. The remake includes more of the book, and I think is more faithful to the book in the portrayal of Jane and Rochester.

Oh, and there are also some film versions of Henry James novels which I thought were excellent. One is "The Heiress," an adaptation of the short novel Washington Square. Another is "The Wings of the Dove" with Helena Bonham-Carter. Another is "The Golden Bowl" (2000). I never have managed either to see any of the film versions of or to read "The Turn of the Screw."

Ellen

Edited by Ellen Stuttle
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  • 4 weeks later...

Oh, and there are also some film versions of Henry James novels which I thought were excellent. One is "The Heiress," an adaptation of the short novel Washington Square. Another is "The Wings of the Dove" with Helena Bonham-Carter. Another is "The Golden Bowl" (2000). I never have managed either to see any of the film versions of or to read "The Turn of the Screw."

Ellen

The "Turn of the Screw" film (I forget the title) with Marlon Brando and Stephanie Beacham was really good as I recall-- sort of a Last Tango in Paris feel to it.

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I think the movie of "Doctor Zhivago" also ranks as a great film version of a great book. There's of course much more in the book than could possibly be compressed into a movie -- a somewhat similar difficulty to doing Atlas as a movie. However, I thought the spirit was conveyed. I was scared to go see the movie -- I didn't want the memory of a bad film adaptation sullying my pleasure in the book. So I waited a long time until I'd heard enough people in whose aesthetic judgments I placed some trust give the movie good marks before I risked seeing it.

I love the Zhivago film, but I've heard Russians complain that it has (or lacks) many little details which almost wreck the film for them - little cultural things like the lack of emotion and physical contact between the characters in situations where real Russians would be crying, hugging and kissing each other. They see it as being comically aloof at times, and coldly British/American.

J

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The "Atlas Shrugged is the second most influential" urban myth is never going to die, but not because of me if I can help it. The latest perpetrator is that well-known empiricist Lindsay Perigo citing the "famous study" that Rand is second to the Bible in influencing people. He well knows, or ought to, that the "famous study" was in fact an informal survey, a publicity stunt,by the Book-0f-the Month Club, in which about 800 people named Rand next to the Bible as most influential on their lives.

Considering the kind of lying that Pigero normally does, I'm surprised that he didn't claim that Atlas Shrugged was scientifically determined to be the most influential and revered book ever, and voted by all other authors to be "objectively superior" to their own work.

J

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I used to be comfortable with the idea that most myths are based in fact. Somewhere.

It serves me well, and often, even nowadays. But, if there were ever a writer, or a movement, or a philosophy that would actually manage to be ill-served by this . . .even this . . ., it has to for sure be the Objectivism.

In the end, after all these fucking years, I still see pretty much only two manifestations. One is newly awakened, via the liberation that reading Rand can give. The other is a very blind type of state that resembles religion, while attacking religion. Those are the two big boys. It is like being vaccinated, but also contracting a disease.

Humanity prevails in the intellectual world, even, though. When I get so fed up with the writings of the confused, I can go to the great ones. Or the crazy ones. And they will always be there. That is where Reason Prevails. That is where even love, joy, humanity, those things prevail.

There are a lot of great ones, but for now I will say that there has been more than one time that Dr. Robert has pulled me out of the fire. And I'm a "religionist." Yeah.

Good people do good things. Right? Right?

EDIT: And Mike effing K., too. All you sane bastards.

Warm Blessings,

rde

Edited by Rich Engle
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There are a lot of great ones, but for now I will say that there has been more than one time that Dr. Robert has pulled me out of the fire. And I'm a "religionist." Yeah.

Who are you talking about?

And what's with the Crowley avatar?

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