I wish I could be excited about this. But I found part 1 so lackluster that I haven’t even bought the dvd yet, despite having spent decades fantasising about an Atlas film. (I’ve probably missed my chance to get the now-recalled dvd box with the blurb praising “Ayn Rand’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice.”) Rand is such an intensely cinematic writer, and the film over and over turns away from her cinematic choices (even in cases where constraints of time and budget would have permitted following them) in favour of something less interesting.

Still and all, I’m mildly pleased that the project will continue. I guess I prefer a completed mediocre Atlas adaptation to an uncompleted mediocre Atlas adaptation.

And if this is what I was writing at the height of my Randian period, I suppose it’s no surprise that I ended up drifting from apostolic purity.

A pity that the poster for the movie wasn’t more like this. Frankly, the movie poster doesn’t even look like a movie poster; it looks more like some sort of generic announcement.

Unfortunately, it’s not clear that the new poster represents the actual dvd cover. Certainly it ain’t the special edition cover.

The Benefits and Hazards of Dialectical Libertarianism (2.2, Spring 2001)

Keeping Context In Context: The Limits of Dialectics (3.2, Spring 2002)

Praxeology: Who Needs It (6.2, Spring 2005)

Reference and Necessity: A Rand-Kripke Synthesis? (7.1, Fall 2005)

A Beauty Contest For Dichotomies: Browne’s Terminological Revolutions (8.1, Fall 2006)

Interpreting Plato’s Dialogues: Aristotle versus Seddon (10.1, Fall 2008)

Most of those were my side of debates with other people, so you should probably go read their side too. Plus lots of other good stuff. Here.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Thompson will not speak to you tonight. His time is up. I have taken it over. You were to hear a report on the world crisis. That is what you are going to hear.

For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is Kevin Carson? This is Kevin Carson speaking.

I’ve been too busy Misesing to have a chance to listen to it yet. But here it is.

The Argounov summer residence stood on a high hill over a river, alone in its spacious gardens, on the outskirts of a fashionable summer resort. The house turned its back upon the river and faced the grounds where the hill sloped down gracefully into a garden of lawns drawn with a ruler, bushes clipped into archways and marble fountains made by famous artists.

The other side of the hill hung over the river like a mass of rock and earth disgorged by a volcano and frozen in its chaotic tangle. Rowing downstream, people expected a dinosaur to stretch its head out of the black caves overgrown with wild ferns, between trees that grew horizontally into the air, huge roots, like spiders, grasping the rocks.

For many summers, while her parents were visiting Nice, Biarritz and Vienna, Kira was left alone to spend her days in the wild freedom of the rocky hill, as its sole, undisputed sovereign in a torn blue skirt and a white shirt whose sleeves were always missing. The sharp sand cut her bare feet. She swung from rock to rock, grasping a tree branch, throwing her body into space, the blue skirt flaring like a parachute.

She made a raft of tree branches and, clutching a long pole, sailed down the river. There were many dangerous rocks and whirlpools on the way. The thrill of the struggle rose from her bare feet, that felt the stream pulsating under the frail raft, through her body tensed to meet the wind, the blue skirt beating against her legs like a sail. Branches bending over the river brushed her forehead. She swept past, leaving threads of hair entwined in the leaves, and the trees leaving wild red berries caught in her hair.

The first thing that Kira learned about life and the first thing that her elders learned, dismayed, about Kira, was the joy of being alone.

I wonder how many “people” other than Rand/Kira herself actually “expected a dinosaur to stretch its head out of the black caves overgrown with wild ferns.”

I still sometimes wish we could have the geeky teenage Rand with us today, to save her before she became the rigidified Objectivist Colossus.

Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you. You have spared me the trouble of committing suicide.

Toward the end of her life, Rand made some revisions to the play in connection with a revived stage performance. Most of the changes were apparently minor, but one was not: Andre’s last line, in the event of being found guilty, is now:

Ladies and gentlemen, I will not be here to serve the sentence. I have nothing to seek in your world.

And this is the ending that currently appears in Night of January 16th: The Final Revised Version and Ayn Rand: Three Plays.

I think this change is unfortunate; the original strikes me as more dramatic and poetic. Rand may have changed it to reflect the fact that under changes in New York law, Andre would no longer have been eligible for the death penalty. But if so, that’s an oddly naturalistic reason for the change, and the play doesn’t plausibly update to a more contemporary setting anyway.

But my real gripe is not just that Rand changed the ending, but that the original line is getting lost down a memory hole. Nowhere in the current published versions of the play is there any information as to what the original line was: not in a footnote or appendix or anything. This seems to be yet another case of the Rand estate’s mishandling of her writings.

2. I’ve never seen the entire movie version (1941) of Night of January 16th. I watched about ten minutes of it once and couldn’t keep my attention on it. Rand once wrote of the film:

There is nothing of mine in that movie, except the names of some of the characters and the title (which was not mine). The only line of dialogue from my play which appears in the movie is: “The court will now adjourn till ten o’clock tomorrow morning.” The cheap, trashy vulgarity of that movie is such that no lengthier discussion is possible to me.

So I’m guessing she didn’t like it.

Judging from this synopsis, the movie’s connection with the original play is indeed tenuous. But what struck me in the synopsis is something I’ve never seen mentioned before: that a “statuette of Atlas supporting a globe” plays a crucial role in the film’s plot (which it certainly does not in the play). Given that Rand hadn’t started writing Atlas Shrugged at that time, it’s an intriguing connection.

Going through old papers I find this gem from my Randian past: a very short sf story that I wrote in (but not for) college, titled “Under the Violet Sun.”

Some of my stories actually had plots (hopefully I’ll dig them up eventually). This one, not so much.

What kind of professor has such empty bookshelves? It's very suspicious.

Check out this interview with my co-conspirator Gary Chartier, mainly about his book Conscience of an Anarchist, on Bathabile Mthombeni’s radio show.

The interview starts at around 5:25 in. (And if you just want Gary and not music, and so prefer to skip the midshow musical interlude, that runs from 25:36 to 28:40.)

Rand used the term “anti-concept” to denote “an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept”; her favourite examples fall into the category of “a ‘package-deal’ of two meanings, with the proper meaning serving to cover and to smuggle the improper one into people’s minds.”

I think I use the term slightly differently from the way Rand did; for one thing, I don’t necessarily assume that such terms are always part of a purposeful “design” to corrupt thought and language. (I don’t deny that they sometimes are; but I don’t think Rand fully appreciated the power of spontaneous order, including malign spontaneous order – on which see Charles’ “Women and the Invisible Fist” and my “Invisible Hands and Incantations.”)

Rand identified “isolationism” and “extremism” (inter alia) as examples of anti-concepts; I’ve argued elsewhere that two of Rand’s own favourite virtue-terms – “selfishness” and “capitalism” – should likewise be treated, by her own standards, as anti-concepts.

Here’s another I’d like to add to the list: “anti-Americanism.” What is it to be an anti-American? It might mean any of at least four things: a) hostility to the American people and their interests, or b) hostility to the American government and its policies, especially its foreign policy and world role, or c) hostility to the founding principles of the u.s., most notably those embodied in the Declaration; or d) hostility to American culture and values.

Obviously there’s no necessity for these four types of anti-Americanism to go together; on the contrary, they pull in different directions. I’m pro-American in senses (a) and (c); and for precisely that reason I’m anti-American in sense (b). As for sense (d), I’m pro-American in some respects and anti-American in others, just as I would favour some aspects and oppose other aspects of just about any culture.

So what’s the false presupposition, the package deal, in “anti-Americanism”? It’s the tacit – and illicit – assumption that any person or position that is anti-American in sense (b) must also be anti-American in senses (a), (c), and (d). That’s how the term works; it builds into its very meaning a smear against critics of u.s. foreign policy. When people use it, call them on it!