Why Nobody Takes PARC Seriously Anymore

[Alfonso Jones]

Roger,

My complaints about Tara Smith's book on Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics pertain entirely to matters that Dr. Smith had control over.

The publisher, Cambridge University Press, put footnotes at the bottom of the page, where they belong (most publishers refuse to do this, or need a lot of arm-twisting these days).

In general, the copy editing and production on this book were top quality.

I just wish the review process had challenged her deliberate non-citation of certain authors.

Robert Campbell

The non-citation of NB is clear evidence that Tara Smith adhered to the Orwellian memory-hole policy re the Brandens.

Are there other examples of poor scholarship which you noticed?

Bill P (Alfonso)

[Neil Parille]

Robert,

The universe of people who are familiar with the world of Objectivist literature is quite small. I wonder if the editor at Cambridge had any idea of what was left out (or left in).

-NP

[Robert Campbell]

Bill P,

The other examples I noticed in Tara Smith's book were

(1) Awkwardly stepping around work that she knew by Tibor Machan, Doug Rasmussen, and others. Tibor's book on generosity was cited, but not on its actual topic. Instead, she footnoted Tibor's book as a source for an English translation of a remark on altruism by Auguste Comte (hard to find in translation), and, very weirdly, as a source for a quote from Adam Smith (not hard to find, doesn't need translation).

David Kelley's book on benevolence was not mentioned at all.

(2) Making sure that ARIan grad students who have no publications, but are credited with participating in her seminar or in some ARI-sponsored event, were included in the index, while some of the authors whose books she cited were not included. Harry Binswanger's unpublished talks were footnoted several times, despite being of tangential relevance (he really hasn't done much work on ethics).

Neil,

I agree that Cambridge University Press probably didn't know where to go for a reviewer who knows the Randian literature.

Robert Campbell

[Roger Bissell]

I suspect that the procedure at Durban House was: receive document of text from author, send to typesetting.

I share the suspicion. Furthermore, I doubt that there's anyone on staff at Durban House who is competent to edit even details of punctuation and grammar let alone to provide what's called "big" editing.

Ellen

I'm sure this is all true. However, even when your book is in the hands of a major academic publisher, you have no guarantee that your first attempts will be improved to the point of presentability.

My favorite example is Tara Smith's book on Rand's ethics. It has taken a number of justifiable hits for its inadequate scholarship, viz., for not citing Branden and others. My most strenuous criticism of it, though, is precisely the shoddy detail editing that its back cover received. (I don't have that material handy to include in this post, but if you have the book, check it out.)

From whom? Would you believe Oxford [arrrrgh! CAMBRIDGE!] University Press? <sigh> Somebody dropped the ball. The cover material is like your suit of clothes. If it's nicely colored and designed, but it has flaws in the weave that anyone with half an eye and brain can see, it detracts significantly (IMO) from the first impression you make on the world. It makes you look cheap and careless. To each his own, I guess.

REB

Jeez. If you people would read the CONTEXT of my remarks instead of quoting them out of context.....

I was responding to the various comments -- most immediately, Ellen Stuttle's -- about how poor books turn out when they're done by vanity publishers, who don't have staff or budget for either major or minor editing. My point was that even having a major academic publisher do your book was no guarantee that there wouldn't be some obvious howlers that spoiled its impact.

I am back home now, where I can access my extensive holdings of mega-important Randish books, and I now have the Tara Smith volume in my travel-worn hands. Here is the (to me) offending boo-boo.

On the back cover (hardbound copy, at least) are three bullet points, and the third one reads:

"Paints a far more positive portrait of the egoist than the stereotypes that philosophers, as well as other; too often lazily accept"

Ironic, isn't it. The use of the word "lazily" in a sentence that was obviously not proof-read for spelling ~or~ punctuation. Clearly, it should have read:

"Paints a far more positive portrait of the egoist than the stereotypes that philosophers, as well as others, too often lazily accept"

And remember, this is on the cover of a book published not by Durban House but CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. You don't think that signals a potential problem with the overall project? Unlike some, I ~do~ judge a book by its cover. As a consequence, I think that Smith's volume deserves not respect, but either pity or scorn, depending on whether or not you approve of her shoddy scholarship.

At this point, I'm going to bite my tongue and sign off, rather than spout off on how irritated I am at various people in this movement right now. See you next week.

NAME

"The Crank"

[Robert Campbell]

Roger B,

You're entirely right about the flaming typo in the third bullet point.

I remember seeing that and wondering how Cambridge University Press would let a book out the door with such a glitch on the back jacket.

It's all the weirder when the inside of the book is so well produced.

Robert C

[Alfonso Jones]

(snip)

On the back cover (hardbound copy, at least) are three bullet points, and the third one reads:

"Paints a far more positive portrait of the egoist than the stereotypes that philosophers, as well as other; too often lazily accept"

Ironic, isn't it. The use of the word "lazily" in a sentence that was obviously not proof-read for spelling ~or~ punctuation. Clearly, it should have read:

"Paints a far more positive portrait of the egoist than the stereotypes that philosophers, as well as others, too often lazily accept"

This bullet (and evidently the other two, unless the other two have been put into paragraph form) is absent from the paperback edition.

Bill P (Alfonso)

[Ellen Stuttle]

Roger B,

You're entirely right about the flaming typo in the third bullet point.

I remember seeing that and wondering how Cambridge University Press would let a book out the door with such a glitch on the back jacket.

It's all the weirder when the inside of the book is so well produced.

Robert C

To repeat: It's a mistake to presume that an editor was shown that copy prior to the jacket's being printed. There's many a possible slip between and amongst editorial, advertising, and production departments.

The voice of (sometimes unfortunate) experience,

E-

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[Alfonso Jones]

To repeat: It's a mistake to presume that an editor was shown that copy prior to the jacket's being printed. There's many a possible slip between and amongst editorial, advertising, and production departments.

Ellen -

You're definitely correct about that. I have personally had the experience of writing technical papers which appeared in refereed journals - and had (allegedly minor) copy-editing done by copy-editors who had no technical expertise in the research field of the journal, with no review of their edits by either the author (I should certainly seen it - I would have appreciated it!) or the Journal Editor or Associate Editors, who would have had sufficient technical expertise in the topic of my paper that they would have at least known that I had to be consulted about the change.

Bill P

[Ellen Stuttle]

[...] the Journal Editor or Associate Editors, who would have had sufficient technical expertise in the topic of my paper that they would have at least known that I had to be consulted about the change.

The word "least" in such a context triggers a painful memory of the type from my years working full-time as an on-staff editor. Trial Valley by Vera and Bill Cleaver, sequel to Where the Lillies Bloom: Mary Call, along with caring for her own siblings, has taken an orphaned child under her wing. The final line of the tale made reference to this child, describing him as "my least one" -- a perfect Cleaverism of usage in the context. We had a young -- and very bad -- copy-editor on staff, pretty newly hired. She'd been well recommended by her supervisor in another division of the company, and we'd been in a short-staffed pinch and had hired her without properly testing her out. Without telling any of the senior editors that she'd done so, she changed the word "least" to "last" -- in final page proofs. Ten thousand copies of the book had been printed before the editors learned of the change -- too late to fix it.

In that case, no one except the authors and staff would have detected the error, "last" sounding appropriate in meaning. What was lost, to the grief of those who knew, was a touch of poetry.

On other occasions goofs made by the advertising or the production department introduced inaccuracy.

A more recent way for error to appear in a final product, nowadays when type-setting is done by computer, is for a non-corrected earlier version of a manuscript to be used instead of a corrected later version. A big mistake of that type once happened to me. I had meticulously copy-edited a long bibliography, the original of which had abundant errors, some of them of a kind noticeable even to the casual glance. The production manager ran the uncorrected file in the print version of the journal. Gaak!!!

Ellen

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[Ellen Stuttle]

Returning to PARC...

First, another detail of the farcical aspects resultant from James Valliant's apparent inability to read (could someone fake this degree of reading incompetence?):

[Here]

The assertion still being made that everything within quotation marks must be a quotation is not something worth revisiting is it?

Since no one has made said assertion, it could hardly be revisited, could it?

Second, William has gone direct to the tragic aspect:

[Here]

It is a sad thing that prosecutor is so unsighted; in making TheBrandens™ a caricature, he also reduces Rand and her husband and her life to a cartoon version.

This is the sadness and waste I feel when I see the ARI-blessed cartoon of Rand's relationships found in PARC. The wretched writing and tendentious, posturing constructions are a symptom of a larger, systematic error: it is more important to be true to a cartoon Rand than to be fair and just and reflect reality honestly.

For Ayn Rand's diaries pertaining to her relationship with Nathaniel to have been published in a setting like that provided by PARC is tragic.

Ellen

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[Daniel Barnes]

This is something of a thread diversion, but I've just read the latest Solo press release here, regarding New Zealand sports broadcaster Tony Veitch who brutally assaulted his partner (breaking her spine, but not paralysing her) and who then paid her off not to go to the police. Veitch's coverup came to light in the press, which has subsequently become a huge story.

In Perigo's frankly bizarre piece he appears not to know the basic difference between criminal and civil offences. He claims that the public is not really outraged because of this brutal act and subsequent attempts by this celebrity to evade the law. Instead they secretly hate Veitch's sportscasting abilities, which Perigo seems to believe are exceptional, and this is the reason they seek to "hang, draw, and quarter him." He draws direct comparison between this supposed "baying mob" and the New Zealand newspaper that broke the story, and the public of "The Fountainhead" and the Wyand newspapers that fed them.

What's interesting to me in this vis a vis PARC is not so much that Perigo is a legal dunce, which he clearly is, but instead the complete novelisation of reality that is going on here. He's fitted the tawdry facts of the Veitch case into his grandiose Randian fantasy template, with absurd results.

Sound familiar? Perhaps this gives us a clue as to why Solopassion is the one place that still takes Valliant's book seriously.

Edited July 11, 2008 by Daniel Barnes

[Brant Gaede]

This is something of a thread diversion, but I've just read the latest Solo press release here, regarding New Zealand sports broadcaster Tony Veitch who brutally assaulted his partner (breaking her spine, but not paralysing her) and who then paid her off not to go to the police. Veitch's coverup came to light in the press, which has subsequently become a huge story.

In Perigo's frankly bizarre piece he appears not to know the basic difference between criminal and civil offences. He claims that the public is not really outraged because of this brutal act and subsequent attempts by this celebrity to evade the law. Instead they secretly hate Veitch's sportscasting abilities, which Perigo seems to believe are exceptional, and this is the reason they seek to "hang, draw, and quarter him." He draws direct comparison between this supposed "baying mob" and the New Zealand newspaper that broke the story, and the public of "The Fountainhead" and the Wyand newspapers that fed them.

What's interesting to me in this vis a vis PARC is not so much that Perigo is a legal dunce, which he clearly is, but instead the complete novelisation of reality that is going on here. He's fitted the tawdry facts of the Veitch case into his grandiose Randian fantasy template, with absurd results.

Sound familiar? Perhaps this gives us a clue as to why Solopassion is the one place that still takes Valliant's book seriously.

But he sure went after Chris S. in support of "Dialectical Dishonesty." He, Diana and Valliant tried to destroy Chris in a horrible piling on. But it's not so bad to knock a woman down and kick her in the back fracturing her spine in four places because he's the only talking head in New Zealand who has any brains.

--Brant

[Mike Hardy]

Another apparent mishap of that kind is in one of Scott Turow's novels. It said "through the month of June", where it obviously should have said "through the mouth of June". The context made it clear that that's what it should have said, but it could have appeared to an editor who did not know the context to be a typo.

In another of his novels, a doctor's autopsy report said "liver and rigor are absent" (or something very similar). It should have said "livor and rigor are absent". This time it was the author's fault; he confessed later. -- Mike Hardy

[...] the Journal Editor or Associate Editors, who would have had sufficient technical expertise in the topic of my paper that they would have at least known that I had to be consulted about the change.

The word "least" in such a context triggers a painful memory of the type from my years working full-time as an on-staff editor. Trial Valley by Vera and Bill Cleaver, sequel to Where the Lillies Bloom: Mary Call, along with caring for her own siblings, has taken an orphaned child under her wing. The final line of the tale made reference to this child, describing him as "my least one" -- a perfect Cleaverism of usage in the context. We had a young -- and very bad -- copy-editor on staff, pretty newly hired. She'd been well recommended by her supervisor in another division of the company, and we'd been in a short-staffed pinch and had hired her without properly testing her out. Without telling any of the senior editors that she'd done so, she changed the word "least" to "last" -- in final page proofs. Ten thousand copies of the book had been printed before the editors learned of the change -- too late to fix it.

In that case, no one except the authors and staff would have detected the error, "last" sounding appropriate in meaning. What was lost, to the grief of those who knew, was a touch of poetry.

On other occasions goofs made by the advertising or the production department introduced inaccuracy.

A more recent way for error to appear in a final product, nowadays when type-setting is done by computer, is for a non-corrected earlier version of a manuscript to be used instead of a corrected later version. A big mistake of that type once happened to me. I had meticulously copy-edited a long bibliography, the original of which had abundant errors, some of them of a kind noticeable even to the casual glance. The production manager ran the uncorrected file in the print version of the journal. Gaak!!!

Ellen

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[Daniel Barnes]

But it's not so bad to knock a woman down and kick her in the back fracturing her spine in four places because he's the only talking head in New Zealand who has any brains.

Update: It gets crazier. Former OL poster James Heaps Nelson says that Veitch reminds him of a hero in a Dick Francis novel.

Is this what a "stylised life" means in practice? A novelised reality?

[william.scherk]

But it's not so bad to knock a woman down and kick her in the back fracturing her spine in four places because he's the only talking head in New Zealand who has any brains.

Update: It gets crazier. Former OL poster James Heaps Nelson says that Veitch reminds him of a hero in a Dick Francis novel.

I almost understand those folks who take issue, narrowly, with the supposed media firestorm. They might wonder to themselves, 'Why does he have to lose his career and everything he worked hard for? Why is he now destroyed?'

I sorta almost kinda understand why the question is raised. If somehow he managed to hush up his ex-partner, and concealed the crime, and paid her off, and they both are happy with that private outcome . . . is it just that he be hounded from the airwaves by media coverage?

What I do not understand is how they would deal with his fall if his former partner had not become complicit in covering up the crime. In other words, if Veitch had been charged at the time of kicking his ex-partner . . . what would the reaction be to his losing his broadcasting job?

I think the answer is obvious. Them who are outraged at the press now would not be surprised or particularly disgusted if Veitch had to stand down from his positions.

Which leaves the question hanging: why did the ex-partner decide to become complicit in the cover-up? The most likely answer is that he put it to her: "If this comes out, I will be ruined!"

So, it finally came out, and his sportscasting career is effectively ruined.

Moral: don't kick your partner and put her in a wheelchair. Don't cover it up. There will be a price paid for preserving your 'private' crime.

As for James Heaps-Nelson, yikes. His analogy has teeth.

[Dragonfly]

In Perigo's frankly bizarre piece he appears not to know the basic difference between criminal and civil offences. He claims that the public is not really outraged because of this brutal act and subsequent attempts by this celebrity to evade the law. Instead they secretly hate Veitch's sportscasting abilities, which Perigo seems to believe are exceptional, and this is the reason they seek to "hang, draw, and quarter him." He draws direct comparison between this supposed "baying mob" and the New Zealand newspaper that broke the story, and the public of "The Fountainhead" and the Wyand newspapers that fed them.

Don't you see that he's just aping Rand in one of her worst moments, namely when she expresses her admiration for Hickman, the the murderer of a young girl? As Rand wrote:

"The first thing that impresses me about the case is the ferocious rage of a whole society against one man. No matter what the man did, there is always something loathsome in the 'virtuous' indignation and mass-hatred of the 'majority.'... It is repulsive to see all these beings with worse sins and crimes in their own lives, virtuously condemning a criminal..."

Worse sins and crimes than slaughtering an innocent girl?

"He shows how impossible it is for a genuinely beautiful soul to succeed at present, for in all [aspects of] modern life, one has to be a hypocrite, to bend and tolerate. This boy wanted to command and smash away things and people he didn't approve of."

"It is the case of a daring challenge to society. It is the fact that a crime has been committed by one man, alone; that this man knew it was against all laws of humanity and intended that way; that he does not want to recognize it as a crime and that he feels superior to all. It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul."

A strong man can eventually trample society under his feet. That boy was not strong enough. But is that his crime? Is it his crime that he was too impatient, fiery and proud to go that slow way? That he was not able to serve, when he felt worthy to rule; to obey, when he wanted to command?...

Perigo apparently thinks that kicking a spine to pieces is a good example of kicking ass and that people who object against the kicking of spines do that only while they hate and resent the wonderful abilities of the kicker. Genuine indignation is of course impossible!

[Ellen Stuttle]

Perigo apparently thinks that kicking a spine to pieces is a good example of kicking ass and that people who object against the kicking of spines do that only while they hate and resent the wonderful abilities of the kicker. Genuine indignation is of course impossible!

No, that isn't even nearly "apparently" what he thinks. He said nothing approving of "kicking a spine to pieces."

The AR and Hickman parallel is obvious -- but she wasn't expressing approval of Hickman's crime either.

Ellen

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[Dragonfly]

The AR and Hickman parallel is obvious -- but she wasn't expressing approval of Hickman's crime either.

Just paying lip service. Both treat the crime aspect as something irrelevant, unimportant. Rand even called it "a daring challenge to society". Perigo: "He did something vile and inexcusable. Not nearly as vile and inexcusable as they, though." Now if some criticisms are far more "inexcusable" than kicking the spine of an innocent victim to pieces, then this does imply that the latter isn't really so inexcusable after all, it's by no means as bad as expressing a disagreeable opinion! Both think that the condemnation by the critics is far worse than the crime itself. In other words, expressing criticism is of a criminal is worse than his crime, killing or maiming some innocent person, itself is.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Rand Ape.

Well, now that Perigo got around to aping Rand in her twenties, all he has to do is write his own Atlas Shrugged.

I don't think we should hold our breaths, though. We should just recognize that aping Rand makes him profound and fall oogle-eyed at his feet for such breathtaking insight. After all, it takes time, hard work and talent to write a masterpiece. Why do that when you can ape now without effort?

Damn this world that doesn't recognize second-hand greatness!

And damn this world that wants to punish vicious monsters for their crimes. Maybe... just maybe... people belittle the achievements of monsters because people are spitting on their lives just like the monsters spit on the lives of the people they killed and maimed. An eye for and eye kind of sentiment...

Nah...

That would come from a good part within them. One seeking justice. You can't expect that. Man was born with original sin. People are innately evil unless instructed by Objectivism and guru wannabes. The world is perishing from an orgy of ignoring boneheaded guru wannabes hatred of the good for being the good. That must be it...

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Obviously, these posts are a digression from the topic. They need a new thread: "Why Nobody Takes Perigo Seriously Anymore."

Rand's comments on Hickman were an immature mind groping privately for an artistic and philosophical sensibility. Perigo can't claim that port from his silly storm. The parallels, though, are exact, except she grew up, he grew down. She never, however, completely outgrew her denatured superman: John Galt, who did not argue or contend, just proclaimed and declaimed. By rendering (the possibility of both) good and bad out of a human being--the heroes are all good, even Hank and Dagny not yet in paradise out of ignorance--she bifucated humanity into good and bad (looters and non-looters) and essentially discarded free will except perhaps as the seminal defining choice in character formation which then becomes the objectively true original sin of Objectivism: the giving up of free will. The only two exceptions in AS I can think of off-hand, are Cheryl Taggart and the Wet Nurse. They were both destroyed consequently. That's why the heroes don't sit around having philosophical discussions and the world gets Galt's speech when it's too late to do the world any good (it wouldn't have done any good anyway). That speech was for the real world where it might do some good, but it's just declamation flooding over hoi polloi drowning all not on the high moral island of rationality: those who see and recognize the truth and act accordingly: move to New York (really or metaphorically) and study (commune with) Objectivism at the Nathaniel Branden Institute and posture as (saved) Randian heroes.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

I have to agree with Pigero on this issue. I can identify with his loving feelings for Veitch, since I've always had a similar crush on Charles Manson.

Like Veitch (and William Hickman), Manson is hated more for his greatness than for his "crimes." The horrid mob of average nobodies resents a giant like Manson because he has charisma that they lack. Think about it: Manson's personality was so powerful that he inspired people to commit murder! The filthy masses of blandly ordinary sheep despise him not because of the murders, but because of the strength, certainty and glamour that he exuded -- because he dared to live by his own vision, and was unashamed of his personal magnetism and ability to command his inferiors. The murders actually mean nothing to the disgusting, sweating herd, who daily commit crimes much, much worse than murder -- the crime of being average, for example, or of listening to singers other than Mario Lanza.

God bless Veitch, Hickman and Manson is all I can say, and a big "hurrah!" to the Objectivists who are heroic enough to see what really motivates the scum of the earth who resent their betters. And to hell with everyone else and their phony concern for the "victims" of these heroic giants.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

Rand's comments on Hickman were an immature mind groping privately for an artistic and philosophical sensibility. [....] She never, however, completely outgrew her denatured superman: [...].

I copied to save your post #845, Brant. It's a good thumbnail sketch.

However, you left out her most direct and full artistic transmogrification of what she saw in the Hickman case: The Fountainhead, complete with Roark's crime and his manner at the subsequent trial.

Ellen

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[Ellen Stuttle]

Apropos, a quote about 2nd handers from FTNI (question: is that right, or does he mean the lexicon?) copied in a SOLO post:

[Here]

Notice how they'll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once .... There's a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals, They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them—because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man....

Ellen

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[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The independent man kills them—because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know.

Ellen,

This is a dangerous statement within the environment of Siberia Passion. I have no doubt it will be used to justify bigotry and violence.

This passage comes from The Fountainhead, p. 606. Roark is talking to Wynand on their boat cruise together. This is not one of Rand's clearer statements, but if you read the wider context, it is clear that she was talking about the perspective of the second-handers, not about the actions of the independent man. In other words, she is talking about the feelings of second-handers on observing an independent man, not about what an independent man should do to them. A clearer rendition would be something like the following:

"The independent man kills them [their souls scream to them]—because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know."

As an aside, one of the problems I have always had with Rand's heroes and villains (even when I was a Randroid) was the aspect of predestination dressed up as volition. Some people in her fiction were born to be villains and other were born to be heroes and others were born to be human cattle. Volition enters later and can cause inner conflicts if a person fights his predestination, but it does not affect what a person was born to be.

This is demonstrated by the conclusion of the sequence of the above passage (The Fountainhead, pp. 607-608, Wynand speaks first):

"I'm glad you admit that you have friends."

"I even admit that I love them. But I couldn't love them if they were my chief reason for living. Do you notice that Peter Keating hasn't a single friend left? Do you see why? If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others."

"To hell with Peter Keating. I'm thinking of you—and your friends."

Roark smiled. "Gail, if this boat were sinking, I'd give my life to save you. Not because it's any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn't and wouldn't live for you."

"Howard, what were the reasons and standards?"

Roark looked at him and realized that he had said all the things he had tried not to say to Wynand. He answered: "That you weren't born to be a second-hander."

Wynand smiled. He heard the sentence—and nothing else. Afterward, when Wynand had gone below to his cabin, Roark remained alone on deck. He stood at the rail, staring out at the ocean, at nothing.

He thought: I haven't mentioned to him the worst second-hander of all—the man who goes after power.

Roark loved Wynand because of what he should be, not what he chose to be and what he did in life.

That's a hell of an is-ought thing to chew on for ya'.

Call it sense of life?

btw - I remember the following feeling from my Randroid days. It's a heady feeling knowing you were born to be one of the heroes, one of the chosen few. You didn't have to do anything to be better than everyone else. All you had to do was be. It's what I imagine people feel when they think they were born as chosen by God to be or do something that is superior to the rest of mankind.

There's great comfort in that feeling. You get quite an ego rush all the time, even from the most mundane occurrences. But boy, is there an unfillable hole underneath it that just gnaws at you in the dark moments.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

The independent man kills them—because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know.

[...] she is talking about the feelings of second-handers on observing an independent man, not about what an independent man should do to them.

Yes, of course. She means "kills" there, as you indicated, in the sense that the 2nd hander feels non-existent in the psyche of the 1st hander.

As an aside, one of the problems I have always had with Rand's heroes and villains (even when I was a Randroid) was the aspect of predestination dressed up as volition.

That was something which was talked about a lot, especially by one person I knew in the old days, a person who was very troubled by it. It seemed to him, he said, that her characters were born with a good soul or a bad soul. That "aspect of predestination" is strong in The Fountainhead but not absent in Atlas.

Ellen

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