The Russian translation of Crosspoints: A Novel by Choice by Alexandra York is a front runner in Russia, where it was featured at the Moscow Book Fair. Praised by Moscow publisher Mir Knigi as “Beatiful and Deep” with “High Style and Spirit,” Crosspoints broke the language barrier with over 10,000 copies sold.
Crosspoints was reviewed on The Atlasphere in 2004, when it was first published.
Read the announcement on Alexandra York’s web site.
Category: The Atlasphere
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Nigeria through the Lens of Atlas Shrugged?
AllAfrica.com has a new article in which a Nigerian native sizes up his country, and its politicians, somewhat through the lens of Atlas Shrugged.
When I read the article at lunchtime, I stumbled over the phrase “disintegration of rational inquiry” — but I think the author is referring to the modern era’s decreasing respect for rational inquiry.
An excerpt:
One of my favorite authors, Ayn Rand, taught the virtue of selfishness and the disintegration of rational inquiry. Her best seller Atlas Shrugged is however one book that I return to every now and then. The book was written in 1957. Ayn Rand, a Russian migrant that lived in the USA and became a house-hold name for her teachings on objectivism, was probably the best known and perhaps widest read philosopher of the 20th century. She was a woman of substance.
Years ago when I first read Atlas Shrugged I immediately contextualized it in Nigeria . But little did I know that a stalemate would result from a warped definition of objectivity, a dire need for a political philosophy and a shrug by an Atlas – Umaru Musa YarAdua. Atlas Shrugged is for me a book for all times. It groups objectivism, self-interest and capitalism all in one. In plain text, according to Ayn Rand herself – nature is to be commanded and must be obeyed, or wishing won’t make it so; you can’t eat your cake and have it too; man is an end himself; give me liberty or give me death.
Nigeria witnessed the disintegration of rational inquiry recently when Patricia Olubunmi Etteh’s power rangers insisted that she would be judge in her own case. Looking at what transpired in that dark period of the House of Representatives that culminated with the death of Dr. Aminu Safana, one would expect nothing to follow but recall, to rid the house of the pea brains that turned it into a house of horror. To think out of the box is one thing. But to think stupidly out of the box in order to justify the unjustifiable, for whatever reason, is sure enough reason for an elected representative to be shown the way out.
See the full article for more.
Ayn Rand Lexicon Now Available Online!
The Ayn Rand Lexicon is an indispensible tool for any serious student of Ayn Rand’s ideas. And now it’s available online.
From the Ayn Rand Institute’s announcement:
Through a special arrangement with the publisher, the editor and the Estate of Ayn Rand, ARI has received exclusive permission to present The Ayn Rand Lexicon — now available in its entirety, free of charge, to Web visitors. Edited by Harry Binswanger, and with an introduction by Leonard Peikoff, this important book presents all of the key ideas of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, in an encyclopedic reference of stunning breadth and depth.
Visit AynRandLexicon.com for full access.
Greg Zanetti Cites Ayn Rand on Consuming vs. Producing
Fellow New Mexican (woo hoo!) Greg Zanetti cites Ayn Rand in his market report his week. Some excerpts:
In America, we have adopted the philosophy that consumption is more important. 70 percent of our economy is consumption based. After the 9-11 attacks, President Bush told us to go shopping. Alan Greenspan even went so far as to say we were doing the world a favor by consuming their goods and thereby acting as the worldâ??s growth engine. …
A contrary opinion, however, comes from the brilliant free market thinker and author Ayn Rand.
To Ms. Rand, â??consumersâ?¦ are irrelevant to economics.â? She believed the title of consumer must be earned by first being a producer. She goes on to say that â??wealth represents goods that have been produced but not yet consumed.â?
Think of it this way: Imagine you are a farmer and winter is approaching. You have had a good year though and you have plenty of food to last you until the next harvest. Beyond this, you have seed to plant for next spring. In short, you have saved, you have produced wealth that has not yet been consumed.
And here is where Ayn Rand will say we in America have turned economics on its head. Today, in order to consume, you do not first have to produce; all you have to do is borrow. Thus, you are reaching into the future and pulling demand into the present. Thus, you are using wealth that has not yet been produced. Or to continue our farmer analogy, we are consuming our seed stock.
Keep reading for the punch line.
Going through an Ayn Rand phase? Uh, yep.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editor Phil Kloer offers a somewhat condescending opportunity to talk about “Going through an Ayn Rand phase” — whether it happened to you, etc.
Give â??em hell, folks.
Invitation to the Objectivism Seminar
Atlasphere member Greg Perkins, a regular blogger at NoodleFood, has begun organizing some new telephone seminars on Objectivism.
The seminars will be book-based, starting with Tara Smith’s Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics before proceeding to OPAR and other Objectivist classics.
From the announcement:
Truly living well calls for engaging fundamental philosophical ideas and integrating their use into our everyday lives, our everyday actions, our way of beingâ??into our souls. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to get busy with all the urgent things around us, and we can drift, distracted and disintegrated. For those of us who want an ongoing practice in such engagement (and those who want to explore the need for that in the first place), I have created The Objectivism Seminar.
The Objectivism Seminar is a weekly online conference call to systematically work through the philosophy of Ayn Rand via the books of prominent Rand scholars. These moderated, one-hour sessions will be recorded and podcast to allow review, catch-up, and even disconnected participation. The idea is to give peopleâ??new and experienced alikeâ??a forum to chew through key Objectivist works and tour the complete system, further clarifying, integrating, and grounding their grasp of the ideas.
Because it is an ongoing seminar, we will have incentive to keep up with the steady schedule of study and stay equipped to consider fresh angles, concretizations, challenges, and applications from other participants. And because life is so full for many of us, I am purposefully keeping the reading load light and the method of participation unobtrusive. The plan is that we will spend almost as much time discussing the ideas as reading about them. Study like this is productive for both experienced students of Objectivism and those new to Rand’s ideas: I’ve read all of these books, some several times, and I would expect to get at least as much out of this as someone going through them for the first time.
If you are interested, please look over the FAQ below and head over to www.ObjectivismSeminar.com to sign up!
For more information see Greg’s full announcement, which includes answers to some frequently asked questions about the seminar.
Vadim Perelman's "House of Sand and Fog"
Last week I watched the DVD of Atlas Shrugged movie director Vadim Perelman’s House of Sand and Fog.
Since he’s going to be the proverbial “god” of the new Atlas Shrugged movie, I figured it would be worth witnessing his previous cinematic work first-hand.
This is a dark movie, no question about it. I can easily imagine some Ayn Rand fans liking the movie, and others actively disliking it.
The writing, acting, and directing are excellent — but it would be hard, and an act of questionable integrity, to squeeze a feel-good movie out of such a tragic novel.
So instead you’re left with a gorgeously filmed and produced adaptation of a sad and disturbing story.
Personally I would recommend the movie highly — but only to someone with a fair tolerance for psychologically dark films.
If you do rent the DVD, I highly recommend watching it again, a second time, with the “commentary” feature turned on.
I’m not normally a big fan of watching the commentary for a movie — but, in this case, it was very well done and I found my appreciation for the movie deepening even more.
The commentary is by Perelman, Kingsley, and the author of the original book — who was positively beaming about Perelman’s adaptation, for whatever that’s worth.
…And it’s probably worth a lot, because it speaks to Perelman’s ability to remain true to a novelist’s vision, while still making a credible and compelling screen adaptation of his work.
I hope to write a fuller review of this movie for the Atlasphere one week soon.
WSJ: Ayn Rand on Armagnac
Today’s Wall Street Journal contains an interesting reference to Ayn Rand’s view of (the alcoholic drink) armagnac, as evidenced in her characterization of Guy Francon in The Fountainhead.
The article is titled “Cognac’s Cousin From Gascony.” Below are some relevant excerpts.
Armagnac has an image problem. To start with, not that many people seem to be sure exactly what it is. …
[T]o the extent most folks have heard of armagnac, the impression they have been given is that it is a pompous quaff for phonies and poseurs and heavies — characters such as Senator Planet, Guy Francon, Sheridan Ballou and Eugene Lopwitz.
… A few years later, Ayn Rand picked up the theme. The novelist prided herself on penning caricatures of phonies such as Guy Francon, who in “The Fountainhead” embodies everything her architect hero Howard Roark despises. A rich and successful architect, Francon is intellectually lazy and stylistically derivative. Francon “hasn’t designed a doghouse in eight years,” but when he did, he was fond of such touches as “Corinthian columns of cast iron painted gold, and garlands of gilded fruit on the walls.” And what does Francon like to drink? Armagnac.
Rand seems to associate armagnac with the most contemptible sort of self-satisfaction. The paragraph that ends with Francon declaring he has fired Roark (because “the insolent bastard” refused to mock up a simplified Doric design for an office building) begins with the boss bragging about how he buys his favorite armagnac for “a hundred dollars a case!”
Poor armagnac.
Telegraph India Covers Atlas 50th Celebration
Thanks to Jerry Johnson for the heads-up about this new article in Telegraph India — titled “Take a bow, Ayn” — covering the events in India that Jerry helped organize in celebration of Atlas Shrugged‘s 50th Anniversary.
It begins:
Govind Malkani is in his nineties, with failing eyesight that cannot cope with the regular update of literature on Ayn Rand that is mailed to him in Mumbai from all over the world. He has outlived his wife Tara with whom he used to run a well-known Ayn Rand readersâ?? club in Mumbai in the 1970s.
Jerry Johnson, 25, has never met Malkani but he knows him as a fellow traveller. â??Malkani possibly owns the largest collection of Rand material in the country â?? books, videos, audio cassettes,â? says Johnson, who has kept pace with Malkani in spreading the R-word.
Both are ardent Objectivists, the strain of philosophy that the Russian émigré in America created over half a century ago. On October 12, in their own individual ways, they and other Rand fans celebrated a half-century milestone, the publishing of Atlas Shrugged, her best-selling seminal novel.
See the full article for more.
Jerry points out some errors in the article he’s trying to get fixed — such as prominent Indian movie star (and Rand fan) Shammi Kapoor’s statement that “money is the root of all evil.” Oops.
C-SPAN This Weekend: Atlas Shrugged & Business
C-SPAN will be broadcasting the “Atlas Shrugged and Business” panel discussion from the Atlas Society’s recent 50th Anniversary celebration in Washington, D.C.
Of this discussion, moderator Robert Bidinotto writes “It’s a fascinating hour-long overview of the appeal and applicability of Rand’s ideas to the world of business.”
I lead off with brief remarks on the reasons for the widespread hostility toward business and businessmen, and how Rand’s philosophical ideas not only repudiated that popular view, but led her to romanticize businessmen in Atlas Shrugged.
Younkins gives a superb presentation on the brilliant economic insights that Rand incorporated into her visionary novel.
Ed Snider reads revealing correspondence between himself and Ayn Rand, in which he first approached her with the idea of setting up a new organized effort to promote her ideas.
Rob Bradley takes on modern university teaching of “business ethics,” as seen through the filter of Rand’s own ethical thinking, and then demonstrates exactly what ideas led to the collapse of the Enron corporation, where he used to work.
It’s scheduled for broadcast on Saturday, October 20, 2007 at 3:00 pm Eastern time, and on Sunday, October 21 at 3:00 am Eastern.
See Bidinotto’s full announcement for more information.