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Preserved in JARS

By on August 18, 2011 2

The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies now has online archives. Here, selfishly (appropriately), is a list of links to my own JARS articles over the past decade:

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.

Kevin Carson Speaks!

By on July 28, 2011 4

Kevin Carson leading the Revolution from an undisclosed location

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.

Ayn Rand in the Land of the Dinosaurs

By on July 11, 2011 2

Now that we know that the young Ayn Rand was a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s dinosaur novel The Lost World and used to play at being one of the pterodactyls from the book, it’s easy to see the likely influence on the following passage about Kira’s childhood from We the Living:

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 Lost World (1925 film)

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.

Jurassic Park raft ride

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.

Fright Night

By on July 8, 2011 2

1. Ayn Rand’s play Night of January 16th is a dramatised trial with two endings, depending on whether the audience votes for the guilt or innocence of the protagonist, Karen Andre. As originally written, Andre when declared guilty announces:

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

Night of January 16th

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:
Atlas

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.

An Ambiguous Dystopia

By on July 8, 2011 9

Under the Violet Sun

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 To the Anarchist Is the Fourth of July? Or, How Is the State Like Soylent Green?

By on July 5, 2011 2
What kind of professor has such empty bookshelves? It's very suspicious.

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.)

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