When Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize for Economics a couple of months ago, I said it’s time to leave Milton Friedman behind. Now somebody at Newsweek is wondering the same thing I am about Ayn Rand. Can her ideas survive the economic crisis?
Ayn Rand, full of her fetishes and obsessions, sure wrote some strained and stilted dialogue in her screenplay for The Fountainhead, which was expertly directed and photographed, yet is anything but a typical 40’s Hollywood movie.
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Here is an excerpt from the novel, taken from the scene where Dominque follows Howard to his room:
He asked: “What do you want?”
She answered: “You know what I want,” her voice heavy and flat.
“Yes, but I want to hear you say it. All of it.”
“If you wish.” Her voice had the sound of efficiency, obeying an order with metallic precision. “I want to sleep with you. Now, tonight, and at any time you may care to call me. I want your naked body, your skin, your mouth, your hands. I want you — like this — not hysterical with desire — but coldly and consciously — without dignity and without regrets — I want you — I have no self-respect to bargain with me and divide me — I want you — I want you like an animal, or a cat on a fence, or a whore.”
Hey, that’s quite an offer. The free market at work! Ayn Rand wrote a couple of great trashy novels, with literary and political pretensions. College boys ate it up, and somehow her aspirations were legitimized beyond Hollywood. I say embrace Rand as the romance novelist she was, who obsessively painted portraits of her idealized leading man, and stop giving credit for her work being anything more than that.
“Atlas Shrugged” is a must-read book, for different reasons than, say, “The Grape of Wrath.” But at over 1000 pages it requires a major commitment. John Galt’s highly repetitive speech towards the end is something like 65 pages by itself. Before getting there you get to read passages like this one:
What depression? I’m still fanning myself off after watching that scene! Pretty silly dialog, and melodramatic music, but what woman on Earth doesn’t know that LOOK on Patricia Neal’s face when she first spots Gary Cooper “across a crowded room?” Naturally, she wasn’t faking, as we found out later. That’s a look a woman just cannot fake.
Joan, I feel terrible! That show sounds really interesting! Molly and I made Tom go upstairs to watch all the great History Channel shows on his computer because “It’s a Wonderful Life” was on NBC and we always watch it in the living room with all the Christmas ornaments. They play it again Christmas Eve but we’re at church so we miss it. Yeah, I have it on DVD, but somehow I have to watch it in real-time.
Doug, Patricia Neal reminds me of the kind of beauty Mom had back in her hey-dey. Sort of the “Intellectual/Taciturn Man’s Fantasy.” I guess you would say. Why else would Dad marry her? 😉 And here’s another surprise. Why have I thought all these years that Gary Cooper was SHORT? He was a breathtaking 6’2″! Must have been some other actor who had to jump up on a soapbox to kiss all his leading ladies.
Think I’ll run out to the library tomorrow and get a copy of “Atlas Shrugged.” Sure gets yer motors running! One last thing: the very last bit Coop says to Neal’s character was pretty much the thing Tom said to me early in our relationship. I was newly divorced and I flung myself at him, too. He VERY wisely wanted me to show him that I could support myself and be on my own for awhile before any talk of engagements or marriage came out. Of course, times being what they were, we DID agree to be monogamous. Very wise man, my husband!
Hi Doug! I’m filling up your “Recent Comments” section but as I said, you have a very interesting and topical blog, oh Great Dograt! Now, I have on a late showing on the History Channel of a new show called “Crash:The Next Great Depression” that is for people like me who know squat to very little about economic theory and is explaining the similarities of the 1920s crash to the circumstances of today. One lender told of “lying loans” of recent years where your income and job were not verified. He said all you needed to get a loan was a figure and “to be able to make a fog on a mirror and prove you are breathing”. Even though in Ohio 23 mortgages were given to dead people. Oy! Now, can anyone explain what Ayn Rand’s fantasies have to do with economies and a way of thought? I don’t get it! Where does economic wisdom come from a lusty story?