The ghost of Ayn Rand is haunting me

[robinturner]

I was chatting to one of my colleagues on the bus, and we got talking about finding time in our busy schedules for recreational reading. I confessed that I spend almost all the time I'm not working on the Internet, and for this reason get through books at the rate of one every three months. She, in contrast, always makes time for reading.

"For example, I've been reading this really great book - in fact I've been recommending it to all my friends."
"Oh yeah, what's it called?"
"The Fountainhead"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! [cue special effect of Solri spiralling into a dark void]

Comments

[chr0me-kitten.livejournal.com]

poor solri. At least you didn't once find yourself inadvertently in a relationship with a Randist (I hope).

[solri.livejournal.com]

Perish the thought. Though I could handle a social-democratic woman who had secret, guilty Ayn Rand / Ann Coulter fantasies. "OK, you be the objectivist heroine, and I'll be Eldrige Cleaver."

Sorry, that was really tasteless.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Blood in my eye! ... I've just realised how out of date I am. Out of idle curisosity, I googled Cleaver and found he later ran for the Republican Party. I really am stuck in a 1960s time-loop.

BTW, I never liked Cleaver anyway - he was the BP who came out with idea that raping white women was OK. Now Huey Newton - he was sound, and was a major influence on my adolescence. I'm not going to google him, in case I find he served as an advisor to Ronnie Reagan.

[chr0me-kitten.livejournal.com]

I took it in the context you meant.

It was sick, but it made me laugh out loud.

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

Funny you posted this -- I was just talking to a friend last night about a piece called A Huey P. Newton Story. Solo theater show written and performed by Roger Guenveur Smith, directed/produced by Spike Lee for film. (Smith has been in many Lee films). I saw the original stage show in San Francisco many years ago, and it's one of the best solo pieces I've ever encountered. It really makes the case for how brilliant and visionary Newton was -- and how fucked things got with him, especially toward the end. They used Newton's photos of the Oakland skyline as the backdrop, which he shot from his penthouse where he was pretty much a prisoner of his own coke-addled paranoia.

Not sure if you can find it on DVD or video, but well worth checking out if you do find it.

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

I would hope the ghost of your colleague is now out and about in the cosmos.

My condolences.

[alexgal.livejournal.com]

Being fascinated by Rand after the misguided age of 16 is just so wrong.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I think that's the difference between Rand and Nietzsche. Many people read Nietzsche under the influence of adolescent hormones and think "Whoa! Superman! Spit on the slave gods and trample on the untermensch!" then re-read him a decade or so later and see the pathos and occasional flashes of insight. With Rand, there is no second reading.

[ironed_orchid]

Sadly, some people never read anything else once they've read Rand. To be honest, I met some many randroids that I never actually read the woman herself, I have only skimmed a couple of her books in the bookshop, before hiding them in the gardening section lest someone below the age of 40 should become infected..