Did AR ever have any fun?

[Backlighting]

In everything I have ever read about or by Rand is there any mention about the need in one's life for fun and/ or relaxation. This is not to say I don't agree with the importance of one's work but rather question whether it is beneficial to an individual obsessed with it 24/7.

Did AR ever have any fun? If so, in what form was it manifested?

Happy Holidays to all! Have fun.

[syrakusos]

Ayn Rand was a fan of Prof. Iwrin Corey

Wikipedia bio here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Corey

His own website here: http://www.irwincorey.org/

Atlas Shrugged has funny lines, but I think that the Bible has more funny scenes.

[BaalChatzaf]

I assume her extra-marital doings had an element of fun. That is only a guess.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

She did "cavort" with her "tiddlywinks" music..., or, so we have testimonial support for that event...

[Xray]

Atlas Shrugged has funny lines, but I think that the Bible has more funny scenes.

I don't recall any funny lines in AS, but then my memory might fail me. Could you give some examples?

[merjet]

She enjoyed her "Tiddlywink" music, smoking, chocolates, reading Mickey Spillane, and some philosophy discussions. I bet she enjoyed writing a lot of times.

[caroljane]

She liked some TV - Charlies Angels and Rat Patrol anyway.

[Guyau]

Concerning the literature, go to Google Books. Bring up Atlas Shrugged. Search on fun. Search on enjoyment. Do the same for The Fountainhead.

I recall too, Rand has Roark, Mallory, Dominique, and Mike sit together after work in Mallory's shack.

They did not speak about their work. Mallory told outrageous stories and Dominuque laughed like a child. They talked of nothing in particular, sentences had meaning only in the sound of the voices, in the warm gaiety, in the ease of complete relaxation. They were simply four people who liked being there together. (357–58)

A friend of Rand's mentioned going on a boat tour around Manhattan with her. (I recommend it.) Rand collected stamps. I'd expect Rand's fun to have been drawn from among the usual suspects. Perhaps for some of us, doing things that are just for fun (other than in the exhaustion of the evening) is more infrequent than average. In her literature, of course, the events and characters are crafted to the themes she selected, for which I'd say occasions of fun should not, if not superfluous, be more than about what one finds in the google searches.

[9thdoctor]

What about her stuffed animals, Oswald and Oscar? I recall Christmas being depicted in her bio as being a fun thing. She was a cat lover, presumably that was fun. Everyone’s different, has fun in their own way, and Rand didn’t write like P.G. Wodehouse, who, for all the lightness of his work, was a very hard worker, just look at his output.

[Brant Gaede]

Did Ayn Rand ever have sex?

--Brant

[jts]

A search on [ Ayn Rand fun ] turned up this.

http://aynrandfunfacts.tumblr.com/

[syrakusos]

But we do not do this for Wittengstein or Rawls or Sarte. Did Sarte really drink espresso? Did Wittengstein ever offer a spontaneous pun? Was Rawls ever seen at a Yankees versus Red Sox game? Only Ayn Rand gets the ad hominem treatment from small minded cowards who cannot address her ideas. She was wrong about many things. So was Newton. So what? The consequential facts are those from which we can advance our knowledge. Anything less is balogna sausage.

[BaalChatzaf]

She was wrong about many things. So was Newton. So what? The consequential facts are those from which we can advance our knowledge. Anything less is balogna sausage.

When the facts contradict one's conclusions then one's premises are faulty. I recall that was a point repeated by a well know novelist with a thick Russian accent.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

She was brilliant... ain't no joke.

[caroljane]

She was brilliant... ain't no joke.

Thornton Wilder in The Eighth Day, about a family of geniuses, depicted them as lacking a sense of humour, which he said, was an impediment to the creative onrush of the superior mind. an unnecessary attribute. That may be true. i'm still glad that so many geniuses have had the gift of laughter however, I think it made their lives easier.

[Brant Gaede]

She was brilliant... ain't no joke.

Thornton Wilder in The Eighth Day, about a family of geniuses, depicted them as lacking a sense of humour, which he said, was an impediment to the creative onrush of the superior mind. an unnecessary attribute. That may be true. i'm still glad that so many geniuses have had the gift of laughter however, I think it made their lives easier.

I know.

--Brant

[Xray]

i'm still glad that so many geniuses have had the gift of laughter however, I think it made their lives easier.

I know.

--Brant

Does the above answer mean that you speak from your personal experience as a genius then, Brant?

Glad to see you posting OL again. I've always liked your special sense of humor, which manifests itself e. g. in the short, witty comments you often put under your name at the end of your posts.

[syrakusos]

She was brilliant... ain't no joke.

Thornton Wilder in The Eighth Day, about a family of geniuses, depicted them as lacking a sense of humour, which he said, was an impediment to the creative onrush of the superior mind. an unnecessary attribute. That may be true. i'm still glad that so many geniuses have had the gift of laughter however, I think it made their lives easier.

Why, then, do we laugh with delight when we have a bright idea or a clever insight?

The Act of Creation is a 1964 book by Arthur Koestler. It is a study of the processes of discovery, invention, imagination and creativity in humor, science, and the arts. It lays out Koestler's attempt to develop an elaborate general theory of human creativity.

From describing and comparing many different examples of invention and discovery, Koestler concludes that they all share a common pattern which he terms "bisociation" - a blending of elements drawn from of two previously unrelated matrices of thought into a new matrix of meaning by way of a process involving comparison, abstraction and categorization, analogies and metaphors. He regards many different mental phenomena based on comparison (such as analogies, metaphors, parables, allegories, jokes, identification, role-playing, acting, personification, anthropomorphism etc.), as special cases of "bisociation".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Creation

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks, "Why the long face?"

A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into a bar. The bartender says, "What is this, some kind of joke?"

The bartender says, "We don't get many faster-than-light nutrinos in here!" A faster-than-light nutrino walks into a bar."

[BaalChatzaf]

"

The bartender says, "We don't get many faster-than-light nutrinos in here!" A faster-than-light nutrino walks into a bar."

Very subtle.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Samson Corwell]

Concerning the literature, go to Google Books. Bring up Atlas Shrugged. Search on fun. Search on enjoyment. Do the same for The Fountainhead.

I recall too, Rand has Roark, Mallory, Dominique, and Mike sit together after work in Mallory's shack.

They did not speak about their work. Mallory told outrageous stories and Dominuque laughed like a child. They talked of nothing in particular, sentences had meaning only in the sound of the voices, in the warm gaiety, in the ease of complete relaxation. They were simply four people who liked being there together. (357–58)

A friend of Rand's mentioned going on a boat tour around Manhattan with her. (I recommend it.) Rand collected stamps. I'd expect Rand's fun to have been drawn from among the usual suspects. Perhaps for some of us, doing things that are just for fun (other than in the exhaustion of the evening) is more infrequent than average. In her literature, of course, the events and characters are crafted to the themes she selected, for which I'd say occasions of fun should not, if not superfluous, be more than about what one finds in the google searches.

As far as I could get into the book in my English IV Advanced Placement class, that scene is my absolute favorite. I felt that it was like reaching the summit of a mountain for them. Roark had finished his monument, Mallory had finished the statue, Dominique, well, I think she had finished modeling, and Mike sat there smoking his pipe. After hours of work they were able to sit back admire what they had accomplished.

This Professor Irwin Corey looks cool. I think I have another person to admire.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Why, then, do we laugh with delight when we have a bright idea or a clever insight?

Michael,

Just to riff off of this (and, please, do not interpret this as implicit criticism or one-upmanship), there is a huge difference between humor and laughter. People meld them when talking in general because the two happen together so often, but humor is only one cause of laughter.

There are many other causes: tickling, a sudden feeling of triumph, awareness of massive approval during a struggle, a surge of plain old feel-good, contagion from hearing others laugh, the delight at insight you mentioned, and so on.

I had to start reading a book by Daniel Dennett (and others), Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind, before this idea came in proper focus for me. It's one of those things I always took for granted, but still would make the error of melding them when analyzing something. It's one of those facts people kinda know but haven't fully thought through.

Years ago, I read an interesting theory by Arthur Koestler in The Act of Creation. He speculated that the smile starts with an infant getting enough sucked nourishment. (And I will stop that line of thought right there... )

Anyhoo... Roark certainly didn't think anything was funny at the kickoff of The Fountainhead. Yet Rand started it thus: "Howard Roark laughed." (Barbara said she cracked up when she saw a copy that was edited by Isabel Paterson--for what reason, God only knows. Paterson had scratched this first line out as if suggesting it were an error. )

Michael