Objective Criterion of Aesthetic Judgment

[Ellen Stuttle]

Wolf,

Just a point of curiosity.

You write:

Rand's praise for Victor Hugo led me to Notre Dame and Les Miserables, two highly naturalist-fatalist novels which, while interesting to read, offered little inspiration. Who can really admire stories where the innocent and worthy are deluded and doomed?

And earlier:

[....] My experience with classical music consists of two experiences. I mixed the front of house, monitors, and a recording of Cosi Fan Tuti, and (like most other parents of small children) I've heard more than few renditions of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. Both of these miserably droll, contrived, camp compositions were forced. [....] If we're talking about emotionally compelling, thrilling experiences, Mozart and Tchaikovsky were pre-music indeed.

I'm wondering if you're aware that Rand considered Hugo's work epitome "romantic" literature, and that Tchaikovsky was one of her top favorites among classical composers. (Mozart she called "pre-music"; certainly not Tchaikovsky.)

I'm not asking from the standpoint of objecting to disagreeing with Rand, I hope you realize. I'm just curious as to whether you know you're disagreeing.

Ellen

___

[Wolf DeVoon]

I'm wondering if you're aware that Rand considered Hugo's work epitome "romantic" literature, and that Tchaikovsky was one of her top favorites among classical composers. (Mozart she called "pre-music"; certainly not Tchaikovsky.)

Yes. I've read the entire Rand ouvre, Early Rand, Journals, Objectivist Newsletter, Objectivist, AR Letter, Intro to Epistemology, Romantic Manifesto. I'm aware of her preferences. I lumped Mozart and Tchaikovky together because their best known works were written to order for clients and constraints of non-musical genres (opera, ballet). Rachmaninov was so Russian thematically, so weepy and tragic that it seemed of a piece with We The Living, a work I cannot read for pleasure or inspiration. Romance must mean something other than disaster IMO. That's why The Fountainhead was such a brilliant achievement.

W.

Edited February 1, 2008 by Wolf DeVoon

[Roger Bissell]

Ellen, this requires an extended response, and I'm not sure I can pull it off this time of night, when I should be getting my "beauty sleep" prior to a rehearsal and concert with the Rochester Philharmonic, but here goes....

1. When you say Rand's aesthetics is some kind of rationalization for her literary preferences, or that her aesthetics is "ethics-geared," I think that you sell Rand short in at least one important respect. I see both her ethics and her aesthetics as flowing (at least partly) from what she calls "metaphysical value-judgments." She talks about them in "The Psycho-Epistemology of Art" (and elsewhere?).

There are several questions/issues about man and the world that have deep significance for your ethics and aesthetics values, depending on what answer you give to them. One is (paraphrasing from memory): is man able to choose values and achieve them? Another is: is man worthy of happiness? Another is: is man capable of grasping the world (and/or is the world intelligible)?

You can see how the Cardinal values of her ethics flow from this: purpose, self-esteem, reason. But also the metaphysical value-judgments generate or suggest three deep alternatives in re aethetics/art. One is: plot vs. plotlessness. Another is triumph vs. tragedy. Another is intelligibility vs. murkiness (or worse).

These are the deepest (Randian) philosophical values in art, and they parallel her Cardinal ethical values. And yes, philosophically speaking, I'd say that artworks that have one or more of them are more valuable, philosophically, than artworks that don't. But there's also the matter of style, which relates to "psycho-epistemological sense of life." That is a different issue than (metaphysical) sense of life that revolves around the volition, happiness, and intelligibility triad.

2. I knew you'd jump on my comments on Shakespeare. I have never agreed with Rand's evaluation of WS (not WSS!) as Naturalistic, not since I first read it in the late 60s. Fatalistic, perhaps, but that's another issue. No, I regard Shakespeare as intensely Romantic, though not ~fully~ Romantic. Let me explain.

Rand (in "What is Romanticism?") distinguished two ways in which volition operates as a premise in a person's life: in regard to his character and in regard to the external world. Following that, there would be four categories of art (it's a tetrachotomy, don't you know!) -- Naturalism, where a person has control over neither his character nor his worldly success; Full Romanticism, where a person has control over both; Byronic Romanticism, where a person has control over his character, but not over his worldly success; and (? name ?) the kind of shallow Romanticism involving heroic rescues and chase scenes, but no important values and challenges of character.....

Shakespeare's tragedies (at least, Hamlet), IMO, fit in the Byronic Romanticism category, along with Beethoven's 5th symphony, Chopin's B minor scherzo (one of my all-time favorite piano pieces), and the stormy movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (another of my favorites). (Yes, I know that calling Shakespeare "Byronic" is a really anachronistic howler, but I'm trying to be descriptively accurate, not historically precise.)(And yes, I am confessing to having a bit of a Byronic streak in me.) Byronic Romanticism is basically a literary style with intense value-seeking and striving, but clouded by the sense of living in a world that is hostile or inimical to one's efforts.

I think that is one reason that Fountainhead and Atlas are so powerful -- they dwell in that world-view for a good while, before flicking the switch to the benevolent, successful universe. We the Living, on the other hand, has always been a downer to me. But then, that was Rand's point: a communist (i.e., totalitarian) regime is inimical to a successful, happy life, and Kira fought the odds to escape, and lost. And in a tragedy, whether the person fails because of a tragic flaw, or a tragic virtue, it's still hard to get fuel from anything other than the beautiful writing (of WS and AR). But still, I'll take that over Roy Rogers any day!

In any case, I don't think that the Shakespeare example demonstrates the failure of Rand's aesthetic theory/perspective, or that her theory "crumbles on examination" -- but instead, her failure to properly apply it! (In general, I think a lot more of Rand's theories than I do of her attempts to apply them. This also goes for Peikoff, as witness his very creative and illuminating DIM hypothesis being misapplied to contemporary American society and, as a result, misused as a cudgel for beating up on people who vote "the wrong way.")

3. You asked about how I evaluate or interpet the volitionality (and worth?) of Bach and Handel -- as against Mozart and Haydn -- and as against Chopin and Rachmaninoff. Etc.

I don't want to over-generalize, so I'll just try to illustrate the point with one particular kind of piece: the sonata-movement form (aka sonata-allegra form)(aka first-movement form for sonatas and symphonies). Earlier in this form's development, the first and second themes were stated more as a means of contrast, more in isolation from one another, while later on, they were stated more in opposition to one another, with transitions linking them more "organically." There was more of a sense of conflict in the latter, and of resolution, working-out of the conflict between them, and more of a sense that they were interacting, that there was a kind of "dialectic" between them. Rosen and others have written about this quasi-literary development of the sonata, so I won't belabor it here.

Another example: the sections of ternary forms like the minuet and trio or the scherzo were very well defined and marked off from one another in the earlier days, and much more dramatically and continuously linked later on. (Chopin's Scherzo in B minor is a fabulous example of this.)

In general, in the earlier days of tonal music, when there was more of a hermetic sealing off of one section of a piece from another, whatever "volition" or goal-directedness or plotting that takes place in any given section does not sound, to the listener, like it is connected to whatever happens in the other sections. Later on, the pieces, and the dramatic action taking place in them, seem more...."of a piece," more organically unified, and thus for there to be more of a sense of a "story," rather than unrelated vignettes. With a longer development of drama possible, there is more opportunity for constructing climaxes that have meaning across the entire piece, not just the section in which they occur.

I hope this helps. Gotta hit the hay!

REB

[Edited at 4 AM California time for ease of reading by my discussion partners! ]

[BaalChatzaf]

REB writes:

3. You asked about how I evaluate or interpet the volitionality (and worth?) of Bach and Handel -- as against Mozart and Haydn -- and as against Chopin and Rachmaninoff. Etc. I don't want to over-generalize, so I'll just try to illustrate the point with one particular kind of piece: the sonata-movement form (aka sonata-allegra form)(aka first-movement form for sonatas and symphonies). Earlier in this form's development, the first and second themes were stated more as a means of contrast, more in isolation from one another, while later on, they were stated more in opposition to one another, with transitions linking them more "organically." There was more of a sense of conflict in the latter, and of resolution, working-out of the conflict between them, and more of a sense that they were interacting, that there was a kind of "dialectic" between them. Rosen and others have written about this quasi-literary development of the sonata, so I won't belabor it here. Another example: the sections of ternary forms like the minuet and trio or the scherzo were very well defined and marked off from one another in the earlier days, and much more dramatically and continuously linked later on. (Chopin's Scherzo in B minor is a fabulous example of this.) In general, in the earlier days of tonal music, when there was more of a hermetic sealing off of one section of a piece from another, whatever "volition" or goal-directedness or plotting that takes place in any given section does not sound, to the listener, like it is connected to whatever happens in the other sections. Later on, the pieces, and the dramatic action taking place in them, seem more...."of a piece," more organically unified, and thus for there to be more of a sense of a "story," rather than unrelated vignettes. With a longer development of drama possible, there is more opportunity for constructing climaxes that have meaning across the entire piece, not just the section in which they occur.

I hope this helps. Gotta hit the hay!

Ba'al Chatzaf responds:

That is a wonderful essay on the music and it is stated in abstract structural terms which the mathematical me can grasp.

You should understand that:

1. I am tone deaf. I cannot carry a tune in a bushel basket.

2. My sense of rhythm is a disaster area.

3. I cannot read music. But I can't read Turkish either. C'est dommage.

However, if I sat down and intelligently -listened- to the pieces you expounded upon, I have the gut feeling I could grasp what you are saying. I will never play an instrument (or even my voice much), but I think I can listen to the music and comprehend the structure. Being a mathematician, abstract structure is my stock and trade.

Thank you kindly for the lesson.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited February 1, 2008 by BaalChatzaf

[Roger Bissell]

Several more comments on Rand's aesthetics and her definition/concept of Romanticism:

4. I think that Rand's conceiving of Romanticism as aesthetic volitionism really only applies well and clearly to literature and music. These are both dynamic, temporal arts, and they are well suited for presenting images of goal-directed, value-seeking processes aka plots, whether involving human characters or tonal characters aka melodies. (I mean this in the same sense that Allan and Joan Mitchell Blumenthal said in their lectures that musical themes are like dramatic characters and harmonic progressions are like dramatic plots.)

It is more of a stretch to find volitionism in, say, a landscape by a Romantic painter, or a statue by a Romantic sculptor. These are essentially static arts, though you can convey ~implied~ action and seeking of values to a limited degree. I wish Michael Newberry would weigh in on this, though I think he's pretty well fed up with this group.

Nonetheless, Rand really has her finger on something, and calling it Romanticism seems more reasonable than anything else she might call it. It just doesn't connect well (IMO) to Romanticism in the visual arts. And it differs from the conventional concept of Romanticism about as much as her concept of Fascism differs from the conventional understanding. (For that reason, I'm very cheered by the recent appearance of Liberal Fascism, which basically makes the point, in spades, that Rand was spinning her wheels on during the 60s.)

5. Rand's aesthetics is more than a championing of volitionism (choosing and seeking value). It is also a championing of man's worthiness to live and be happy, and a championing of man's mind to seek intelligibility and he world as intelligible. Those are ~her~ "metaphysical values," that determine both the Cardinal values of her ethics (purpose, self-esteem, and reason), but also the philosophically best things to contemplate in art. Her philosophical outlook is really very subtle and deep and fertile.

6. Rand also understood the nature of aesthetics more generally and identified the fundamentality of subject, and how subject and style work together to convey the artwork's theme. And most crucially for literature and music, she understood that for dynamic/temporal artforms, the subject is twofold: a figure and changes it undergoes. When the subject is more specifically a story, the subject is: people and their actions, or character and plot (in music: melody and harmonic progression).

* * * * * * * * * * *

All of these point, to me, show how much of value there is in Rand's aesthetics and her philosophy more generally. She did not tie up these points in a nice neat bundle, and consequently there is a lot of misunderstanding and agreement about it to this day.

For example, there is the failure of astute commentators like Kamhi and Torres to understand the key importance of the concept of a "microcosm," which Peikoff elucidated a few years too late to get Rand's official endorsement, but which casts a whole different light on Rand's definition of art as "re-creation of reality" than is the case for nearly everyone opining about it.

Another example, already discussed in this thread, is the idea that Rand tried to smuggle her literary and/or ethical values into her aesthetics. As I have argued, her aesthetics and ethics are both more fundamentally grounded in her view of reality and man, her "metaphysical value-judgments," which are her take on the basic issues of life that confront us, at least tacitly and by osmosis, before we form an ethical code or aesthetic preferences.

But these are some of Rand's theoretical virtues. In applying those powerful insights and theoretical tools, she sometimes made serious gaffes (such as her conflicting claims on the same page of "Art and Cognition" that architecture is a form of art, that all art re-creates reality, but that architecture does not re-create reality--huh?), and she sometimes applied her ideas in very controlling, disrespectful ways to people she presumably cared very much about but whose aesthetic values she could not accept.

My response to such unfortunate missteps by Rand is not to jettison her profound, breakthrough ideas -- but to reject her missteps, and to urge that we apply her valid concepts and principles both more logically and more humanely.

REB

[BaalChatzaf]

Response to post #30.

REB:

But these are some of Rand's theoretical virtues. In applying those powerful insights and theoretical tools, she sometimes made serious gaffes (such as her conflicting claims on the same page of "Art and Cognition" that architecture is a form of art, that all art re-creates reality, but that architecture does not re-create reality--huh?), and she sometimes applied her ideas in very controlling, disrespectful ways to people she presumably cared very much about but whose aesthetic values she could not accept.

Ba'alChatzaf:

I have trouble with this. We can describe reality, model reality, represent reality. I do not see how we can recreate reality. Reality is at least 30 billion light years across. That sounds like a bit much for humans to do. I cannot take this literally.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Roger Bissell]

Response to post #30.

REB:

But these are some of Rand's theoretical virtues. In applying those powerful insights and theoretical tools, she sometimes made serious gaffes (such as her conflicting claims on the same page of "Art and Cognition" that architecture is a form of art, that all art re-creates reality, but that architecture does not re-create reality--huh?), and she sometimes applied her ideas in very controlling, disrespectful ways to people she presumably cared very much about but whose aesthetic values she could not accept.

Ba'alChatzaf:

I have trouble with this. We can describe reality, model reality, represent reality. I do not see how we can recreate reality. Reality is at least 30 billion light years across. That sounds like a bit much for humans to do. I cannot take this literally.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Then don't!!

Or, better yet, get out your dictionary and see for yourself that "re-create" means to create anew, which can mean either (1) to create again or (2) to create in a new form.

You are completely correct in arguing that it is impossible to do #1 (except in a very scatalogical sense). But #2 is exactly what artists do -- they create the world anew in a symbolic form. They make a miniature, imaginary world in which they embody what is significant to them about reality.

I'm referring here to what I developed, painfully and at length, in my essay "Art as Microcosm," which is posted here on OL and was published several years ago in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. Several people have made kind offers to discuss this essay with me, but other more important matters seem to keep getting in the way. (You know, vital issues like James Valliant's book, Lindsay Perigo's nastiness, or Victor Pross's frauds.)

You are welcome to read the essay and share your comments about it with me, either by private email or here on OL.

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

Think top down, not bottom up.

You don't recreate subparticles. You recreate entities that can be found in nature by emphasizing or exaggerating some features and diminishing or omitting others. You don't recreate reduced parts, you recreate wholes.

Or you create new entities altogether (but this is still a recreation of reality if looked at from the angle I am talking about).

Think "create entity" as reality producing one and being one at the same time. Then, if man makes an entity that does not occur without man's cognitive/physical efforts, he "recreates reality."

EDIT: Of course, this exends to microcosms, as brilliantly presented by one Roger Bissell, which I once promised to analyze but keep putting off...

In this case, the recreation is of both background and entity.

Michael

[Jonathan]

Perhaps it would have been better if instead of saying that art is a "re-creation of reality," Rand had said that it is a "stylized simulation, a substitute, or a model of an imaginary alternate or potential reality," since that's what she meant according to her further elaborations on the subject.

J

[Jonathan]

When people say things like "Romantic music is objectively superior," or "Romantic art is the best art," wouldn't that mean that all Romantic art is superior to all non-Romantic art? If a world-renowned professional artist creates a non-Romantic piece of art, and a novice creates a Romantic piece, wouldn't the novice's work be automatically better if "Romantic art is the best art"? We wouldn't even need to look at the two artworks. All we'd have to do is hear the one artist admit that his work is not Romantic, and the other say that his is, and we'd instantly know which was "objectively superior," no?

J

Edited February 1, 2008 by Jonathan

[Dragonfly]

I'm referring here to what I developed, painfully and at length, in my essay "Art as Microcosm," which is posted here on OL and was published several years ago in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. Several people have made kind offers to discuss this essay with me, but other more important matters seem to keep getting in the way. (You know, vital issues like James Valliant's book, Lindsay Perigo's nastiness, or Victor Pross's frauds.)

You can hardly say that it hasn't been discussed on this forum, with 298 replies in that thread. I think that anyone who wants to make a new contribution to that discussion should first (re)read all the existing posts, to avoid endless repetitions of the same arguments. I just reread the whole thread, which was quite interesting. You won't find that kind of discussion on a philistine forum like Solo...

[BaalChatzaf]

You are completely correct in arguing that it is impossible to do #1 (except in a very scatalogical sense). But #2 is exactly what artists do -- they create the world anew in a symbolic form. They make a miniature, imaginary world in which they embody what is significant to them about reality.

REB

That sounds like they are -modeling- reality which is what we all must do to deal with it. We have to ignore some features and properties and emphasize other features and properties to get along (nay, to survive). It is identifying the essentials.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Roger Bissell]

You are completely correct in arguing that it is impossible to do #1 (except in a very scatalogical sense). But #2 is exactly what artists do -- they create the world anew in a symbolic form. They make a miniature, imaginary world in which they embody what is significant to them about reality.

REB

That sounds like they are -modeling- reality which is what we all must do to deal with it. We have to ignore some features and properties and emphasize other features and properties to get along (nay, to survive). It is identifying the essentials.

Ba'al Chatzaf

That is ~exactly~ what artists are doing. They are symbolizing reality, but instead of doing it in a discursive form, they are doing it in a "presentational" form. (In my essay, I contrast them as linguistic symbols vs. aesthetic symbols or microcosms.)

A "picture" is worth a thousand words. A well-constructed aesthetic microcosm is worth a thousand-word philosophical essay on the nature of the world and how to live in it.

Why might you want an aesthetic microcosm? Oh, perhaps for emotional fuel or inspiration. Perhaps for "the sense of living in a world in which everything is as it should be." Perhaps just to see a vision of how things ~might~ be, whether or not you agree that that's how they ~ought~ to be.

Artists are the closest to God that humans can be. They are generators of alternate realities, and they let us peek (look or listen or think) into them. Hell of a deal, I say.

REB

[Ellen Stuttle]

[Edited at 4 AM California time for ease of reading by my discussion partners! ]

Thank you, Roger. I'm most appreciative.

I'd best explain to the list at large what's going on. I sent Roger a panic email, asking him please to make changes in the screen appearance of his long posts. The visual appearance was setting off my neurologic problem.

The cause of this problem isn't clear. The reigning theory for awhile was that it's an aftermath result of my having had a mild case of childhood polio. Persons who had childhood polio, even cases in which there's been no trouble for years, can develop problems in later life; thus at first my neurologist thought that my symptoms were due to resurgent polio. Subsequently he's become unsure of the diagnosis; there are contraindications.

The symptomatology is clear, however. What happens is similar to an epileptic attack. It isn't epilepsy, but it's similar to epilepsy in that there's unsynchronous nerve firing and resultant spasms. The unsynchronous firing pattern gets set off in my right motor cortex, with a result of uncontrollable twitching in the voluntary muscles of the left side, including those of the left orbit of both eyes.

The trigger is known to be light. Prolonged exposure to any bright lighting, even natural sunlight, can set it off. Some light sources are worse than others at triggering it. Also, reading as such for a long stretch can trigger it. Reading a computer screen for longer than about an hour at a time is pretty sure to cause trouble.

Furthermore, the sheer appearance of certain typographical displays can set it off double quick. (Roger's long posts, in which he was quoting a previous long post and then continuing without break for white space into lengthy paragraphs was doing the job.)

Once the twitches have been set going, they're difficult to get stopped. Just turning off the computer or putting down the book or closing my eyes for awhile isn't sufficient. I'll sometimes have to lie in a dark room for a number of hours before the firing pattern reverts to normal. Thus the problem can become a serious nuisance. Thus, when one of Roger's posts set it off last night, I emailed him in panic asking for mercy -- a request with which he's kindly complied.

There's a lot which I'd like to respond to in Roger's posts, and I'll try to respond as life permits. For now I'll just say: to be continued... (and thanks again, Roger, for heeding my plea).

Ellen

___

[BaalChatzaf]

A "picture" is worth a thousand words. A well-constructed aesthetic microcosm is worth a thousand-word philosophical essay on the nature of the world and how to live in it.

.....

Artists are the closest to God that humans can be. They are generators of alternate realities, and they let us peek (look or listen or think) into them. Hell of a deal, I say.

REB

In the not too distant future the 2D screen (which is a home for 1.2 D strings) may be replaced or supplemented by a moving hologram which would make it a 4D visual representation. If we could only simulate the sense of touch and small we would have the ultimate representation.

Currently physicists using very expensive particle accelerators can simulate the conditions of the cosmos not long after the Big Bang. The physicists have modeled the conditions of the Cosmos to within 10^-43 seconds after the B.B. Only God can go the rest of the way. Think of a zillion $ accelerator as an abstract moving sculpture or mobile. Sometime this year the best of this class of art-work will go online at CERN, once they have the finally glitches ironed out. Back to the Future. Onward to the Higgs Boson.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Ellen Stuttle]

Roger,

First, I have to applaud the amount of effort and thought you've put into your reflections on aesthetics. I'm especially glad to have your posts #28 and #30. Those summarize in a brief enough fashion, I might be better able to address what I see as the overlaps and differences between us. I think the overarching differences lie in the respective degrees of value we find -- and the respective interpretations we've formed -- of Rand's actual writing on the subject. You see her work as being a better theory than I see it as being. It's not that I see no value in her ideas, but I view them as so infused by moralism as to have a predominantly harmful result. I've often summarized this result as her turning the aesthetics response into a morals exam.

Clearly, you're trying to extricate her views from that result. But I think that to the extent you succeed at doing so, this is more because of your knowledge of other aesthetic theorists, especially Susanne Langer on general aesthetics and Charles Rosen (and similar writers) on musical aesthetics. In other words, it's because of your infusing into Rand something you've gotten from sources besides Rand. I think the product of your infusion casts her work in a more beneficent light than is strictly justified.

I'm not sure how to proceed. I'm groping for an angle of approach which is practicable from the standpoint of my posting limits. Maybe the best way is to start with the order in which she wrote her pieces on aesthetics. You're sort of approaching from the end backward, but that isn't the way she did it. Instead, her views developed in a way which I think supports my claim that upholding the superiority of her preferences was a driving force. It isn't that I think she "tried to smuggle her literary and/or ethical values into her aesthetics" (quoting from your post #30) in any conscious way, that she sat down and said to herself, I'm going to prove that my tastes are better. It's that the whole way she went about developing her theories leads to this implied conclusion.

So, what I'll do next is to type a list of her essays on aesthetics in the order in which they were penned.

Ellen

___

[Ellen Stuttle]

Order of Publication of Rand's Aesthetics Articles

?, 1962: "Introduction to Ninety-Three"

November 1962: "The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age"

October-November 1963: "The Goal of My Writing"

January 1965: "Bootleg Romanticism"

March 1965: "Art and Moral Treason"

April 1965: "The Psycho-Epistemology of Art"

February 1966: "Philosophy and Sense of Life"

March 1966: "Art and Sense of Life"

July-August 1968: "Basic Principles of Literature"

May-July 1969: "What Is Romanticism?"

April-June 1971: "Art and Cognition"

___

[Roger Bissell]

Ellen, there are at least two important pieces by Rand on aesthetics that are not in your list. Well, one is, but it's a later, truncated version: the esthetic vacuum essay. The original version was several times longer and was the lecture she gave on the Columbia University radio station in 1960 and again in 1962. If you are interested in reading it, I transcribed it from the tape sold by Second Renaissance, and I reviewed it in JARS several years ago.

The other piece is actually "outtakes" from her 1958 lectures on fiction writing. There was a healthy chunk of material on her concept and definition of art -- probably also material on sense of life. Torre Boeckmann (sp?) butchered it in the edited volume he produced. I think this is unconscionable. Even the tapes of those lectures are somewhat censored, especially in regard to comments made by Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. This is history, and it should be made available intact for scholarly purposes and to provide a complete, honest record.

Enough of the soapbox ranting. I mainly wanted to make the point that Rand's basic aesthetic views were pretty much formed by 1958, when she first started writing non-fiction material (not counting her early essays on politics in the 40s). There was pretty much of an explosion of stuff across the board by her around 1958-1960. Interesting, considering how depressed (and incapacitated?) she was after the publication of Atlas.

REB

[Ellen Stuttle]

Roger,

Yes, I would be interested in seeing the material you reference. I think it's only fair to warn you, however, that if, as you describe, her "basic aesthetic views were pretty much formed by 1958," I expect I'll be even less enthused by what seems to me their not-well-stitched fabric than I already am.

Ellen

PS: Question to MSK: Has something been done changing control features of the site? Little details aren't working, such as the "Top" button, and typo corrections seem to be glitching...

___

Edited February 3, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

My "Top" button works.

My own typo corrections work fine, too. If you let me know a specific case, I might be able to pinpoint the problem. Formatting gets weird at times because we enabled html so we could embed videos. Even so, you still have to choose to use it—a new selection appears at the bottom. This is prone to happen with copy/paste from web pages. When that happens, select the text and click the "AA" with the "X" through it button, which will remove the formatting, and reformat it.

Also, when the program misbehaves, in over 90% of all cases the problem will clear up if you clear your cookies and reboot.

Michael