Green Energy
Perusing the new book arrivals at the Kansas State University library, I was pleasantly surprised to find a new hardback copy of Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed. This work, edited by Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz, contains transcripts of dozens of interviews of Rand. The book begins with a short interview from 1932 when Rand was working as an unknown scriptwriter in Hollywood. The largest section of the book is devoted to the period in the early and mid 1960s when Rand was interviewed on numerous occasions at American universities.
The last section contains interviews from both television and radio. The last part of the book provides fascinating discussions between Rand and such personalities as Mike Wallace, Johnny Carson, and Edwin Newman. This last is one of my favorites. Newman is critical, but not hostile. Unlike most mainstream media types today, Newman knows how to ask intelligent questions that cut to the heart of the matter. At the end of the interview, which took place in 1972 on NBC, Newman asks Rand on whether her novel Atlas Shrugged is "happening today." Rand's answer is just as relevant now as then:
This book is required reading for anyone interested in the ideas of Ayn Rand.
Crossposted at The Dougout
- Again With This Degenerate
Back in 1961 Gore Vidal typed a review of Ayn Rand's For the New Intellectual. The review was published in Esquire Magazine, which has made it available online. Vidal's main complaint against Rand (and this guy is chock-full of complaints) is...
- 'from Mohammed To Ayn Rand'
My interview with Front Page Magazine, on ProPiganda: Drawing the Line Against Jihad, The Infidel & Pigman. An Excerpt: From Mohammed to Ayn Rand DS: As an ex-Muslim creating a graphic novel about an ex-Muslim who creates an anti-Jihad superhero is...
- With 'atlas Shrugged,' Hollywood May Have Its First Anti-bailout Movie
Hollywood could soon be going Objectivist. After decades in development hell, Ayn Rand's capitalism-minded "Atlas Shrugged" is taking new steps toward the big screen -- with one of the film world's most prominent money men potentially...
- Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Climbs Up Charts During Recession
Counter-intuitive? No, I don't think so. People see what their governments are doing, and they want no part of it. This is the beginning of the Great Rearmament of the Western Human. It's time to depose our bloated, spoiled, childish governments,...
- Atlas Is Shrugging
Stephan Moore at The Wall Street Journal on how America has been living the plot of a fifty-year-old novel: Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme...
Green Energy
Ayn Rand: Objectively Speaking
Perusing the new book arrivals at the Kansas State University library, I was pleasantly surprised to find a new hardback copy of Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed. This work, edited by Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz, contains transcripts of dozens of interviews of Rand. The book begins with a short interview from 1932 when Rand was working as an unknown scriptwriter in Hollywood. The largest section of the book is devoted to the period in the early and mid 1960s when Rand was interviewed on numerous occasions at American universities.
The last section contains interviews from both television and radio. The last part of the book provides fascinating discussions between Rand and such personalities as Mike Wallace, Johnny Carson, and Edwin Newman. This last is one of my favorites. Newman is critical, but not hostile. Unlike most mainstream media types today, Newman knows how to ask intelligent questions that cut to the heart of the matter. At the end of the interview, which took place in 1972 on NBC, Newman asks Rand on whether her novel Atlas Shrugged is "happening today." Rand's answer is just as relevant now as then:
Yes, I see the novel coming true in a more literal sense than I ever expected: the destruction of reason, the orgy of altruism, the demands for sacrifice of everybody to everybody else, complete intellectual chaos, the destruction of the independence of industry. The one thing I didn't predict, because I couldn't have reached that state of imagination, is the ecological crusade. That's the cherry on the cake - the attempt to obliterate industry openly, blatantly, consciously.One could at that Rand did not anticipate the abject Western surrender to Islam under the guise of multiculturalism as the nuts on top of the cake.
This book is required reading for anyone interested in the ideas of Ayn Rand.
Crossposted at The Dougout
- Again With This Degenerate
Back in 1961 Gore Vidal typed a review of Ayn Rand's For the New Intellectual. The review was published in Esquire Magazine, which has made it available online. Vidal's main complaint against Rand (and this guy is chock-full of complaints) is...
- 'from Mohammed To Ayn Rand'
My interview with Front Page Magazine, on ProPiganda: Drawing the Line Against Jihad, The Infidel & Pigman. An Excerpt: From Mohammed to Ayn Rand DS: As an ex-Muslim creating a graphic novel about an ex-Muslim who creates an anti-Jihad superhero is...
- With 'atlas Shrugged,' Hollywood May Have Its First Anti-bailout Movie
Hollywood could soon be going Objectivist. After decades in development hell, Ayn Rand's capitalism-minded "Atlas Shrugged" is taking new steps toward the big screen -- with one of the film world's most prominent money men potentially...
- Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Climbs Up Charts During Recession
Counter-intuitive? No, I don't think so. People see what their governments are doing, and they want no part of it. This is the beginning of the Great Rearmament of the Western Human. It's time to depose our bloated, spoiled, childish governments,...
- Atlas Is Shrugging
Stephan Moore at The Wall Street Journal on how America has been living the plot of a fifty-year-old novel: Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme...