US Message Board - View Single Post

AtlasShrieked · #2 (**permalink**) 06-18-2008, 10:13 PM

Quote:

It was a proud face, with hard, angular cheeks and cold, clear eyes; and it was crowned with black, angular hair. Intelligence shone from it like light from an expertly-cleaned window.
``Why not?''

``Because my mind is not for sale.''

``I don't understand.''

``Do you see these tools?'' He held up his belt of window-washing tools.
``Who do you think made them? Man did; or, man's mind did.
Squeegee, wash bottle, soap---each is the product of man's mind.
Man makes his tools with his mind. With his mind, man makes his tools.''

He lifted the belt higher. ``But man, who makes his tools---with
his mind!---can also discard them. Like this.''

He hurled the belt into the darkness.

``Who is John Goat? If you really want to know, you'll have to come with me, Miss Stank.''

He tore the robe from his body, and was naked.
Dallas gave him her hand, and he took it. They leapt from the train
together, and rose into the objective moonlight.
-----By Michael Wilson

A PASSAGE FROM PROCRUSTES STRETCHED
by A*n R*nd
I wrote this passage in 1955. It was, for reasons of space, deleted
from the final draft of my novel, Procrustes Stretched. It has never
before appeared in print.
I present it as an example of Romantic writing at its best.
Romanticism, which has always been my philosophy of art, takes as
its goal the portrayal of man as a heroic being. The Romantic artist
selects facets of reality and reassembles them ``in order to create in
concrete form the abstraction which is his sense of life’’ (The Virtue
of Rudeness, p. 178). Note this: he selects, much as a physicist selects
the numbers that go into his mathematical equations.
Romanticism's antithesis is Naturalism. The Naturalist holds that
every snippet of reality, no matter how trivial, is worthy of inclusion in
a work of so-called art. The difference between the two philosophies is most
evident in music. The Romantic pianist carefully chooses the notes he will
play, while the Naturalist attempts to strike all of the notes at once.
The first approach produces music; the second, cacophony.
The reader must decide for himself whether these paragraphs better
exemplify the tenets of Romanticism, or of its opposite, Naturalism.
The context of the passage is as follows. Ellis Island has gone into
hiding, taking with him the secret of his process for getting blood from
a turnip. Canada has declared itself to be a Fool's Paradise. Dallas Stank
is heading west, searching for a scientist able to reconstruct the ultimate
mousetrap whose plans she and Nk Rrdn found in the abandoned factory.
---A*n R*nd
``

Copyright 2000

I still laugh out loud while reading this one.

there are more...
Parodies and Humor about Ayn Rand and Objectivism