I never liked Ayn Rand (Alice Zinov, Ivanova Rosenbaum), yes, this name is too good to be true. Something about her and the people who were so devoted to her always irritated me. In truth, I knew very little about her, except for her novels, it seemed very long, Alan Greenspan was associated with her in some way, and she had a painful affair with Nathaniel Branden (Nathan Blumenthal) too good to be true. I heard an interview with Brenden and Ken Wilber, in which Brenden, a recognized psychologist, discussed the matter with the much older and married Rand, with the permission of both their spouses.
Well, I don't like Republicans either. I took the Harvard online tests, all of them. Gays, blacks, Jews, women, I must say, surprisingly, no prejudice. But when I passed the Republican exam, the big red light went out on the computer, the sounds of the horn sounded (I am exaggerating). But yes, according to Harvard, the only evasion that I have concerns the Republicans. And something like the type of Republican Ayn Rand, I find it particularly fierce. New agents for the right wing. But do not doubt their zeal.
According to the New York Times. When in 1991 the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month club revealed that the most important book in the response was life, Raind Atlas Shrugged was the second popular choice, after the Bible. ”
I can not speak for the accuracy of the data, but still shocking. Alan Greenspan, Neoconservatives, Dick Cheney and Ayn Rand as their muse, sending America to imperialist wars and eliminating income tax for the rich as an incentive to achieve. That, plus a strange affair with young Brenden, forgive me if I do not have a positive image of Mrs. Rand.
This is the spring of 2009, in Murcia, Spain. I stay in the old country house where my ex-wife lives on a very large farm about 5 kilometers from the nearest village, which probably has several thousand inhabitants. The rest of the villages in this area are much smaller, some of them have less than 50 people. I have no money, though completely broken, no car, a limited amount of food, and my ex-wife is excited to see me squirming. I am mostly hungry all day, drinking is out of the question, only I have coffee and cigarettes and some books in a house that can be considered a palace, with a tower, a crest in front of the house, perhaps 10,000 square meters. ft (1000 sq. meters). And I forgot to tell you, very intermittent hot water, like every three days or so. How is a 42-year-old man in this situation? You and many other people might laugh at this, but keep reading my blog, and maybe I will give some advice.
I consider myself well read. What does it mean? I mean the school reads well. From Aristotle and Plato through Schopenhauer and Nietzsche all the important Russian, French and English writers, “New York”, you understood. And whenever I come across someone famous, I did not read, this is a different me. I have very clear ideas about reading. First, I never read anything twice, I decided long ago, I prefer to read more than enjoy a few trusted few. This is for me a question of temperaments, but I made a decision, and I strictly follow it. Another rule I have about reading is that I don’t read anything that has been written over the past 50 years. The main reason is that I do not trust the critics, for me the only and best critic is time. Time, as a critic, never refuses and never hesitates; it is flawless. So I do not read trash. I will not read what I think will not be read in 50 years. And the best way to do this is to read only those things that have been printed for at least 50 years. Yes, there are some exceptions, but very rarely, and when I do them, it’s usually for some kind of book of pop spirituality that I have to read by a woman.
So maybe someone who hasn't read Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code (although I'm a big fan of DaVinci Inquest, the first TV show that hooked me over the years) was considered well-read? I think so. Can someone who has not read Stendhal be considered well-read, maybe more complicated. Well, a long way back to Ayn Rand. There I am on a farm, crashed, hungry, without booze, just cigarettes, potatoes and a large vessel Nescafe. I walked without talking to anyone. I find the old edition of Ayn Rand Fountainhead, which I left there many years ago. It was a pocket edition, a small print, slightly divergent at the seams. Address in Hong Kong, written on the inner cover. I think I bought it at a second-hand England bookstore in Madrid many years ago.
You cannot say that Mrs. Rand was a virtuoso with prose. Her dialogues sometimes sound very funny. But she understands the plot. And the story pulls you very quickly. This is a massive reading; there is something refreshingly romantic and idealistic in all this. I understand the essence of objectivism, the philosophy of Mrs. Rand. But I understand why academies avoid it. It is not intellectually very interesting. This is what smart 13-year-olds may worry about, but not 30-year-olds. And I think this is what has always worried me about people who were fanatics of Ayn Rand (except that Harvard says that I have a pre-programmed prejudice towards them) is that they seem so strange children who knew something so complicated, so especially for their age that you will never understand, and they ordered it above you.
However, with regard to fiction, The Fountainhead is an excellent reader, very well built, maybe too long. I think she could carry the story together earlier, a lot of tension went to the end. This is becoming too obvious. And it is so nice to find the author, while in my 40s, who I thought I did not like, and I really liked it. I look forward to reading Atlas Shrugged.
