How is that for a pretentious sounding title?
I can’t sleep due to my brain’s recent penchant to ceaselessly churn , so I’m going to see if banging out a few observations will allow the furnace upstairs to cool a bit. My brother mentioned to me last weekend that he had finally seen the Hollywood adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountanhead (the one about the buildings, not the one about the trains; that seems to be how everyone tells her two most famous works apart) and that it had done absolutely nothing to convince him further to read any of her books.
I kind of laughed at the time but the more I reflected on his words the more I realized they kind of bothered me. Like, arguably, any writer adapted for the screen it’s safe to say that Rand’s original texts paint a far richer picture – and this is especially true for a lengthy piece with more nuance like The Fountainhead – than any film distillation could hope to capture. When I was younger I fully bought into Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism and the romantically stoic and ultimately selfish lifestyle she presented. Man lives and dies alone and all that he gathers or does should be carried squarely on his own shoulders. How gallant. How noble. How ultimately flawed by its complete avoidance of the fact that human beings possess emotion and tend towards empathy for each other even when it’s not in their best interests.
Anyway, I thought about my brother’s off-the-cuff observation and decided he was missing something by not having read Rand. The catch is that I don’t think I would press him to much at this point to actually read her. I’ve come to believe Ayn Rand falls into that lexicon of writers that really should be read at a certain stage of life. She should be discovered shortly after Catcher In The Rye’s influence has started to wane on the individual and shortly before the influence of Bukowski’s drunken bluntness helps to pare down the words written and spoken. I believe there are a whole slew of writers that are terrific for opening an inexperienced mind to new vistas and are delicious and necessary reads at a certain point. The downside to this is that after that point, if one has already grown beyond the capacity to approach these works with wide-eyed wonder, writers cherished by some might be dismissed by others as redundant or silly. Here I’m going to break out my trusty Jimi Hendrix reference: people born today have no idea why Hendrix is considered by the “Great White Rock and/or Roll Canon” as being so terrific and the reason for that is that they’ve heard what he’s done copied and diluted by so many imitators that the original work becomes obscured.
Let me take this a step further. As I’ve grown older I’ve been able to see that The Hendrix Principle may be flawed itself since, face it, Hendrix was great more due to his willingness to go out on an edge and risk embarrassing himself than to his technical brilliance. I think the same could be said of the writers I’m thinking of here. If you want a more extensive list of what writers I’m thinking about, just walk around a college campus of hang out at a coffee shop that isn’t a Starbucks, and you’ll see the books littering the tables. There’s Burroughs’ Junky, and that table has Kerouac’s On The Road. Oh, and that cat’s reading Hesse’s Demian…and there’s Rand’s own Atlas Shrugged underneath it on that coffee and sugar streaked and cigarette ash laden table being held up be three books of matches under that one wobbly leg.
I think all of those authors mentioned are important to read at some stage of one’s development as a reader. You can never be too old or too experienced to read them. However you can be too far along in your development to truly appreciate them with the wide-eyed wonder of the novice becoming the pro. And that’s why I wouldn’t push my brother too hard to tackle Ayn Rand at this point; but if he does, while I think he’ll be pleasantly surprised I know he won’t be overly impressed.
Not anymore, at least.
Where in the world will Tankboy be this weekend?
Well, know I'll be taking in some of the Around The Coyote stuff tonight since tomorrow the whole thing gets over-run by suburbanites and yuppies. I'm not saying I expect to even see anything good since the stuff shown is maybe a notch above a craft fair,but Photogal likes to go on the hunt for undiscovered greatness (and there usually is some good jewelry at least) so I'll tag along and mooch some free wine from a gallery or twelve. Whatever other social plans I do have will probably center on very cheap entertainment since the funds are frighteningly low. Anyone know of any parties where I can park my keister with a twelve pack or something?
Bueller...Bueller?
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