r-mode and w-mode

[petronia]

Reading, in a way that precludes me from writing (not because I can't, but because the full-body immersion in someone else's work taints my style). The system is on input and not output. I'm taking advantage of the fact to clear some of the doorstops on my list, which is why I'm finally reading Atlas Shrugged. ...Out of curiosity, how many of you are into Ayn Rand, or at any rate like her novels? Leave me a note. No, I won't unfriend you or attempt to debate you. XD It's purely curiosity. I have interestingly mixed feelings on Rand - that is, separate strands of opinion on her writing, her philosophy and her devotees - that perhaps only vie in complexity with my feelings on Christianity. It's as deserving of an essay as anything else, but the essay would be a long one.

I'll attempt to clear Mervyn Peake after the Rand book if this keeps up, but that plan is provisory. ^^; And I typically don't even include my online reading when I tot up time spent (which is probably why I always think I *should* have slept more than I do), but Manna's Administration series is so counter-normatively long that I can't whitewash those hours from the books. So add four decent-length novels to the count for the last week, as well as the Herbert re-read. ^^;

Comments

[aitreni.livejournal.com]

I found the plot parts of Ayn Rand's novels entertaining but skipped over the philosophy. That one rant in the end of "Atlas Shrugged" was too much -- I read a couple of pages until my eyes were whirling, then flipped through the book to see just how long the rant was. When I saw it was 50 pages, I hastily turned them aside and went back to the plot.

Guess I'm not much of a philosopher...

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Well, at least you enjoyed the plot. :P (So do I, actually. She's not at all a bad writer, and her characters tend to be quite attractive in that, er, if-they-were-in-anyone-else's-book-they'd-be-the-sexy-villains sort of way. XD But didacticism has never done anything to help a novel along.)

modality

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mike/]

For me it's much more words mode vs... tekken mode is what I called it in the past, 'cuz that's usually what brought it on, but it's all about muscle memory and patterns and the distances between things; not quite visual but far removed from language.

(i know what you're talking about--am totally impressionable, in writing style as in so much more--but i find the sense of being full of words more than makes up for it. but then again, i'm speaking as a total dilettante.)

I never made it through Atlas Shrugged. It wasn't the longwindedness as much as the feeling she was cheating, attacking these crude parodies of egalitarian socialists so unfairly that even though I wanted to buy in to the elitism my fairness wouldn't let me. That probably carries through to the rest of her philosophy; it's pleasant enough to be selfish that if you're offered an excuse you don't look at it too closely.

modality

[petronia.livejournal.com]

The only thing that turns off words-mode for me is painting, frankly. And that's a conscious switch that flips right back the moment I step away from the piece.

(Swimming, too. Swimming typically does it.)

Atlas Shrugged: precisely. The deck of rhetoric is stacked - as well, it's a paradigm calculated to appeal most to the temperament that needs its bolstering least. I speak as someone very much of said temperament. *g*

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

Hm, you should read Sewer, Gas, and Electric sometime, I think. The author ended up with mixed feelings on Rand during the research for it (but then got accused of partisanship by either side of the issue, which is amusing).

Besides... Ayn Rand in a hurricane lamp. What more is needed? (Aside from Meisterbrau, the shark.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

...This sounds really good. I must track it down. XD

(To be honest I find myself mentally trying to update Rand's settei as I read - it's that retro-futuristic thing she has going, all heavy industries and slightly pre-Modernist architecture, like 50's Soviet poster art. Makes me want to add computers and sleek chrome things and turn it into cyberpunk.)

[corneredangel.livejournal.com]

I think there's a point at which almost everyone is into Rand...I *also* think that for most people, this phase lasts about two days, then reality reasserts itself, and the woman shrinks back to being what she is: a bitter angry Russian aristocrat who naively tries to make sense of the world and - like thousands of bitter angry Russian aristocrats before her - assumes that she has somehow stumbled onto the One Truth.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Upon which point - ironically enough - do you also find that there's a distinct flavour of Soviet heroic art to the stylistics of the thing? Or is it just me? :P

(Temperament, I tell you. Most people have an emotional aversion to Rand's world-view, presented in bald terms. The ones who don't are typically delighted to find a philosophy that carries no odour of namby-pamby love-your-fellow-man touchy-feeliness like the rest, often to the point of losing intellectual rigour when taking it into consideration. It's an ironic trap.)

[corneredangel.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely. But then again, remember, socialist realism in its Soviet, fascist, and futurist flavors really is, well, just three flavors of the same basic thing.

[(Anonymous)]

well, i read the fountainhead. the protagonist is selfish and sexy.