'Lies My Parents Told Me'
[NAFDA] "There will be an occasional happy, so that it might be crushed under the boot of the writer." From Zorro to Angel (including Wonderfalls and The Inside), this is where Buffistas come to anoint themselves in the bloodbath.
I think my Ayn Rand issue (and Tim, frankly, I don't give a shit if you think she's brilliant. You're wrong.) rests around the idea that her whole philosophy was justification for behavior that was juvenile and selfish, unnecessarily self-important and self-indulgent and just generally crappy.
Betsy, huh? Fu Manchu?
Agreed, Kat re: Rand.
She would have made a good third wife to Heinlen.
Ouch!
I make me laugh.
It makes me laugh too!
I think my Ayn Rand issue... rests around the idea that her whole philosophy was justification for behavior that was juvenile and selfish, unnecessarily self-important and self-indulgent and just generally crappy.
I agree, and I don't like her writing either. Objectionable content + unappealing style = I think I'll read something else. Such as Elvis Shrugged.
I adored Fu Manchu. (I knew it was bad and Bad For Me; I just loved the over-the-top melodrama.)
I worry about rereading Hermann Hesse for just this reason.
I don't know that it changed my life or anything, but I really liked Siddhartha. I dug the theme of duality.
joe, she wrote one piece that I loved. It was the first chapter of one of her books. She described something about how the woman stood on the threshold of train door like a dancer in the wings, waiting before a performance. How she ended that chapter (bringing it around to that image), was succinct and just beautiful.
It stuck with me more so than objectivism itself.
PC, most of his books deal with duality. It was Narcissus and Goldmand that got me. What a fantastic book. I'm a bit afraid to reread less I like it much less than I did then.