Category: Media Citings

Sandra Salmans has an article titled “Essays on the Edge” in the Education Life section of the Sunday, January 18th issue of The New York Times. “Writing for dollars: be selfish, be freethinking, or just be,” says the subtitle, as Salmans surveys “the more intriguing, lucrative or unlikely competitions” for scholarship money.
The very first scholarship cited is “For Capitalist Pigs”:

The virtue of selfishness is richly rewarded by the Ayn Rand Institute, an educational foundation devoted to promoting the author’s philosophy of Objectivism, which endorses reason, self-interest and capitalism over altruism or environmentalism. A top prize of $10,000 goes to the best essay by a high school junior or senior who demonstrates “an outstanding grasp of the philosophic and psychological meaning of The Fountainhead.” Appropriately, it’s a no-strings-attached cash award. College students can win up to $5,000 for the best essay on the meaning of Atlas Shrugged.

The article is accompanied by a nice photo of Rand with the caption: “Ayn Rand created a philosophy. An ‘outstanding’ grasp of it is worth $10,000.”

Atlas Shrugged topped The Week Magazine‘s Dec 19 list of “Best Books,” as chosen by Chuck Klosterman, a senior writer at Spin Magazine. His mini-review:

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Signet, $9). People who are intellectual (but not necessarily smart) constantly insist that Rand?s philosophy is simplistic and flawed, and maybe it is; no philosophy is perfect. But she makes more sense than anyone else I?ve ever experienced. If you disagree with Atlas Shrugged, it basically means you disagree with the concept of ?being great.?

Heh. (Thanks to co_techie at LiveJournal for the tip. She also notes a significant reference to Atlas Shrugged in the Dec 30 episode of Judging Amy.)

In keeping with my penchant for tracing Rand references, I came upon this little mention in the current New York Review of Books (15 January 2004).
In this issue, John Gregory Dunne reviews Natalie Wood: A Life by Gavin Lambert. [The full text of the review is available online only to subscribers.] He remarks that actress Natalie Wood had a part in the second movie directed by Irvin Pichel, Tomorrow is Forever. The producer of the film was Sam Wood, who, Dunne reminds us:

…is perhaps best remembered for relentlessly rooting out Communist influences in Hollywood films and writing, with Ayn Rand, a manifesto of filmmaking don’ts, including ‘Don’t Glorify Failure’; ‘Don’t Deify the Common Man’; ‘Don’t Smear the Free Enterprise System, Success, and Industrialists’.

That’s a reference to Rand’s Screen Guide for Americans, which appeared in the November 1947 issue of Plain Talk.

Back in March, on the anniversary of Ayn Rand’s death, Salon.com’s Steve King posted a fair-minded summary of Ayn Rand’s work in their “Literary Daybook” feature. Included is the following description of Rand’s first week in the United States:

Whatever might be said about Rand’s controversial philosophy, difficult personality and long books, her life story is a remarkable one. In 1926, 21-year-old Alice Rosenbaum fled Communist Russia for Hollywood America, determined to be a writer. She arrived there six months later as Ayn Rand — “Ayn” for the nice sound (rhymes with “mine,” one biographer says without irony), “Rand” for the Remington Rand typewriter she brought with her. On her second day, she got a lift and a job from Cecil B. DeMille; in her first week, she met the man to whom she would be married for 50 years.

The article also notes that “A recent book about Greenspan by Jerome Tuccille is titled Alan Shrugged.” I had not heard of this book before, but more information is available from Amazon.com and the book was reviewed at TownHall.com.