Ayn Rand And The End Of Love

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Robert_Bumbalough said:

Rand could have at least had them go on a date and have John buy her dinner first.  How many guys have you ever known who scored when they were stinky and dirty and on the job with a super hot engineering babe wearing formal evening attire? Yeah literary license: and it does move the story.

Robert,

I'm not so bothered by this. I've had a life where all kinds of things happened--both passively and actively--that didn't make sense, but I found out later they did. Really crazy things. I've written about a lot of them here on OL.  

As to literary license, I'm not of the camp who uses this term as a Get Out Of Jail Free card for stupidity. From my studies in neuroscience, modern psychology, etc., and applying it to storytelling, I have a perspective I don't read very often in O-Land. It deals with the way our minds are made and Rand's intuitive use of it in her fiction.

Both in reality and in storytelling, our minds only pay attention to the ordinary to set a background--the frame. Then our awareness leaves focus on it. We pay great attention to the extraordinary. Since a story is a an abstraction at a higher level than watching and groking an event, if you want your audience to pay attention, you better goose up the extraordinary parts. That's how storytelling works and has worked ever since before cavemen drew pictures on cave walls.

Authors who spend a lot of words (pretty or otherwise, with metaphors or just plain description) writing about a protagonist who wants to drink some milk walking up to a refrigerator, opening the door, getting the carton of milk out, pouring a glass, drinking it, putting the carton back and putting the glass in the sink don't tend to get wide audiences.  Let there be a cockroach in the milk, or let blood coming out of the carton, or diamonds, and you suddenly have a story worth paying attention to.  

Rand intuitively knew that placing strong visceral events in incompatible surroundings got a lot of attention. (After all, she studied and learned a lot of her fiction writing techniques in Hollywood from people like Cecil B. DeMille and his assistants, etc.) Her purpose in using "literary license" was not to explain the unexplainable like the post-moderns do (like when they join Ozzie and Harriet with Beverly Sills and Daffy Duck and Genghis Khan), but to get you to focus on what she found important. Clashing surroundings (a train tunnel) with The Big Event (first time at lovemaking) can even prompt the parts of our brain that deal with symbols since that's the way symbols work. So we can imagine symbolically that her love for Galt had to start from the ground up despite all the fanciness she had built up in her life. Go down that rabbit hole and it starts getting fun.  

I wish Rand had written more about her selection of events from a visceral perspective, but she didn't. She mostly said they had to add up logically to a climax (according to her method of outlining plots) and things like that. But think of the big events in her books, Roark blowing up a housing project (or, hell, going Freud and Roark in a rock quarry jackhammering into solid granite as Dominique looks on in lust  ), or any of the major events in AS. Even when Rand wrote about mundane things like eating, like the scene when a bum told Dagny about the meeting at the Twentieth Century Motor Company where Galt walked out, notice that she was eating with a bum and he was before a woman who had just saved him from being thrown off a moving train and suddenly he got an unexpected fancy meal when he was starving. That, to me, is a hell of a way to set up storytime (or, for the more literary, set the context for a story within a story) than having a character say, "Once upon a time..." or "That reminds me of...") 

1 hour ago, Robert_Bumbalough said:

On the philosophy end of the scene, how does an Objectivism scholar reconcile Rand's Love-At-First-Sight belief with her stand against psychological determinism? 

They don't.

Most of them just don't talk about it.

If that sounds like a cop-out by them, it's probably because it is.  

You have no idea how irritated I get at O-Land people who miss the deep value of Rand's work while they defile her surface reality with worship and revisionist history. To me, they are just as guilty as her ideological enemies who do the same, but with demonization and revisionist history. The first cannot see Rand's errors and fudges, and the second cannot see her insights and talent.

You have a quirky way of looking at Rand as you read her. I like it, even when I don't agree with it, because I feel it's your own independent mind chugging along, not a group-think script. (And, for entertainment value, I'm starting to see a dirty old man among your inner archetypes... And that bothers me because I resonate with it... It makes me wonder about me...  )

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

45 minutes ago, Robert_Bumbalough said:

Funny the capitalist guys never mention Reisman or any ideas from his book "Capitalism".

Robert,

I have that work, but I haven't even read it. I'm not going to pretend why, though. It's a looooooooooong-ass book. And I don't need to be convinced that capitalism is good with a slew of examples. In short, a little voice keeps telling me to not start because I will get bored beyond endurance.

 

I eventually read these things, though. As I will read this one. And I will probably find my inner voice, once again, to be wrong...

Michael

[Robert_Bumbalough]

Hi Mike. Okay. My little response goes:

 

// I'm not so bothered by this. I've had a life where all kinds of things happened--both passively and actively--that didn't make sense, but I found out later they did. Really crazy things. I've written about a lot of them here on OL. //

Okay. Cool. Clue me in. If there were only one that captured the essence of the concept, which would it be?
 

// As to literary license, I'm not of the camp who uses this term as a Get Out Of Jail Free card for stupidity. From my studies in neuroscience, modern psychology, etc., and applying it to storytelling, I have a perspective I don't read very often in O-Land. It deals with the way our minds are made and Rand's intuitive use of it in her fiction. // 

She's way under rated. AS is great story telling. Although, I'd have liked it if the looter bosses were bit more like Cuffy Megis or more like NKVD thugs of the 1930s solidifying Uncle Joe's power by crushing the Ukranians. I love the way she describes the character's emotional and psychological states with the long paragraphs of metaphores, similies and allusions to the reader's shared mental configurations and experiences.

// Both in reality and in storytelling, our minds only pay attention to the ordinary to set a background--the frame. Then our awareness leaves focus on it. We pay great attention to the extraordinary. Since a story is a an abstraction at a higher level than watching and groking (I loved Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land".)  an event, if you want your audience to pay attention, you better goose up the extraordinary parts. That's how storytelling works and has worked ever since before cavemen drew pictures on cave walls.//

Has someone created a set of lesson plans for a seventh or eighth grade literature class built around AS? 

// Authors who spend a lot of words (pretty or otherwise, with metaphors or just plain description) writing about a protagonist who wants to drink some milk walking up to a refrigerator, opening the door, getting the carton of milk out, pouring a glass, drinking it, putting the carton back and putting the glass in the sink don't tend to get wide audiences.  Let there be a cockroach in the milk, or let blood coming out of the carton, or diamonds, and you suddenly have a story worth paying attention to. // 

Oh yeah. Same deal with work. Same-ole-thing gets dull; que up something different in context of a deadline and watch the crew work their magic.

// Rand intuitively knew that placing strong visceral events in incompatible surroundings got a lot of attention. (After all, she studied and learned a lot of her fiction writing techniques in Hollywood from people like Cecil B. DeMille and his assistants, etc.) Her purpose in using "literary license" was not to explain the unexplainable like the post-moderns do (like when they join Ozzie and Harriet with Beverly Sills and Daffy Duck and Genghis Khan), but to get you to focus on what she found important. Clashing surroundings (a train tunnel) with The Big Event (first time at lovemaking) can even prompt the parts of our brain that deal with symbols since that's the way symbols work. So we can imagine symbolically that her love for Galt had to start from the ground up despite all the fanciness she had built up in her life. Go down that rabbit hole and it starts getting fun. // 

Wow. Good Stuff. Andrew Bernstein should read this and work the idea into the next edition of his Cliffnotes for AS.
 

// I wish Rand had written more about her selection of events from a visceral perspective, but she didn't. She mostly said they had to add up logically to a climax (according to her method of outlining plots) and things like that. But think of the big events in her books, Roark blowing up a housing project (or, hell, going Freud and Roark in a rock quarry jackhammering into solid granite as Dominique looks on in lust  ), or any of the major events in AS. Even when Rand wrote about mundane things like eating, like the scene when a bum told Dagny about the meeting at the Twentieth Century Motor Company where Galt walked out, notice that she was eating with a bum and he was before a woman who had just saved him from being thrown off a moving train and suddenly he got an unexpected fancy meal when he was starving. That, to me, is a hell of a way to set up storytime (or, for the more literary, set the context for a story within a story) than having a character say, "Once upon a time..." or "That reminds me of...") //

It's been a long time since I've read a fiction book. I've been putting this one off for twenty years at least. If I'd have read Rand when I was a kid, I'm confident my life would have been much more productive. Better late than never. My mind is me, and I'm my most valuable asset and keeping me right and in training is a good reason to take time to read AS.

// They don't.

Most of them just don't talk about it.

If that sounds like a cop-out by them, it's probably because it is. //

Gee what a shame. The lefties are as wrong headed as the religious conservatives, so rational people need to find a way to talk about ideas and persuade others to lay off Identity Politics and Virtue Signaling before push comes to shove.   

//You have no idea how irritated I get at O-Land people who miss the deep value of Rand's work while they defile her surface reality with worship and revisionist history.//

Peikoff's loyalty oath thing was shut down pretty quick on his lawyer's advice, but Binswanger's lectures agreement was pretty much the same sort of thing. Either one gave those who found Objectivism unsavory, like Rothbard, a talking point to slander the O-landers as cultists.

// The first cannot see Rand's errors and fudges, and the second cannot see her insights and talent. // 

Well said. 

// You have a quirky way of looking at Rand as you read her. //

I'm my own man and I think for myself or at least I like to pretend I think for myself. The O books are on my read list and it'll take some time to get through them. 

// I like it, even when I don't agree with it, because I feel it's your own independent mind chugging along, not a group-think script.// 

Hell if everybody agreed, it'd be a pretty damn boring blog.

// (And, for entertainment value, I'm starting to see a dirty old man among your inner archetypes... And that bothers me because I resonate with it... It makes me wonder about me...  ) //

We're men and we're hard wired to appreciate the fine points of female sexual characteristics. Ayn Rand knew that as does every woman. That they take such pains to look good for us despite that they don't know us should make us proud at least a little. It's what makes the world go around so it is said by many. 
 

[Robert_Bumbalough]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Robert,

I have that work, but I haven't even read it. I'm not going to pretend why, though. It's a looooooooooong-ass book. And I don't need to be convinced that capitalism is good with a slew of examples. In short, a little voice keeps telling me to not start because I will get bored beyond endurance.

 

I eventually read these things, though. As I will read this one. And I will probably find my inner voice, once again, to be wrong...

Michael

Reisman shows what and how Marx straw manned Adam Smith on the Labor Theory of Value and David Riccardo on the Iron Law of Wages while inventing a false doctrine Reisman calls the Primacy of Wages as the framework of the Capitalism Exploitation theory and why that frame work doesn't do what Marx claimed. The book has a thorough index and table of contents that allows one to quickly locate topics. It's worth becoming familiar with the book if one wishes to argue for capitalism with the kids taken in and wool blinded by postmodern skepticism and having an undue affection for socialism. 

[Wolf DeVoon]

7 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

 

Michael, there are ads popping into your posts, can't read what you say, many lines blanked by (of all things) underwear ads.

[update] Now it's blockchain ads blotting out MY posts and 'Get Paid To Write' covering yours!

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Michael, there are ads popping into your posts, can't read what you say, many lines blanked by (of all things) underwear ads.

[update] Now it's blockchain ads blotting out MY posts and 'Get Paid To Write' covering yours!

There is a problem. 

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

8 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

 Let there be a cockroach in the milk, or let blood coming out of the carton, or diamonds

Too bizarre to be offended.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Michael, there are ads popping into your posts, can't read what you say, many lines blanked by (of all things) underwear ads.

[update] Now it's blockchain ads blotting out MY posts and 'Get Paid To Write' covering yours!

Wolf,

What browser do you use?

Are you using a mobile device?

Google was nudging me to accept something. I did. Now this.

But, to be fair, let's see what happens. In the meantime, please give me some feedback.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Too bizarre to be offended.

Wolf,

I don't understand this, neither part: the bizarre nor the offended.

Re bizarre: Lots of mysteries and thrillers have these kinds of oddities with perfectly rational explanations given later. A cockroach in the milk could be in a comedy--I even remember one where a person put a cockroach in a yogurt container and the punch moment was side-splitting hilarious, blood could easily come out of a milk carton be in a medical mystery or horror story, and a milk carton could be a temporary hiding place for diamonds in a heist story during the going wrong phase.

The principle is the mind pays attention to out of place things, not mundane things which it tends to automate and shove away from awareness (the technical term is habituation).

Re pearl clutching: Why on earth would examples to illustrate the idea of the mind paying attention to things incongruent with the normal functioning of the background be potentially offensive?

Michael

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

There is a problem. 

Brant,

Ditto what I said to Wolf. If you could let me know what is going on at your end, I would be grateful. Also, what you use to come to OL (PC and browser or mobile device).

Thanks,

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

8 hours ago, Robert_Bumbalough said:

It's worth becoming familiar with the book if one wishes to argue for capitalism with the kids taken in and wool blinded by postmodern skepticism and having an undue affection for socialism.

Robert,

I agree, but only up to a point. The millennial generation is mostly lost to an indoctrination campaign, but Gen Z is doing a splendid hardass backlash on them. So these kinds of explanations are great for Gen Z (if you can get their noses out of 4Chan or video games  ).

The millennials, though, need something more relevant to their indoctrination. They're good people, but they've been taught to think differently. And telling them their public education school teachers tried to epistemologically cripple them on purpose for political reasons doesn't go very far. (I've tried and flopped that way.  )

Many millennials feel something is off, though. The trouble is nobody outside of their generation (except their indoctrinators) speak their language using the same subtexts as they do.

Rush Limbaugh tried one thing, though. He did a spiel awhile back where he put their Apple devices through the redistribution concept and it was kinda hilarious. He claims to have gotten through to several millenials that way. (Not full on conversion to capitalism, but getting them to question what they've been taught.) One thing's for sure. No millennial wants his or her iPhone or iPad redistributed to a class of victims of oppression. Not when it's keepsies.  

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

47 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

A cockroach in the milk could be in a comedy--I even remember one where a person put a cockroach in a yogurt container and the punch moment was side-splitting hilarious...

I guess I shouldn't tease like that without saying more.

I can't remember the name of the film though, nor even the main storyline. Here's how the cockroach in a yogurt container thing went down.

All during the film, a secondary character (a friend of the female lead, if I'm not mistaken) is sitting at a kitchen table talking to some other friends. He's trying to open a plastic yogurt container (with aluminum lid) very carefully, put a cockroach in it and seal the container back like new so he can eventually sue the yogurt company. To make it more impactful for the future lawsuit, he plans to serve the yogurt to the female lead because she has an absolute horror of cockroaches and will raise a stink to high heaven.

The friends around him discuss the whole thing and taunt him saying he'll never make the container look right, that it's a hairbrained idea, and so on. This throughline is cut into the main action each time one of the main characters enters the kitchen for the main storyline. So this weaves in and out most of the film. And, of course, the female lead has no knowledge of what her "friend" is up to.

The big moment finally comes. The guy has made the container perfect. The female lead is engrossed in telling everyone how things are turning out well for her despite all the serious setbacks (events belonging to the main story). As she talks, he gives her the yogurt container. Everybody watches in suspense as she peels off the lid. But instead of looking down, she starts talking excitedly about some other detail she just remembered. When she comes to the end of a point, she puts the container to her lips and starts drinking it down without even looking. Suddenly she pauses while she looks at everyone, then pauses some more, then gulps loudly, smacks her lips in satisfaction and continues her story, totally clueless. The people at the kitchen table look on in silence, not daring to say a word and the guy who set it all up just stares in disbelief.

It's one of the funniest scenes I have ever seen in film.

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

10 hours ago, Robert_Bumbalough said:

Okay. Cool. Clue me in. If there were only one that captured the essence of the concept, which would it be?

Robert,

Let's see if we're on the same page. To me, the concept is something happening that doesn't make any sense, but ends up making a lot of sense in the end.

Here's one example, but it's pretty heavy. I once helped a woman I didn't know very well die of brain cancer (over several months) while I was detoxing from crack cocaine addiction and breaking up with her daughter who was my girlfriend at the time. That made no sense to me. (Nothing did back then.  ) 

Later, it became clear that I would not have turned out the way I did without that, and exactly that, being in my path at that time of my life. (There's an article I wrote 13 or 14 years ago called Letter to Madalena ... An Homage to the Value of Valuing where I go into it. It's too late to look up the link, besides, it's posted on several forums, so Google it if you want to read it. Ah, hell... That's not right... Well here... Here's the OL link, even though I first published it elsewhere.) 

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Just now, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brant,

Ditto what I said to Wolf. If you could let me know what is going on at your end, I would be grateful. Also, what you use to come to OL (PC and browser or mobile device).

Thanks,

Michael

It seems so far to be on this thread only. Small block ads laid over text. You can't x them out. PC Microsoft edge.

--Brant

edit: I've found it on another thread--it doesn't appear over every post

quote the post you want to read and it goes away

[9thdoctor]

7 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I can't remember the name of the film though, nor even the main storyline. Here's how the cockroach in a yogurt container thing went down.

 

You're thinking of the film Striptease with Demi Moore.  I can't find a YouTube clip of the scene.

[anthony]

22 hours ago, Robert_Bumbalough said:

  On the philosophy end of the scene, how does an Objectivism scholar reconcile Rand's Love-At-First-Sight belief with her stand against psychological determinism? 

 

Hi Robert, From what I 've seen, they haven't -  and MSK affirms. "Love at first sight" -- in my experience, is a notion to be handled with kid gloves. "Attraction" at first sight, there is no doubt. But does his/her outward appearance match anyone's inner state, their lasting qualities? And how acutely insightful is one at an early stage of getting to know the woman? Not reliably, to my knowledge, and several times outer and inner have painfully differed (alternately, may be pleasantly surprising). "Attraction" naturally is of one's senses: looks, vision, etc., - ultimately to touch (one hopes) and if the sense-perceptions are what we first know about the reality of a woman - in a nice conceptual tie-in, one's integration and evaluation - from further experience with her - confirm or contradict the first impressions to gain a 'concept' of her(his), um, full package. I venture Rand's idea is that a crucial part of love is in one's initial, also, ongoing physical attraction, and so a necessary part of what, sometimes, may, could follow. For certain, by AR, one shouldn't brook a physical-'spiritual', animal-rational (body-mind) split, in romantic love as in every other way.

There was an excellent book by Branden which I mostly forgot and I can't refer to (never lend out favorite books): The Psychology of Romantic Love. 

[Peter]

I use Microsoft Explorer and I am getting ads that cover up the text from OL messages. 

[Robert_Bumbalough]

10 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

...the concept is something happening that doesn't make any sense, but ends up making a lot of sense in the end.

 

Yeah. That's it. After I slept on it for a few nights my little brain churned out an epiphany. Ayn Rand spent years spilling ink and wading reams of typing paper to fabricate 900 or so pages developing Dagny's character as a classy top shelf individual with a very strong pride and work ethic and then she has her do the misplaced sex scene to seal the deal with Galt, and that triggered my WTF moment. 

Yeah. Been clean and sober for quite a while, but got lucky back in the stoner and lush days so avoided death and jail. Yeehaw. Life is good. 

[Peter]

3 hours ago, anthony said:

Hi Robert, From what I 've seen, they haven't -  and MSK affirms. "Love at first sight" -- in my experience, is a notion to be handled with kid gloves. "Attraction" at first sight, there is no doubt. But does his/her outward appearance match anyone's inner state, their lasting qualities? And how acutely insightful is one at an early stage of getting to know the woman? Not reliably, to my knowledge, and several times outer and inner have painfully differed (alternately, may be pleasantly surprising). "Attraction" naturally is of one's senses: looks, vision, etc., - ultimately to touch (one hopes) and if the sense-perceptions are what we first know about the reality of a woman - in a nice conceptual tie-in, one's integration and evaluation - from further experience with her - confirm or contradict the first impressions to gain a 'concept' of her(his), um, full package. I venture Rand's idea is that a crucial part of love is in one's initial, also, ongoing physical attraction, and so a necessary part of what, sometimes, may, could follow. For certain, by AR, one shouldn't brook a physical-'spiritual', animal-rational (body-mind) split, in romantic love as in every other way.

There was an excellent book by Branden which I mostly forgot and I can't refer to (never lend out favorite books): The Psychology of Romantic Love. 

An oldie but goodie.

Peter

From: Monart Pon Reply-To: Starship. Forum Subject: [Starship Forum] [Movies] Ayn Rand's "Love Letters" Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 18:01:37 -0700. Last night we watched again a video of an old 1945 black-and-white movie, "The Love Letters", the screenplay to which was written by Ayn Rand, using a story idea she was asked to convert for a movie. Whatever the original idea was that remained with the screenplay, the movie was an Ayn Rand love story. The dialogue was hers, and so was the characterization of the heroine, whose depiction by Jennifer Jones hints of the Marilyn Monroe to come.

All throughout "Love Letters" are dialogue that may have come out of any of her stories. Parts of it remind me of her "The Husband I Bought". One line from the heroine I remember is (paraphrasing): "You know what the secret of happiness is? Just two words: Be yourself."

Ayn Rand had finished Fountainhead a couple years ago, 1943, and the consequent cultural uprising was just being conceived.

If "Love Letters" were to be made over again today with the sophisticated methods and forms of modern movie production, the impact of Rand's screenplay would be even more realistic and dramatic. For example, the more profound dialogue should be spoken more slowly, with better emphasis. And the outdoor scenes would really be outdoors. But who would play Victoria?

Rand has a treasure-trove of stories to be made into culturally invigorating movies, especially Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead of course, but also her lesser known stories like Red Pawn and Anthem.

I've heard some years ago that, Kerry O'Quinn, the publisher of STARLOG (a sci-fi magazine) had plans and rights to produce Anthem, but I haven't heard anything more since. I could imagine how earth-shaking and exhilarating a modern movie of Anthem might be, in a culture that has made popular movies like The Matrix, The Postman, Water World, and The Road Warrior. If I were a movie producer...

But I digress... If you haven't seen "Love Letters", and you're a romantic, you would enjoy it. It's worth ignoring the production flaws which we modern viewers may find distracting. But it was made 60 years ago, and its themes are timeless, like all of Rand's themes. Below is the write-up from the box. Monart

 

"Love Letters." Jennifer Jones delivers an Oscar-nominated performance in this love story / psychological drama about a lovely, trusting young woman who suffers from amnesia after her husband's violent death.

 

"During World War II, Roger Morland (Robert Scully) persuades his friend Alan Quinton (Joseph Cotten) to pen passionate love letters to Victoria Remington (Jones). Believing that Morland is the author of the letters, she marries him. But Morland's deception sets in motion a dire chain of events that locks Victoria in a world of fear and clouded memories.

"So begins a tale of intrigue, love and suspense, as Quinton returns home in search of Victoria, the woman he loves. But once he finds her, can he risk driving her over the edge with the knowledge of her past life? William Dieterle directs Ayn Rand's fast-paced screenplay that envelope the viewer in an unforgettable romance / murder mystery that both touches the heart and teases the mind." Produced by Hal B. Wallis 1945 1hr 42 min. Available from MCA Universal Home Video.

[Robert_Bumbalough]

5 hours ago, anthony said:

Hi Robert, From what I 've seen, they haven't -  and MSK affirms. "Love at first sight" -- in my experience, is a notion to be handled with kid gloves. "Attraction" at first sight, there is no doubt. But does his/her outward appearance match anyone's inner state, their lasting qualities? And how acutely insightful is one at an early stage of getting to know the woman? Not reliably, to my knowledge, and several times outer and inner have painfully differed (alternately, may be pleasantly surprising). "Attraction" naturally is of one's senses: looks, vision, etc., - ultimately to touch (one hopes) and if the sense-perceptions are what we first know about the reality of a woman - in a nice conceptual tie-in, one's integration and evaluation - from further experience with her - confirm or contradict the first impressions to gain a 'concept' of her(his), um, full package. I venture Rand's idea is that a crucial part of love is in one's initial, also, ongoing physical attraction, and so a necessary part of what, sometimes, may, could follow. For certain, by AR, one shouldn't brook a physical-'spiritual', animal-rational (body-mind) split, in romantic love as in every other way.

There was an excellent book by Branden which I mostly forgot and I can't refer to (never lend out favorite books): The Psychology of Romantic Love. 

Hi Tony. Thanks for an insightful reply. I was wondering about all that. In several years I hope to have read through the books and will then have a better understanding.  Until then, it's back to work time.

[Wolf DeVoon]

19 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Wolf,

What browser do you use?

Firefox on a laptop. Your reply to Robert B. 17 hours ago now unreadable, big ad for a hotel in Marble Arch London.

[Wolf DeVoon]

19 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Wolf,

I don't understand this, neither part: the bizarre nor the offended.

Re bizarre: Lots of mysteries and thrillers have these kinds of oddities with perfectly rational explanations given later. A cockroach in the milk could be in a comedy--I even remember one where a person put a cockroach in a yogurt container and the punch moment was side-splitting hilarious, blood could easily come out of a milk carton be in a medical mystery or horror story, and a milk carton could be a temporary hiding place for diamonds in a heist story during the going wrong phase...

Re pearl clutching: Why on earth would examples to illustrate the idea of the mind paying attention to things incongruent with the normal functioning of the background be potentially offensive?

Michael

 

This post was covered by an ad, but I was able to read it by hitting reply. I admit that I was influenced by Rand, RLS, Fitzgerald, Hammett and Chandler. No horror as such, no milk carton diamonds in a heist gone haywire. I would like to have pearls to clutch like J.K. Rowling, deep pocket promotion by Scholastic, but for better or worse, I try to tell stories that make sense without side-splittingly hilarious cockroaches.

[Wolf DeVoon]

10 hours ago, anthony said:

how acutely insightful is one at an early stage of getting to know the woman?

I certify that it is impossible to know a woman after five minutes, five years, or five decades. They have movable parts.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

15 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

This post was covered by an ad, but I was able to read it by hitting reply. I admit that I was influenced by Rand, RLS, Fitzgerald, Hammett and Chandler. No horror as such, no milk carton diamonds in a heist gone haywire. I would like to have pearls to clutch like J.K. Rowling, deep pocket promotion by Scholastic, but for better or worse, I try to tell stories that make sense without side-splittingly hilarious cockroaches.

Wolf,

I don't think you got my point. You got lost on specific examples as if they were my point. They weren't. They were easy and obvious examples I made up on the spot for clarity, not literature. And what was I trying to be clear about? I was talking about a general storytelling technique and the brain science reasons why it works.

But let's do it this way since you are caught up in the throes of the primacy of contention...

Maybe this will be clearer...

Imagine San Francisco in the 1920's, a femme fatale, a world-weary badass detective and so on. Throw in a statue of a falcon that is really supposed to be solid gold and precious jewels underneath a black coating, a falcon statue that was made during the 16th century by the Knights of Malta as a gift to the King of Spain fulfilling a tradition going back to the 1500's when an ancient mystic organization having something to do with Jerusalem (Order of St. John of Jerusalem) essentially leased land on the Island of Malta and elsewhere and paid for it to Spanish royalty with annual gold and jewel statues of falcons. What's more, this particular statue has been all over the world, with cities like Cairo cited.

I just read The Maltese Falcon by Hammett a couple of months ago. Hammett droned on and on about this history, tradition and the goddam bird. Frankly, I think that part interrupted the flow of the story, but at least Hammett changed the subject after a longish passage of nonstop explanation and right before he put the reader in a coma of boredom.   

But to my point, does that bird and esoteric ancient European history belong as a normal thing in the seedy side of San Francisco of the 1920's? Or is it out of place?

That McGuffin bird is a perfect example of my point. The only way Hammett got away with pushing the esoteric explanation and ancient history right up to the limit a popular fiction story could withstand was because it was so odd in that environment.

Notice Hammett's character orchestration, too. It's a cast of weird people against a background of normal folks. The Southern-fried fat guy (obese actually) in charge of the bad guys who is obsessed with the statue (and punwise called Gutman.. Gut Man, get it? ). The tall ship captain who crashes the private eye's office out of nowhere and falls forward like a tree ("holding himself stiffly straight, not putting his hands out to break his fall, he fell forward as a tree falls") only to die and fumble the bird. The creepy "levantine" (gay male) and his young stupid hotheaded punk lover (male, of course) who became the patsy. The pretty girl who used a pin (a "three-inch jade-headed steel bouquet-pin") to scratch and dig the hell out of her stomach, drawing blood, so she could stay awake while drugged and who somehow drifted off to nowhere to be heard from no more. And so on. 

Rather than looking down your nose at this technique (normal/ordinary background with oddity/out-of-place thing(s) in the foreground to focus the reader's attention), look at the very authors you cited and you will see them use it over and over. They're great authors.

Michael

[Robert_Bumbalough]

20 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Wolf,

I don't think you got my point. You got lost on specific examples as if they were my point. They weren't. They were easy and obvious examples I made up on the spot for clarity, not literature. And what was I trying to be clear about? I was talking about a general storytelling technique and the brain science reasons why it works.

But let's do it this way since you are caught up in the throes of the primacy of contention...

Maybe this will be clearer...

Imagine San Francisco in the 1920's, a femme fatale, a world-weary badass detective and so on. Throw in a statue of a falcon that is really supposed to be solid gold and precious jewels underneath a black coating, a falcon statue that was made during the 16th century by the Knights of Malta as a gift to the King of Spain fulfilling a tradition going back to the 1500's when an ancient mystic organization having something to do with Jerusalem (Order of St. John of Jerusalem) essentially leased land on the Island of Malta and elsewhere and paid for it to Spanish royalty with annual gold and jewel statues of falcons. What's more, this particular statue has been all over the world, with cities like Cairo cited.

I just read The Maltese Falcon by Hammett a couple of months ago. Hammett droned on and on about this history, tradition and the goddam bird. Frankly, I think that part interrupted the flow of the story, but at least Hammett changed the subject after a longish passage of nonstop explanation and right before he put the reader in a coma of boredom.   

But to my point, does that bird and esoteric ancient European history belong as a normal thing in the seedy side of San Francisco of the 1920's? Or is it out of place?

That McGuffin bird is a perfect example of my point. The only way Hammett got away with pushing the esoteric explanation and ancient history right up to the limit a popular fiction story could withstand was because it was so odd in that environment.

Notice Hammett's character orchestration, too. It's a cast of weird people against a background of normal folks. The Southern-fried fat guy (obese actually) in charge of the bad guys who is obsessed with the statue (and punwise called Gutman.. Gut Man, get it? ). The tall ship captain who crashes the private eye's office out of nowhere and falls forward like a tree ("holding himself stiffly straight, not putting his hands out to break his fall, he fell forward as a tree falls") only to die and fumble the bird. The creepy "levantine" (gay male) and his young stupid hotheaded punk lover (male, of course) who became the patsy. The pretty girl who used a pin (a "three-inch jade-headed steel bouquet-pin") to scratch and dig the hell out of her stomach, drawing blood, so she could stay awake while drugged and who somehow drifted off to nowhere to be heard from no more. And so on. 

Rather than looking down your nose at this technique (normal/ordinary background with oddity/out-of-place thing(s) in the foreground to focus the reader's attention), look at the very authors you cited and you will see them use it over and over. They're great authors.

Michael

Yeah. Mike, Wolf, Tony, Pete. Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein used this technique in their stories where characters were made to think they were in normal surroundings but really they were being tricked by magic aliens using ESP mind control.  Wow I enjoyed reading scifi when I was a kid. Then the old Outer Limits show writers and directors used similar techniques. Oh great stuff.