Greybird

I would like to recommend, in light of this, the fiction works of my friend of over a decade, Donald Harington, who's quoted in the epigraph in my .sig below. If you would like to know more about what I have long seen as his adept, vigorous "word music," you're invited to take a look at this article about Harington which I wrote for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1996. From all of Barbara's allusions to Wolfe, I'd say that Harington shares many of the same sensibilities. Not so much in style — he's far more plot-driven — but in what I'd call a Southern perceptiveness, of burrowing into the emotional undercurrent of events, searching for resonance. The novel quoted below, Some Other Place, the Right Place, uses deliberate shifts in style and presentation to find the emotional truths underlying the protagonists' country-crossing search for the heart of a "ghost story." I might have rejected its suggestions of Other Realms if I hadn't run across Nathaniel Branden's suggestion (see his "Full Context" interview) that "mysticism" is deserving of rational exploration, as an expression of portions of the human psyche, and as being distinct from "irrationalism." I didn't reject it, as I would have when under Rand's stronger spell 15 years earlier, and I was amply rewarded. If you'd like to try a more straightforward narrative, one that is shaped by both subtle matters of allusion to "shades of green" and by a plot involving a man wrongly convicted of rape, I would recommend what I see as Harington's strongest writing, The Choiring of the Trees. * * * I originally found this quote by Barbara Branden and replied to it deep within a thread that's nominally about Wagner, and decided it ought to be "unburied" by posting it here instead. ~ SR

[MildExasperation] Is a member allowed a lack-of-caffeination lapse here? [/MildExasperation] Yes, I inverted the chronology. I don't really think that's particularly significant. What I clearly failed to get across until my last response (if then) was that the esthetic ideas were in her head, or so she maintained, even if the Brandens hadn't helped set up her forum yet for putting them in published form. I'm not inclined to use "malice aforethought," in the legal sense, in regard to Rand. She had no conscious malice that I could see, at second hand, from Barbara's and others' accounts. Yet that self-criticism session came damn close to exhibiting malice. The "aforethought" comes from Rand having had to know for decades, long before "The Objectivist Newsletter," that such moralizing was misplaced and mistaken.

He's been that acerbic-to-vicious for at least a dozen years, in h.p.o and elsewhere. It's no "newly found perspective." Many ARIans just don't bother talking about the Brandens very often, period. Not every forum indulges in routine personal sniping, as SOLO and progeny do. In any event, is this particularly germane to the fact of his domain name having expired? I would still suggest that the links to his root page on OL be replaced by the Wayback Machine link, until the site returns (if ever), so that others here could benefit from his relatively non-partisan Web efforts.

I'll heartily recommend an intelligent romantic comedy/drama that I and about six other people in North America actually saw in the theaters, 'Til There Was You. You can buy the VHS tape for 1 cent and upwards at Amazon.com. It's worth the shipping, folks, and if you don't see the subtle storytelling successes I did, what have you lost? Here is my Amazon review. ~ SR ***** Delightful and subtle, O. Henry twists, vastly underrated November 21, 2001 Stories intertwine through our lives, around life events, past our passions, and a few stories themselves remind us of this. "'Til There Was You" makes this self-conscious storytelling into a delightful journey. Two journeys, in fact, because it takes the title literally. Two fascinating people (writer Jeanne Tripplehorn, architect Dylan McDermott) are shown growing up and constantly seeking passion and connection in their lives, but finding no way to hold on to either. When a bit of serendipity comes along, they both are transformed: An historic and almost otherworldly Los Angeles apartment house shows magic and belonging to her, substance and commitment to him. The ironies lie in her defending it in anonymous letters, his falling in love with the letters while designing the building's replacement, the building being owned by his lover, whose book is being ghostwritten by ... but you may get the idea. The writer and the architect are woven together by ties and resonances they cannot imagine, and yet they've never even (formally) met. It's a rich, intricate, hilarious, and wry screenplay, written by a principal writer of "thirtysomething" and writer/creator of "My So-Called Life." The acting is touching and passionate, especially when one realizes that it's two connecting love stories -- about learning to love and respect yourself, before you can find the serendipities of life. This isn't a conventional romantic comedy or drama. The couple isn't what is important here. The individuals are. In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand wrote: "To say 'I love you,' one must know first how to say the 'I.'" These characters don't know, at first, but they're open to life, and they find out, playing with and against friends, neighbors, and lovers. Their journey is what will enthrall you. The ending almost doesn't matter. Buy this and give it your full attention. You will be rewarded!

I'm of course in synch with the emotional thrust of the question. But I think it's worth pointing out that the question is anachronistic — "Art and Sense of Life" wasn't penned until years after Ayn had first trashed Barbara's love of Thomas Wolfe.C'mon, you know what I meant. Remember this bit from "About the Author," in Atlas, which you were kind enough to type in yesterday? If Rand really had her "fundamentals" thus in hand, I'd think she would have realized by the early Fifties that moralizing about one's reaction to "a philosophical composite," as she later referred to art, was problematic, to say the least. When it involved a young woman who adored her achievements and who had a consistently serious, perceptive approach to reality, it also was unjust. I'm inclined to think not only that Rand knew better, but that she knew that she knew better. Certainly in regard to dealing with others' appraisals of art. She'd been a working writer for a quarter-century. She'd had a great deal of experience and heartache in trying to apply her (perhaps implicit) esthetics in the real world, against critics, publishers, and producers who dealt in nonessentials. She'd published three novels and had more than one play go into production by the time she trashed Barbara's literary and other passions. She knew that sense of life and explicit philosophy were separate, and highly separable, elements, and that most people couldn't untangle the two, and were mystified at what art aroused in them and why. She'd read and loved the work of that ol' altruist Hugo for nearly a half-century by then, and knew how that didn't mesh with her explicit philosophy. If those weren't enough clues, she didn't show half the perceptiveness that Barbara and Nathaniel give her credit for possessing. In any event, thanks for the quotes that touched on these and other elements of such an attitude on Rand's part. I wouldn't have had a tenth the fortitude Barbara had to stick around and benefit from the far more productive portions of her mentor's personality and outlook. Reading about the downside, Rand's furious impulse toward encouraging repression — and the session of "self-criticism," picked up from the collectivists she despised, and imposed on her closest female friend — got me furious all over again. (You shouldn't have had to actually type all that, I'd have to say. Shall we try pulling together a Neo-Objectivist Reference CD-ROM? {rueful smile})

The site's main page is available here, in its last revision of 7 February 2006, at the Wayback Machine. Links here will go to other archived pages. Text from the site is still present in Google's cache, as well. I would like to second Michael Brown's concerns. This useful site is listed many times at OL, especially in the Lists of Links, and unless there's reliable word of its imminent return elsewhere, such links do need to be revised. At least to use the main-page version linked above. It may be that Richard Lawrence's domain registration simply expired, and he may not have had the money to renew it or his hosting contract. He's no longer listed as the domain owner at Whois. Lawrence is an old "sparring partner" of mine, but he had been scrupulous in documenting every faction and prominent Objectivist, not just the ones (ARI, et al.) with whom he agreed. And I have to respect that. He's too ... I'll be less snarky and say "persistent" ... to leave this site off line for very long, if he has the money and attention to devote to it.

Thank you for all of those warm welcomes thus far! Chris ... If you've been to very many Libertarian Party national conventions — as I have since 1981, and as other postings here have suggested for you — we've very likely been in some of the same rooms, at least. Kori ... Friends can do intriguing things with Photoshop, eh? If you aid and abet them with scans {grin} ... The fandoms article will probably come first, as another one just went sour on me. Passions shared about one work or creator don't always translate to such sharing in other areas. I've seen more forums "for Ayn Rand fans" blow up than I have for "Objectivists," though. Passions coming from principles have more staying power. Ross ... I'm glad you're enduring the Thai heat, and you'll have a longer personal response soon. Victor ... Ross refers to many movie posts that I made to the late, great, Jimbo-and-Kirez-gutted Atlantis mailing list. I have a piece about 50 favorite films, and why, that I posted there, and intend to revise and re-post here very soon. Stephen ... Like I said about Photoshop above! The ones you admired are by James Porto. ... Are you still publishing "Objectivity"? Rodney ... You and others might find my thread about Donald Harington, with links to an article I wrote about him and to some suggested novels, of some interest. * * * And now, a long-ago-posted .sig noting just how polarizing I can be, dredged from my Atlantis-list files during searches yesterday, and causing me to ROTFL at the memory of it. Two people I'd find, well, interesting to meet in person someday: "Despite his facility with words, despite his quoting of history's writers, when he is amongst friends Steve Reed openly reveals the kind of human being he is — a slimy one." ~ Stephen Speicher, in humanities.philosophy.objectivism, 17 April 2000 "If Steve Reed slurs Petey Schwartz, more goddamned power to him." ~ Chris Cathcart, same venue and date

And, finally, as to Wagner: I haven't had the emotional stamina to take in his work for more than a few dozen minutes at a time. I'd be hopelessly swamped by esthetically digesting any full installment of the "Ring" cycle. Yet they're going to have to pry my recordings of many of his shorter works from my cold, dead hands. Especially that of the prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg as performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under Daniel Barenboim, live outdoors in the Berlin Waldbuehne in 1990. With thousands cheering, in the wake of the fallen Wall, for the liberation of their city. The concert disc begins with Wagner, and ends with the audience singing (and whistling) to the lively and beloved "Berliner Luft." This moving and delightful experience is selling for as little as 58 cents right now at Amazon.

I originally had here a quote from a post by Barbara Branden in this thread, and a reply discussing the author Donald Harington and his fiction, but I've moved them here to begin a new thread instead. ~ SR

Yes, he said, yes, I will, yes. (To quote James Joyce. {grin}) Rand caused pain. We all do, but it takes a great deal of courage to admit that one does. That esthetic meat-grinder was one area where she most definitely fell short. I was thrilled by many details brought forward in The Passion of Ayn Rand, disappointed by others, but I recall that Ayn's trashing of Barbara's love of Thomas Wolfe was almost the only moment where I was purple with rage. How dare she! I thought. To go against the value of someone's strongest passions, even if they weren't directed toward what one "ought" to value. Didn't Rand read her own "Art and Sense of Life," I thought? I say this from my not being a particular fan of stream-of-emotional-consciousness writing, and if Barbara's quotations are fair excerpts, I wouldn't be able to stick with Wolfe's efforts for long. Yet whether I could enjoy Wolfe or not is really beside the point. Barbara's passions deserved respect, dammit. The working of a conceptual consciousness that had demonstrated its consistent acknowledgment of the facts always deserves such respect. Her emotional response was, and is, one of those facts. With hindsight, I now know why the scene-setting opening passage of Barbara's biographical essay in Who Is Ayn Rand? seemed so different in style from the rest of it. It was the Wolf(e) in her trying to escape. (And, by the way, that essay was admiration, however overemphatic. Paxton's film, THAT is hagiography.)

If the former uses any of the material that Milgram presented at the C-SPAN American Writers event in Hollywood, in Spring 2002, the book would be worth purchasing for that alone. I heard her detailed, often witty, astonishing dissection of the book's structure, and was absorbed in it. Her students are, methinks, fortunate to have someone who deals with abstractions so well. Milgram is definitely not behaving as if she is part of the knot of Court Intellectuals surrounding Peikoff's throne room. Neither, for that matter, is Eric Daniels, the professor at Clemson who provided almost the only historical context that day about The Fountainhead. (He even mentioned Isabel Paterson and Albert Jay Nock. My mouth fell open in delighted shock at that.) Andrew Bernstein, though ... weeeeellll, that's another story ... and some day soon I'll re-post my reactions at the time to his performance on that (free-admission) occasion.

Thanks for posting it! You're a witty and adept caricaturist. John's head made me laugh out loud, and he got da funk. Yoko might not have quite that skin color, but it still works. Their getup evokes the time of the famous Bed-In of ... was it Toronto? Montreal? I've seen a couple other works of yours on this site, since joining late last week, but they weren't of people I know, so they didn't register as much. I'll have to take a broader look. Do you have a Web gallery? If not, you might consider joining me over at deviantART (it's free).

I posted the following commentary on the "Reviews" sub-list of the WeTheLiving mailing lists, back on 6 June 1999. I saw the cable-movie version of The Passion of Ayn Rand as being far more interesting, and showing more of the benefits of quality moviemaking skills, than many reviewers had been willing to admit. The title pretty much sums it up. ~ SR Flawed biography, or hagiography? I know what I prefer It's both sad and outrageous to see how freely some have chosen to dump on the Brandens (particularly Barbara as biographer), Rand, and the entire scenario of their personal lives, as dramatized in the Showtime movie. Barbara is sharing genuine insights with us, and it's the height of boorishness to publicly ridicule her as a reward for doing so. Joshua [Zader], if you think doing so is bad manners without your having seen the film as yet, just wait until you do see it. Shall we remember the limitations of film and TV as dramatic media? Look closely at the end of the "Passion" movie, for the disclaimer that some persons and dialogue had been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Was it the best possible esthetic choice, at every turn, to make such condensations of personae and rearrangements of events? Perhaps not. But when the choice is between judiciously doing so and not doing so at all -- a ten-hour miniseries not being an option -- it becomes easier. The fictionalizing disclaimer, actually, belonged with greater worth on the Paxton film from last year. "A Sense of Life" was worshipful, not objective, and in no legitimate sense a biography. What is more outrageous: putting the great love of Rand's life at center stage for 100 minutes, or pretending it almost didn't exist by marginalizing it into less than 3 minutes? The "Passion" film is not perfect. It ends up inhabiting a region somewhere between genuine art and objective biography. Yet it communicated all of the essentials of the relationships involved. Helen Mirren [as Ayn] was subtle and persuasive (and even, if you take seriously the Brandens' accounts of the final abusive climax, too restrained). Peter Fonda [as Frank] showed a man beset with upholding his inner worth and dignity in an abusive situation. Julie Delpy [as Barbara] portrayed a perceptive woman who couldn't understand what was wrecking her emotional life. Eric Stoltz [as Nathaniel] was a bit too callow to show Branden's personal charm, but did show intelligence and emotional ambiguity. I might have liked something more detailed. Yet at this remove, 30 years after a personal drama with a huge "cast," the condensations that were made to show participants such as Patrecia Scott and Robert Berole are not unreasonable. The greatest difficulty I had with the film, partly remedied by watching it once again on my tape, was with a kind of "mental stereo." Part of my awareness was focused on the acting and settings, but another part recalled the chronology of the actual years of the Brandens' romancing the mind and heart of Rand, as described in both of their books. That made it difficult to appreciate the dramatic art involved on first viewing. Fonda and Delpy, especially, came off to much better effect when I could see their work again. (I had only one moment where this stereo effect took me entirely out of the film. In the wedding reception scene, I remembered, from her review of "2001": "Hey, wait a minute, Rand detested the 'Blue Danube' waltz!") Whether this tinkering with timelines is wholly effective or not, I would second those who say that in the film's progression, "Caroline" is not shown as Nathaniel's patient. The contrast is made richer by how the character is positioned -- not as rich as it could be, for Stoltz doesn't respond to her with the needed emotional depth, but it's still rewarding. Some of the dramatic turns show off Rand to better advantage than she had been during her life. In lecture question periods, she took questions in written form, not from freely offered "discussion," as was shown here. The quickness of her mind came across more clearly this way. The TV interview showed a similar depth and agility, with enough uninterrupted screen time to get many points of Rand's philosophy across quite clearly to the viewer. Barbara's remarks about the tenacious dedication of the producers and creators are well taken and sorely needed. One of my closest friends [Donald Harington, for the book quoted in the signature below] has been through the Hollywood mills in trying to bring one of his own novels to the screen. It can be a soul-flattening experience. That so much ended up being shown so clearly about Rand and her inner life is what commends this biography -- not the self-absorbed talking-head festival from last year -- to your attention.

I posted this review of My Years with Ayn Rand eight years ago on the Amazon.com Website, and in one of their database glitches, my name was detached from it. Some recent digging into my e-mail archives reminded me of it, as Ellen Stuttle and others wrote to say they liked it. I thought it'd be worth posting here. ~ SR ***** Already a compelling memoir, made better and more pertinent April 9, 1999 Nathaniel Branden has reworked his memoir of his 20 years of romancing the mind of Ayn Rand -- before, during, and after he knew her on a daily and intimate basis -- into a more focused narrative with this second edition. He took the subtitle of the previous edition, made it the title of this one, and jettisoned his use of a famous Rand quote as an epigraph. ("Judge, and be prepared to be judged.") All were wise decisions, because this book is really not about Rand's judgments. They would have been difficult to get past -- especially her final sweeping, damaging, slanderous ones about Branden. But to focus too directly upon them ignores the story line, and it's one of a love story that reads like a novel. Branden fell in love as a teenager with the intellect that shone from "The Fountainhead." And by virtue of his own formidable intellect, along with an uncanny fit into the life of a writer who was missing a genuine challenge and grist in her friendships, he came to love the woman as well. He couldn't handle so many varieties of love at once, and their being present in one skein of interactions that ranged from metaphysics to physical admiration in bed. Such lucid and candid self-admission is what I doubt has been seen this clearly since the extraordinary life of Benvenuto Cellini, in his own famed Renaissance autobiography. For either edition, I couldn't fathom those who see "self-aggrandizement" running rampant on Branden's part. He doesn't minimize his intellect or achievements in publicizing and even, in part, integrating Rand's philosophic work. Nor should he, with the memory hole that Leonard Peikoff and others have erected regarding his role. (I would have been far more bitter than Branden is about such immature revisionist efforts.) If anything, Branden is much too hard on himself, considering the detachment from reality that Rand was capable of creating in her worst moments. He bends over backwards to insist on limning many of her best moments. In how he respects and compactly describes Rand's achievements, he shows that in one sense, his "years with Rand" never really ended. They still live in his mind and heart. What had been added to them, after 1968, were the years of Nathaniel Branden, a person and innovator in psychology that he had suppressed. Branden is, indeed, much less sharp with some of his former associates and "Collective" members than he had been 10 years ago. One exception to Branden's rounder edges, and well aimed in light of 10 years of public absurdity, is with Peikoff. Branden doesn't hesitate to point out the roots of the mess Peikoff has made with the role of Objectivist thought in the wider culture. His own 1950s warnings to Peikoff, his ex-wife's cousin, are even more timely to re-read in light of the many sycophants that Peikoff has gathered to his side. Unlike Branden, Peikoff apparently has never tried to re-own his self. Another decade has also improved Branden's appraisal of and regard for his ex-wife Barbara, and rightly so. They were not on the best of terms in the mid-to-late '80s, partly from the contrast between their biography/memoir efforts, and that obscured some genuine mutual respect. The one lengthy addition to this new version, that of his current (third) wife Devers' encounter with Rand, is superbly revelatory of several strains of Rand's personality that Branden depicts throughout his memoir. It makes the tragedy of Rand and Branden more poignant, in showing what emotions and inner conflicts Rand could never quite give up upon in her own life ... even when this could have helped make her whole. Nathaniel Branden won't say so, here or anywhere, even obliquely, but he was the love of Rand's life, and he remains the prime shaper of all of her public role beyond that of novelist. That makes his story compelling. I have one mild complaint and one subtle plaudit about this edition. I had hoped for some more detail about Branden's relationship with his third great love and second wife, Patrecia. He may have held back on adding more detail out of wanting to include the episode with Ayn and Devers, and that was probably the better choice for his narrative and for his slice of intellectual history. Branden did, though, do better this time with his use of photographs. These end up being more evocative than those in the first edition (though slightly fewer), largely from their being placed at timely points in the body of the book, rather than being a single section in the middle. I was glad that the fascinating Patrecia did, at least, get an additional and striking photo, along with her husband, on an Aspen mountaintop. And, also, that two different photos of Rand, with their handwritten inscriptions to Branden, were newly included. Nice defense against the memory hole ... take that, Lenny. When I spoke briefly to Branden 10 years ago after a talk he gave about his memoir, I said that the story he told called for a happy ending in the best and most innocent storytelling sense, and that I saw it in how he described life with Devers -- and in the photo of her arms around his neck, the last in the book. You'll understand why I found text and photo so compelling if you try the whole of this intelligent and passionate memoir.

Michael's truly useful and detailed recap included, reporting from the Wayback Machine site: 2.05. Letters from Supporters This document is entitled “Selected Letters from OLDFOP Supporters” and none of the letters are dated. Several short letters to Barbara offering support and expressing indignation are presented from Jim Peron, Paul M. Eisen, Joan Mitchell Blumenthal, Moira Russell, Wendy McElroy and Carol B. Low. One such letter to Robert Hessen from Steve Reed is given. That last was, indeed, from me, on 3 October 1998. Robert and Barbara had fortitude in spades, and I was delighted to see them working to bring such a defeat to His Unholiness. A last-minute one, as it turned out! Nobody on Peikoff's legal team could inform him of the difference between physical manuscripts and the copyright on the words therein, it seems. Either that, or he felt that sheer intimidation could get him what he wanted anyway. Neither possibility speaks well for his "real world" judgment ... as if any more signs of such a deficiency were needed, then or now.

They're in at least a few private archives, as well. I have a set of them on tape. They were copied for me by an NBI attendee who taped them himself from the radio station in 1962. They're fascinating and have genuine spontaneity. I've only listened to a couple of them in full, but the rest are sitting ready for future car trips.

A useful compendium, which I'd long wanted to find! The other half of this particular instance of airbrushing, o'course, happened at the back of the book, under "About the Author." This originally concluded, before her "proof that they do" peroration, with a paragraph about Frank, followed by one of fulsome praise of her "ideal reader," which ended: "He is my intellectual heir. His name is Nathaniel Branden." I'd have quoted that whole excised Branden graf, but I no longer own a Tenth Printing, 1958 copy of the hardcover edition. It was damaged, when I bought it used, and I sold it in a periodic thinning of my library. I have a better brand-new copy, still with the original striking jacket design ... one so stylized that I'm always struck anew on picking it up that Rand would have approved it. (And I'd never buy an edition infested with Peikoff's prattling, pretentious Foreword. Besides, wouldn't you agree that it can be more efficient to send electronic editions *a-HEM!* to friends?) :shifty:

I was five when the Beatles invaded, but nonetheless enjoyed their music all during growing up. It didn't get stitched into me, though, until adolescence, which came well after they broke up. I couldn't recall a musical world where they didn't exist, so the epochal changes they brought about never registered quite as much with me emotionally as they would with many of you. Of special personal resonance: "She's Leaving Home," "I Saw Her Standing There," "All You Need Is Love," and most of all, "The Long and Winding Road" ... yes, I know the purists never liked the orchestral arrangement, but I was held captive by it. That song alone got me past losing my first love. In the years since, the boys' fave bits for me have been "It Don't Come Easy" (Ringo), "Live and Let Die" (Paul, with a frisson from its being for a Bond movie), "My Sweet Lord" (George), and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" (John). They were musicians, not just a pop-culture sensation. Ross, I'm truly curious: Didn't you ever run across a mention, at least, of McCartney's next band (Wings) in the intervening years, and wonder why he wasn't working on another Beatles album instead? I'd have thought the cultural shock over Lennon's murder in 1980 would also have jogged things loose, with the constant mentions of his being the "former Beatle." It certainly shook me up. I remember with stark clarity how shocked my entire residential college was that night, gathered around the big TV in the downstairs living room. It seemed more important, and more senseless, than the mishigass going on with Carter and Iran. Who on earth would hate John Lennon that much? How was it possible? I'm still wondering, and the killer's madness will never quite explain it.

Turner Classic Movies shows "The Fountainhead" at least three or four times a year. It did so most recently this past month in a "31 Days of Oscar" tribute to Gary Cooper. I almost never miss it, and I've got two copies of the film on tape! (And will soon buy the long-overdue DVD.) A newly produced "What a Character" interstitial piece on Cooper's career, one of many running between TCM features, relies heavily on shots of Cooper from this film. One of them is of his sketching the bastardized version of Wynand's house, in order to show that he couldn't be bought by the newspaper mogul. This piece noted that Cooper initially sought work in Hollywood as an illustrator, and that was news to me. No camera tricks, as I'd long thought ... he must have been actually sketching that atrocity! Last Fall, the "Essentials" series co-host probably was Molly Haskell, a self-consciously feminist film critic who wrote From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies. I recall her being impressed by Patricia Neal. That Haskell got past a usually quite cynical attitude to be, yes, notably moved is a tribute to the film's power. She's married to Andrew Sarris, creator of the "auteur" critical theory of director-shaped film productions, and someone who's long been dubious about the value of a less flamboyant craftsman such as King Vidor. That had to have made it more difficult, methinks, for her to show that this moved her. I first saw this movie in 1976, age 17, on an ancient ('52) 18-inch black-and-white set that seemed, somehow, to fit it better than the color sets I've seen it on since. My dad urged us to watch it. He'd always admired Gary Cooper's work, with his own favorite being "Sergeant York." I'd found the piety and manipulation of that undeniably well-told story off-putting, and almost resisted Dad's suggestion. I'm glad I didn't. We turned on the local PBS station (!) and I was enthralled. Especially by the courtroom speech, which was vastly different in ideas and rhetoric from the statist credo I'd had shoved at me in government schooling. The stark imagery and Max Steiner's soaring score were also compelling. This was my introduction to the work of Ayn Rand. A few weeks later, I looked up the full courtroom speech in the high school's copy of the book, since my mother had wanted to read it in full. I photocopied it, but didn't get enticed to read the whole book until the following Summer, my last before college. Well, then the hooks were in my mental hide! And all these years later, I still think that this is the best way to encounter what still is Rand's best work of fiction -- solely as fiction, not as a hybrid with deliberate philosophic writing. Movie first, to get the essence of the story, and only then the far broader planes of the book. This reversal of the usual path is nearly unique in my experience. Few movies ever match up to the mental vistas of their books. I wouldn't say that the film's storyline, far more condensed, is "better" than the book's, but it fits the film medium far better. Most of all, it's more direct. You get a host of characters, especially Toohey and Wynand, brought out in detail by visual and aural cues. These two received lengthy flashbacks in the book, into their youth and career paths, which couldn't be easily portrayed on screen. Their psychologies were telegraphed, though, quite well by Robert Douglas and Raymond Massey, respectively. Gestures of flamboyance and drive were shown in walks, mannerisms, props (especially cigarette smoke), and intonations. Even apart from the plot and Rand's dialogue, the vigor of the story comes out in an ineffable sense of being "driven" that was unique to Warner Bros. among the major studios. Their scrappy gangster pictures and saucy slices of strong Americans fit the thrust of Roark's persistence in the face of adversity. I can't imagine that the overbaroque production values of, say, MGM would have allowed for such tart thrusts of acting and visual design. (That studio's committee-driven production line would have gutted the content, as well.) I'm struck on every re-viewing about how easily one can be absorbed in the story on its own terms. It highlighted the plotting. Rand's book brought out a far more detailed tapestry of motivations and conflicts, alongside -- and over and under and behind -- the plotting. Having been captivated by the book, I thought that re-viewings of the movie would feel flat by comparison, by not having this degree of detail. For me, at least, they haven't done so at all. And I'll second the suggestion to see this film, for once, with the sound turned down. At least the powerful compositions in the last ten minutes, from Wynand rising with Roark in the courtroom onward. Especially notable here is the silhouette of Wynand and Roark against the buildings of New York, as Roark leaves Wynand's office for the last time. Both men are meant to measure up against the skyscrapers, literally and figuratively, very closely fitting how Rand saw the characters.

I'm giving some of those YouTube videos a try. All I've seen or heard of Blue Rodeo, which I did like, was their movie appearance in the underrated comedy-drama "Postcards from the Edge." They backed Meryl Streep -- yes, I found it hard to believe, but she showed energy and panache! -- on "I'm Checkin' Out (of This Heartbreak Hotel)." That merits a re-visit.

Hello, OLers ... It's a pleasure to find a place of such civility and benevolence, and I've spent a few days reading what I've found to be a wealth of clear thinking. I'd say one way to plunge into such an Objectivist forum is to find a unique way to encapsulate my feelings about, well, Objectivist forums, at least thus far. So here are a few words of especially prized country-music wisdom from the late, great Eddie Rabbitt. I've always been the kind of man Who doesn't believe in strings Long-term obligations are just Unnecessary things But girl, ya got me thinkin' While I'm drinkin' one more beer If I'm headed for a heartache Then why the hell am I still here? That was from "Every Which Way But Loose," the title song for the movie of the same name, which coincidentally was released about the time I decided I was an Objectivist, in 1978. Yes, in this setting, the girl is indeed one Alissa Rosenbaum. The unafraid child who delighted in existence while climbing those rocks in Switzerland, in a vivid image for me from Barbara Branden's superb biography. She had a compelling joy behind her achievements, one that came through to me. Especially when I saw the movie of "The Fountainhead" on our black-and-white set in 1976, at my dad's recommendation. And then looked up the courtroom speech of Roark in the high-school library, at my mother's request, a few weeks later. And then took in the whole Rand corpus as I went off to college. A joyous feeling that would have had even more prominence had it not been, ultimately, buried or obscured by her disappointments, by the limitations of intellectual movements ... and by the effects of the detritus, bile, and bitterness of, now, nearly forty frigging years of infighting. Some of it heroic and necessary, such as that of David Kelley, the needed Martin Luther. (After the Brandens, Paul and Pauline of Tarsus. And you all know who the Pope is. Yes, the analogies are religious, but appropriate.) But all of it wearying. In thirty years I've been a part of or lurked around a lot of Objectivist(ish) venues, all of them in search of good discussion: a campus club I co-founded at Northwestern; injections of sanity into same as an alumnus; Peikoff's tapes of his first Objectivist course; editor and, later, publisher of Nomos magazine (R.I.P.); running CompuServe's "Individualism" board in the Issues Forum; AOL discussions; Usenet's a.p.o and, later, the cloistered h.p.o (and I voted "no"); Atlantis, until Jimbo pretty much wrecked it; Atlantis II, until Yahoo! Groups' limitations worked against it; and a recent gander at SOLO and its progeny until I ran screaming the other way. (On the parallel track of Libertarian activity: campus organizer in 1980 for Ed Clark, with his biggest speaking gig; Illinois state party chair; official and convention organizer in two other states; ballot-access PAC; member of the national Platform Committee; and, most recently, Internet aide for Los Angeles' stellar Karl Hess Club.) This venue resulting from Michael and Kat's efforts (whom I've not yet cyber-met, but look forward to doing so) seems, in its congenial nature and civil tone, to be among the best thus far. With many fine people I hope to reconnect with that I recognize, among them: ~ John Enright, provocative poet, from my Chicago Nomos days. I believe I once met Marsha, as well. ~ Jerry Biggers, met at the above Peikoff tapeplaying, who kindly loaned me his NBI record of Nathaniel's "The Concept of God" so that I could make a tape copy. ~ Stephen Boydstun, whose lecture on "Quantum Mechanics and the Objectivist Metaphysics" I still remember vividly after a quarter-century. ~ Ross Barlow, whose missives from Thailand and on every 2 August (more for you folks later about that) have been welcomed, even with my being too ill for a while to reply. ~ Chris Sciabarra, whom I met 25 years ago in New York and have had occasional, valued correspondence with since (and he's the Giordano Bruno, by the way). ~ Barbara Branden, with whom I had a well-valued correspondence through Atlantis for some time, until I took some damn-fool umbrage with her out of all proportion, which I genuinely regret. ~ Roger Bissell, the same. Though we did manage coffee at Disneyland! ~ Chris Cathcart, Wolf DeVoon, and other sane folk from h.p.o. ~ Ellen Stuttle, who gabbed on the phone with this fellow Wildcat to his sheer delight for nearly two hours. ~ Other fine people from Atlantis and A2: Brant Gaede, Christian Ross, George Smith, Mike Hardy. ~ Stellar thinkers like Nathaniel Branden and Tibor Machan, whom I've each met more than once. With more to come, I hope! "Greybird" is my usual nom de Net, and I'll keep it here, at least for now. (He's the younger brother of my favorite character in the underestimated Romantic realm of comic books.) My personal photo in my profile (I won't say how much of it is really me {wicked grin}) is wishful thinking. Art showing winged humans is my esthetic passion, for forty years now, with a Yahoo! Group for it, and a gallery of my favorites that would, I hope, take your breath away, if you care to look. My pages at Elfwood SF & Fantasy Art and deviantART show stabs at fiction and other whatnots. Many of them from my being in fandoms ... which I've given up on, as constricting my spirit. Thereby hangs a new article, soon to come. I make what living I can scrape together doing a host of things, all never with enough clients: individual Windows setup and training, fine typography, publication design. So, about enough personal history and cheerful egotism for one such post, eh? I look forward to meeting and talking with all of you, trying to find more net.succors of the spirit.