Procrustes Stretched

[AtlasShrieked]

not my writing, but an oldie but goodie I loved to post long ago...

``Who is John Goat?''

Dallas turned from the window and looked at the man in the seat
beside her. He had got on at one of the stops outside New York City,
but she had not noticed him before now. He had a bald head that seemed
to rest, like an opaque percolator bulb, atop a pillow of fat that had
once been a neck. His eyes were pale and lifeless.

``Pardon me?''

``Who is John Goat?''

``I don't know. Besides, those words are meaningless nonsense.''
The man nodded. His nod seemed to reject the possibility of objective
knowledge. Dallas turned back to the window and gazed out upon the vast, blank prairies.

A lighted billboard flickered by. Her heart trembled, and she
remembered the first time she had ever heard a radio commercial.
Her brother had told her that bird songs were prettier. But Francisco
had laughed and said, ``When I grow up, I will make birds out of copper and sell them for money.''
And, the next day, he had presented her with his first copper bird,
made from metal he had mined with his own hands.

``Does it know any songs?'' she had asked.

``Only radio commercials.''

And then they had made love . . .

``Pardon me, miss.''

It was the bald man.

``Yes?''

``My name is Waldo Mudge. What's yours?''

``Stank. Dallas Stank.''

``Stank? The Stank who runs the railroad?''

``The same.'' Dallas proudly threw back her head.
``Hmph!'' Mudge sniffed.

``What do you do for a living, Mr. Mudge?''

``I'm a humanitarian. I live for others. Why do you look at me that
way? I give all my blood to the poor. Organs, too. Right now, I'm nothing
but an empty balloon. Don't look at me like that. Do you want to know
what keeps me alive? My love for mankind---something you would never
understand!''

``You're right, I . . . What's that hissing I hear?''

``Hissing? What? Oh, no!''
Suddenly, Waldo Mudge deflated.

Dallas turned away, overcome with disgust. A voice inside her head seemed
to whisper, ``This is what altruism leads to.''

But---the whole world was deflating---being sucked down an infinite black
hole of misery and despair. Nothing worked anymore. Dallas couldn't even get men to wash her train windows . . .

Wait, she thought: Her window was clean. She leaned closer.
It was perfect: not a single streak or water spot. It shone, and with
an energy that was more than reflected light.
It shone with the energy of intelligence.
Yet the window puzzled her. It was almost too clean.

That was it. It was too clean: it had been washed on the outside,
and quite recently.
National Directive 1089 forbade window-washing on the outside of
a moving train.

One of her men had broken the law to do his job.
Dallas knew that she had to find him---for her sake, and her windows'.
She opened her window and climbed outside.

The wind nearly blew her off the train. She only smiled, and lighted
a cigarette.
She remembered the old man, in New York City, who had once owned a
cigarette factory. It had gone bankrupt when all of his customers died of
lung cancer---but that had not broken his spirit . . .

She finished the cigarette and threw it down. She saw the window washer
then.

He was on the next car, at the end of the train. He was clad in what
Dallas recognized to be the robe of a Capuchin monk. She climbed toward him.

She reached the gap between the cars, and hesitated. She had been
good at car-jumping once. That had been years ago. Could she still do it?
She softly whispered her grandfather's motto.
``I think I can, I think I can.''

She sprang. The earth and the train screamed past her as she hurtled
through the rushing air. A fingernail snagged on the aluminum of the next
car, and she pulled herself to safety. In minutes she was at the side of
the window washer.
``I want to give you a raise,'' she said.

``No, Miss Stank.''
And he threw back his hood and laughed.
His face was like one she had never seen, but always known. It was

 

[AtlasShrieked]

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

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Is that really he?

 

[midcan5]

Whittaker Chambers 1957 Review of Ayn Rand

"... Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind, which finds this one natural to it, shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: " To the gas chambers — go!" The same inflexibly self-righteous stance results, too (in the total absence of any saving humor), in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture — that Dollar Sign, for example. At first, we try to tell ourselves that these are just lapses, that this mind has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the differences between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house. A tornado might feel this way, or Carrie Nation.

We struggle to be just. For we cannot help feel at least a sympathetic pain before the sheer labor, discipline and patient craftsmanship that went to making this mountain of words. But the words keep shouting us down. In the end that tone dominates. But it should be its own antidote, warning us that anything it shouts is best taken with the usual reservations with which we might sip a patent medicine. Some may like the flavor. In any case, the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. But it is not a cure for anything. Nor would we, ordinarily, place much confidence in the diagnosis of a doctor who supposes that the Hippocratic Oath is a kind of curse." http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2705853/posts