The OL "tribe" and the Tribal Mindset

[Ellen Stuttle]

When I see that list with points, I wonder what all the fuss is about. [....]

It wasn't just the material used from Milgram which occasioned a fuss. There was also brief closely paraphrased uncredited material from Mimi Reisel Gladstein, Robert Hunt, and Leonard Peikoff. Also a two-word unreferenced quote ("writing machine") from Rand's Journals. I was told, though I haven't ever checked this out, that a few details of wording in the unreferenced passages were unquoted exact wordings. What can be seen by direct comparison of the first and second published versions is that four or five phrasings were either dropped from the first edition or slightly altered in the second.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....] (for example Taggart Terminal obviously is the Grand Central Station in disguise).

I don't know if I've ever thought of this before, but it occurred to me yesterday: Although the maze of tunnels and the office building towering above the terminal mirror Grand Central, the location can't be where Grand Central factually is -- pretty much at the center of Manhattan. The Taggart railroad system is transcontinental. The transcontinental trains leaving New York City depart from Penn Station.

Ellen

[Chris Grieb]

[....] (for example Taggart Terminal obviously is the Grand Central Station in disguise).

I don't know if I've ever thought of this before, but it occurred to me yesterday: Although the maze of tunnels and the office building towering above the terminal mirror Grand Central, the location can't be where Grand Central factually is -- pretty much at the center of Manhattan. The Taggart railroad system is transcontinental. The transcontinental trains leaving New York City depart from Penn Station.

Ellen

I think it possible Ayn Rand was using both locations. Atlas is a work of fiction.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Wrong. It's addressed to Doug Bandler, a recent new poster there.

The rest of your post is of course your fancifying. That statement is straightforward factual error.

Stuttle,

I really wish you would read. Robert already corrected the "factual error" and I agreed. All you have to do is read the posts immediately below the one where I made the error. They are quite short.

This is not the first time I have seen you say something someone else has just said as if you were presenting something new.

This is a pretty weird habit.

I stand by my analysis of your motives. Whether you change or not, I don't care. I am only concerned that the reader get to see it clearly, especially the anti-Barbara stuff--but ultimately all of it, without all your habitual sneakiness and doublespeak.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....] (for example Taggart Terminal obviously is the Grand Central Station in disguise).

I don't know if I've ever thought of this before, but it occurred to me yesterday: Although the maze of tunnels and the office building towering above the terminal mirror Grand Central, the location can't be where Grand Central factually is -- pretty much at the center of Manhattan. The Taggart railroad system is transcontinental. The transcontinental trains leaving New York City depart from Penn Station.

Ellen

I think it possible Ayn Rand was using both locations. Atlas is a work of fiction.

Yes, Chris. What led to the thought...see the sequence... (chuckling)

Ellen

[Robert Campbell]

I was told, though I haven't ever checked this out, that a few details of wording in the unreferenced passages were unquoted exact wordings.

Again, Ms. Stuttle must have one hell of a source, if she is willing to accept all of this on his, her, or its word, without checking anything out for herself.

If her source is so reliable, and the claims made by her source are all correct, which shouldn't this person be stepping into the limelight and taking credit?

Robert Campbell

PS. A little while ago Ms. Stuttle didn't know who Robert Hunt was. Now she claims to know Robert Hunt's original text well enough to be able to identify a "close paraphrase" of it. Remarkable.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

The urge to smear for vanity is the mother of invention...

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

[....] (for example Taggart Terminal obviously is the Grand Central Station in disguise).

I don't know if I've ever thought of this before, but it occurred to me yesterday: Although the maze of tunnels and the office building towering above the terminal mirror Grand Central, the location can't be where Grand Central factually is -- pretty much at the center of Manhattan. The Taggart railroad system is transcontinental. The transcontinental trains leaving New York City depart from Penn Station.

Ellen

I think it possible Ayn Rand was using both locations. Atlas is a work of fiction.

Fiction?

--Brant

learns something new every day

[Rich Engle]

Ellen points out a smoking gun, nay, a smoking Howitzer!:

Also a two-word unreferenced quote ("writing machine") from Rand's Journals.

Yeah, that's a totally original quote. It should be patented. Geez.

Edited March 25, 2010 by Rich Engle

[Robert Campbell]

Yeah, some smoking Howitzer.

Here's the passage Ms. Stuttle was lately complaining about:

To produce the work of art that Atlas Shrugged is, Ayn Rand became a writing engine who exhaustingly planned, edited, and revised in order to make her masterpiece better and better. All that mattered to her was to perform with integrity, dedication, and consistent focus until it was done properly. This is obvious to anyone who reads Rand's journals and drafts which illustrate her process of continually improving this great novel. (p. 2, first printing, my italics)

I don't have the Harriman volume in front of me, but I believe Rand actually wrote "writing machine" in that journal entry.

Ms. Stuttle seems to think so, because she has misremembered Ed Younkins saying it that way.

Robert Campbell

[Dragonfly]

I don't know if I've ever thought of this before, but it occurred to me yesterday: Although the maze of tunnels and the office building towering above the terminal mirror Grand Central, the location can't be where Grand Central factually is -- pretty much at the center of Manhattan. The Taggart railroad system is transcontinental. The transcontinental trains leaving New York City depart from Penn Station.

The New York (and other places, including America in general) in AS is not the same as the New York that we know. Yet she does use existing names in those cases.

[Ellen Stuttle]

The New York (and other places, including America in general) in AS is not the same as the New York that we know. Yet she does use existing names in those cases.

And no one ever said that she didn't. In fact I specifically said that she did use US geography. The issue pertained to what she took out, what she deleted in editing. In The Fountainhead there were historical people and places references which she deleted in successive drafts. But her conception of Atlas was of a world in an altered time frame from the start. She didn't delete from the manuscript historic references which she didn't put in it to start with.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Yeah, some smoking Howitzer.

Here's the passage Ms. Stuttle was lately complaining about:

To produce the work of art that Atlas Shrugged is, Ayn Rand became a writing engine who exhaustingly planned, edited, and revised in order to make her masterpiece better and better. All that mattered to her was to perform with integrity, dedication, and consistent focus until it was done properly. This is obvious to anyone who reads Rand's journals and drafts which illustrate her process of continually improving this great novel. (p. 2, first printing, my italics)

I don't have the Harriman volume in front of me, but I believe Rand actually wrote "writing machine" in that journal entry.

Ms. Stuttle seems to think so, because she has misremembered Ed Younkins saying it that way.

Robert Campbell

I miswrote "writing engine" as "writing machine," even though I was looking at the text in the 2nd version. I was in a hurry to leave for an appointment.

The text in the Journals says "writing engine" (pg. 48):

From now on--no thought whatever about yourself, only about your work. You don't exist. You are only a writing engine. Don't stop, until you really and honestly know that you cannot go on.

Concentration!

[....]

The full paragraph (without the added italics) from the pdf I have of the 1st version of the Younkins includes a sentence Robert left out. It also includes a couple words -- "her work" -- which I assume Robert left out in haste. And it uses the word "persistent" not "consistent."

Atlas Shrugged is written with tenacious purposefulness and precision of mind. To produce the work of art that Atlas Shrugged is, Ayn Rand became a writing engine who exhaustingly planned, edited, and revised in order to make her masterpiece better and better. All that mattered to her was to perform her work with integrity, dedication, and persistent focus until it was done properly. This is obvious to anyone who reads Rand's journals and drafts which illustrate her process of continually improving this great novel.

The revised version reads:

Atlas Shrugged is written with conviction and precision of mind. To produce her novels, Ayn Rand became what she called a "writing engine" who exhaustingly planned, edited, and revised in order to make them better and better (Rand 1997, 48). All that mattered to her was to perform her work with solemn purposefulness until it was done properly. This is clear to anyone who reads Rand's journals and drafts which illustrate her process of continually improving this great novel (Knapp 1998).

Did Younkins ever read Rand's drafts?

As to Robert's description "complaining about," no, I wasn't "complaining about." I was explaining to Dragonfly that the fuss wasn't only over the paragraph about AR's editing process but over other details too.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

I just reread the idiotic Slate article, and I think it's silly for people to blame the "tragedy" of it on anything that Barbara or Anne Heller wrote. Johann "Hari Potter" Hari's strongest criticisms, as well as his most hostile smears, were based on what Rand herself had written, or what Hari idiotically misunderstood or misrepresented her to have written. If Rand's critics have been given "ammunition" by anyone, it's Rand who gave them nukes compared to the incidental BBs or .22 shells that others may have provided here and there.

Where Hari got the material, and the presentation of Rand's life he gives -- which is quite a bit lengthier than the quotes he uses out of context from Rand -- is mostly from Heller's account, with touches from Burns, e.g., the amphetamine use. Not that Heller (or Burns) wrote it the way Hari uses it. But Heller aids such interpretation, for instance, by saying that Rand's description of Hickman (actually of Danny Renahan) was a description of characteristics of Rand's own (pg. 70), and what Heller quotes from Barbara Weiss, which she presents at face value, entering no cavil, was picked up thousands of places on the web either from Hari's article or from direct reading as the "gemstone," so to speak, of Heller's depiction.

--

Not to mention that Lindsay Perigo and his flunkies somehow think I gave aid and encouragement to the author of that genuinely idiotic article.

Robert Campbell

Alpha Bête Noire

By whom and on what thread was this charge made?

Ellen

[Dragonfly]

But her conception of Atlas was of a world in an altered time frame from the start. She didn't delete from the manuscript historic references which she didn't put in it to start with.

How do you know?

[Jonathan]

Where Hari got the material, and the presentation of Rand's life he gives -- which is quite a bit lengthier than the quotes he uses out of context from Rand -- is mostly from Heller's account, with touches from Burns, e.g., the amphetamine use. Not that Heller (or Burns) wrote it the way Hari uses it. But Heller aids such interpretation, for instance, by saying that Rand's description of Hickman (actually of Danny Renahan) was a description of characteristics of Rand's own (pg. 70),

Are you saying that you believe that Rand did not have the characteristics that she describes Renahan as having?

and what Heller quotes from Barbara Weiss, which she presents at face value, entering no cavil, was picked up thousands of places on the web either from Hari's article or from direct reading as the "gemstone," so to speak, of Heller's depiction.

What do you think Weiss meant by "I came to look on her as a killer of people," and what do you think most people take it to mean? You don't think anyone is taking it literally, do you?

I think most people probably take it to mean that Rand dominated the people in her life, that she didn't value their individual personalities or respect their differences, but aggressively sought to rid those closest to her of ideas, traits and even subjective tastes that she disliked, and to replace them with her own allegedly superior ideas, traits and subjective tastes.

J

Edited March 26, 2010 by Jonathan

[Robert Campbell]

Ms. Stuttle pretends not to know that Lindsay Perigo has attributed to Neil Parille and me direct responsibility for the idiotic hit piece on Rand of which he was complaining.

All ya gotta do is read the title of

http://www.solopassi...5#comment-85723

"The Babsian/Campbellian/Parillian Chickens ... come home to roost"

Next question?

Robert Campbell

Alpha Bête Noire

[Jonathan]

Ms. Stuttle pretends not to know that Lindsay Perigo has attributed to Neil Parille and me direct responsibility for the idiotic hit piece on Rand of which he was complaining.

All ya gotta do is read the title of

http://www.solopassi...5#comment-85723

"The Babsian/Campbellian/Parillian Chickens ... come home to roost"

Next question?

Robert Campbell

Alpha Bête Noire

Pigero is blaming Barbara for others' accusations that Rand was an amphetamine addict with a drug-addled brain, despite the fact that Barbara concludes that the evidence doesn't support accusations of drug abuse or impairment? Why am I not surprised?

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jonathan,

It's obvious to any idiot that if not for the Branden books, and the new biographies, Hari would have been an instant convert to laissez-faire capitalism right after reading Atlas Shrugged and would have accepted Rand for the trailblazing heroine she was. Rather than write against her ideas and person, his article would have praised her to the skies and he would probably be in the Tea Party movement...

Michael

[Jonathan]

Jonathan,

It's obvious to any idiot that if not for the Branden books, and the new biographies, Hari would have been an instant convert to laissez-faire capitalism right after reading Atlas Shrugged and would have accepted Rand for the trailblazing heroine she was. Rather than write against her ideas and person, his article would have praised her to the skies and he would probably be in the Tea Party movement...

Michael

Plus he probably would have been even better at quidditch.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

But her conception of Atlas was of a world in an altered time frame from the start. She didn't delete from the manuscript historic references which she didn't put in it to start with.

How do you know?

You mean the first statement? The second is a straightforward point of logic: one can't delete from a manuscript what isn't in it.

I've already answered about the first statement. I did not examine the drafts myself. I'm assuming that the reports of the person who did, who I know to be a careful researcher, are accurate as to the progression of the contents and the editing.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jonathan,

My, my, he looks so precious.

I wonder if he can air conduct with a magic wand...

I also wonder, should he ever get his grubby mitts on power, if he would smile in regret as he ordered an execution for someone who disagreed in public with the party line...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I'm assuming that the reports of the person who did, who I know to be a careful researcher, are accurate...

I have a great idea.

Why don't we just take Stuttle at her word and plain out admit she's a badass?

She know T-H-I-N-G-S and P-E-O-P-L-E--W-H-O--M-A-T-T-E-R, and we don't...

We should never forget it, too.

Ooh...

Ahhh...

(I think I'm going to faint from so much admiration... ooh... ahhh...

... thud...)

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

Where Hari got the material, and the presentation of Rand's life he gives -- which is quite a bit lengthier than the quotes he uses out of context from Rand -- is mostly from Heller's account, with touches from Burns, e.g., the amphetamine use. Not that Heller (or Burns) wrote it the way Hari uses it. But Heller aids such interpretation, for instance, by saying that Rand's description of Hickman (actually of Danny Renahan) was a description of characteristics of Rand's own (pg. 70),

Are you saying that you believe that Rand did not have the characteristics that she describes Renahan as having?

Of course she didn't. Here's the passage Heller quotes:

pg. 70

Of the protagonist in her story, a murderer, [Rand] wrote, "He doesn't understand because thankfully he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people. Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should." (This, by the way, is practically a diagnostic description of narcissism, and also a description of Rand herself.)

I don't even agree as to its being "practically a diagnostic description of narcissism," which in turn I don't think is an actual something anyway.

and what Heller quotes from Barbara Weiss, which she presents at face value, entering no cavil, was picked up thousands of places on the web either from Hari's article or from direct reading as the "gemstone," so to speak, of Heller's depiction.

What do you think Weiss meant by "I came to look on her as a killer of people," and what do you think most people take it to mean? You don't think anyone is taking it literally, do you?

No. I think they take it psychologically, as destroyer of people's personhood.

I think most people probably take it to mean that Rand dominated the people in her life, that she didn't value their individual personalities or respect their differences, but aggressively sought to rid those closest to her of ideas, traits and even subjective tastes that she disliked, and to replace them with her own allegedly superior ideas, traits and subjective tastes.

Something like that, which I think is a caricature.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Michael,

For your information, I haven't seen or had any direct contact with Shoshana Milgram for upward of 25 years.

I have enough familiarity with her work to conclude that she's a careful researcher. One can know that someone who died before one was born was a careful researcher by studying the person's work. No private pipeline required.

Ellen