Do you mean something like this?
mando
http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e348/cwn_annwn_1/duggars.jpg
On Sep 3, 2009, at 9:43 AM, Chris Miller wrote:
Ayn Rand Chapter 10: The Goal of my Writing
I've skipped Chapter 9, an introduction to Victor Hugo's "Ninety-
Three", until
I read that novel myself -- possibly next year..
She begins Chapter 10 by declaring "The motive and purpose of my
writing is
the projection of an ideal man"
Fine
Could not such a motive also be attributed to Homer and Valmiki?
And didn't
they write some pretty good stories?.
Although we might note that the goals pursued by their ideal men
were rather
domestic: Odysseus wants to return home, and Rama wants to get his
wife back,
and I would have no interest in such a story set in our
contemporary world. Do
you?
I also have no problem reading stories about people who are deeply
flawed
(although, I do want them to be demonstrably smart)
So, as with the rest of "Romantic Manifesto", I'm not going to sign
on.
Rand writes that "Misery, disease, evil, all the negatives of human
existence,
are proper subjects of study in life, for the purpose of
understanding and
correcting them - but they are not proper subjects of contemplation
for
contemplation's sake. In art, and in literature, these negatives
are worth
re-creating only in relation to some positive, as a foil, as a
contrast, as a
means of stressing the positive - but not as an end in themselves"
And I would say that the foil, in a good story about bad people, is
the story
itself, and the sensitive, powerful mind of the storyteller.
But still -- I think Rand does have a point regarding the
disparagement of
beauty and idealism in our contemporary artworld.
The possibility of a finding a non-ironic painting of a happy,
healthy,
beautiful person in a museum of contemporary art is just about zero.
And I would join Rand in saying that such an omission is a moral
failure.
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