You know how you're too young for a book and set it aside thinking it's dumb, and then ten years later you can wrap your brain around it properly? At age 20, I was too young for Russell Banks. But, he's not half bad.
Not that I thought it was dumb, but
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
didn't really click with me in high school, but it made a whole lot more sense and I enjoyed it much more when I read it a couple months ago.
You know how you're too young for a book and set it aside thinking it's dumb, and then ten years later you can wrap your brain around it properly?
Then there are times when the opposite is true, like how when you were 19, you thought
The Fountainhead
was some profound and daring shit, and now you wish you had a time machine so that you could go back and wack your 19-year-old self with a frying pan on the noggin until the then-you came to senses. Not that I'm talking from experience or anything.
I like Russell Banks, but I always wonder why I do that to myself, you know?
I am very glad to be ensconced in the demographic of people who always knew of Ayn Rand as a punchline. I don't know how I came to be in this demographic -- I expect I was raised here -- but I'm happy to stay.
I suspect a large part of my interest in the book had to do with the fact that my then extraordinarily vanilla self was somewhat titillated by the S/M aspect of the main relationship, wrapped in all that pseudo-philosophical crap.
Then there are times when the opposite is true, like how when you were 19, you thought The Fountainhead was some profound and daring shit, and now you wish you had a time machine so that you could go back and wack your 19-year-old self with a frying pan on the noggin until the then-you came to senses.
See, I think it's a good stage to go through. A learning experience, if you will, to keep you from thinking those ideas are good ones when you hit actual adulthood.
Yeah, but what about the unfortunates who cling to this stuff forever?
Yeah, but what about the unfortunates who cling to this stuff forever?
You mean like Alan Greenspan? (Though I'm not sure how much of it he still holds to, he was part of Rand's inner circle.)
I have pretty much Plei's attitude toward Rand. Though I was more a worshipper of Dagny than Dominique.
I have pretty much Plei's attitude toward Rand. Though I was more a worshipper of Dagny than Dominique.
Oh, totally.
I still find Rand herself fascinating, because she was just such a fucked-up thing.