Wednesday, November 29, 2006

The Evangelist

I read last month that there is talk of making Ayn Rand's tome Atlas Shrugged into a film. And I remembered that, despite my bona fide teenage obsession with Rand's work (I'm pretty sure I read it all, and went to Objectivist meetings too boot for a while), I had never seen The Fountainhead on film. Netflix rectified that over the Thanksgiving weekend. I also recently picked up a (mericifully) cheap copy of the book.

I can see why The Fountainhead appealed to my teenage self: all the iconoclasm, all the idealism, all the homage to human creativity and freedom (I managed to overlook the ideological and economic implications of Rand's work at the time). I'm here to report that the film (for which Rand wrote the screenplay) is oh-so-very true to the book, but not for the qualities that attracted me to the story as an adolescent: it's overwrought, histrionic, and lacking all subtley. My adult self cringed and giggled all the way through the film, and cringed and giggled all over again when I opened up the book. It's not that I don't still find aspects of Rand's basic take on what makes people tick useful or accurate to some degree. It's the evangelical hypercapitalism that gets me - along with all the drama.

P.S. Ha - one of the external links on the Rand wiki page takes you to The Atlasphere, a dating and networking site "Connecting the admirers of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged" ! - I'm just not sure why Anthem didn't make the cut?

If you would like to comment on my choice of image, just note this was the only commons image I could find....

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Inventory

I just noticed how long a lapse I've had here. Rest assured I've been thinking about writing, but potential posts are in various stages of edits. Too many things seemed interesting to me in the last month, which is a good thing. But now I have to get around to finishing up my thoughts in some semi-tidy packaging for posting here. Until then, here's a summary of topics of works in progress:

The passage of what would have been the 100th birthday of Hannah Arendt, and what she really meant - not what most of us think she meant - when she coined the phrase The Banality of Evil - and all kinds of heavy stuff about the nature of human freedom.

The announcement that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged will be made into a film ( I've got the old Patricia Neal * Gary Cooper Fountainhead on the way to me via Netflix), and my adolescent foray into the inner sanctums of the Objectivists. Also included: how I somehow squared this with my burgeoning socialistic views.

George Orwell: we all must read his nonfiction, as well as fiction, from a very early age. If his undiluted moral sense didn't permeate our collective consciousness and make the world a far better place, most of the English-speaking parts of the world would at least write much better.

An inventory of a recent visit to San Francisco, including wondering just why cars appear parked in the middle of the street there, ostensibly for church. Double parking in NYC is nothing compared to this. Plus a comparison the Public Libaries of Portland, OR, Seattle, WA, NYC, and SF. And maybe something about how New Yorkers are spoiled by having so many Great Public Spaces.

Polar Bears are shrinking, along with the polar ice caps.

When We Were Kings (the film) and how Muhammad Ali is, unlike most of the people we so easily bestow the title upon, an actual hero, and why. And how I coincidentally ended up watching Street Fight, about Corey Booker's first mayoral campaign in Newark, right after Kings, and therefore must compare one old school black american hero with one new school black american hero-in-the-making.

My cab ride coming home late from work tonight, during which the young Turkish driver showed me it is possible to be both supremely cynical and idealistic at the same time, and with grace.