Michael Prescott's Blog

Men of glass

Today I understood something about the appeal of the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, who was an influence on me in my younger days. What occurred to me -- and what seems quite obvious now that I think about it -- is that Rand's iconic heroes are a picture of personal strength exactly as it would be seen by a very insecure person.

Let's take the character who is probably the best known exemplar of Rand's ideal man, Howard Roark of The Fountainhead. Roark is characterized by an absolute, steely indifference to anyone and anything around him. He simply cannot be hurt by the world. He cannot be hurt by other people, whose opinions are of no consequence to him whatsoever. He cannot be hurt by external events, which he shrugs off, no matter how painful they might seem to be. He cannot be hurt even by his own emotions because, as Rand makes clear, whatever pain he feels goes down only to a certain point -- not a very deep point -- and then stops. The Fountainhead's most famous image is of Roark blasting away at granite in a rock quarry, and Roark himself is a man of granite, the man Simon and Garfunkel might have had in mind when they sang, "I am a rock, I am an island ..."

Now isn't this exactly the image of the human ideal that would appeal to a highly insecure individual?

Imagine for a moment that you are an insecure teenager -- which is almost a redundancy, because teenagers are, by nature, insecure. Their lives and characters are unformed, their future is uncertain, peer pressure is great, and the ego rides herd over their every action. This is natural; it is just what it means to be teenager, any teenager. And so it should be no surprise that that it is among teenagers that Rand's books, especially The Fountainhead, have their greatest appeal, and that most new converts to her philosophy are between 15 and 19 years old.

As an insecure teenager, you are perpetually in danger of having your feelings hurt. Every whisper, every glance, every smirk or laugh is an arrow in the heart of your fragile self-esteem. The world is a threatening and unpredictable place, and what wouldn't you give to rise above it all, to be immune to any possible criticism or derision or humiliation or ostracism? What wouldn't you give to be free of all that, and to know that nothing could hurt you in any way, ever again? What wouldn't you give, in other words, to be Howard Roark?

I think this is why teenagers in particular, and insecure people in general, are drawn to Rand's vision. In her pristine, untouchable heroes, elevated above common humanity and safely insulated from any possible emotional upset, insecure readers find an escape from their own vulnerabilities. Howard Roark is their ideal. Nothing can hurt him, because nothing can touch him. They long to be like him. He is -- they think -- strong.

But they are mistaken.

Because the truth is, we do not become stronger by withdrawing from the world or from our own feelings. We do not achieve inner peace and serenity by becoming a rock and an island. The more we retreat, the more fearful we become. The more we hide, the more things we feel the need to hide from. The more out of touch we are with ourselves and with those around us, the more unpredictable life seems to be. In real life, the man of granite is as fragile as glass.

This is probably why Rand's philosophy ultimately proves unsatisfactory for most of its adherents, and why most converts to Objectivism drop out of the movement within a few years. Readers of Rand's fiction come to realize that their escape hatch from the world has turned out to be dead end, that their role model is only a false idol.

The strong person engages with the world and is willing to be hurt by it. Rand's heroes have never progressed that far. They are not an ideal. They represent, not a goal to be reached, but a way station that most of us have already left behind.

Q & A

A reader with the screen name Sully asked me some questions about writing, which I'll try to answer here.

Sully started off by saying, Actually, part of me would like you to talk about your books more. Or at least, the construction of them.

I can understand that, but talking about my books is usually a little boring to me. I have written a fair amount about this subject on my Web site in the Interviews & Chats section. In this space I typically focus on other stuff.

1. Now that you've written all these books, do you have a good idea of how long it takes to do a first draft?

Normally it takes me a month or two to come up with an idea, another couple of months to develop the basic plot and do the initial research, and then about eight months to write the book (60 ms. pp. per month X 8 mos = 480 ms. pp. total). The eight months includes rewriting, which I usually do as I'm going along.

However, I am currently starting a more complex book that may take longer to do, because it requires more research and more work. So it's not a hard-and-fast rule.

I notice that a lot of thriller writers can pump one book out a year, more or less. Is this because you're contractually obligated to?

In some cases, yes. And there are writers who do two or even three books a year under different pen names (I'm not one of them). Some romance writers crank out a book every three weeks, although at a certain point, as someone once said, "That's not writing - it's typing!"

Can you reasonably predict a pace for yourself? The way a carpenter might know that they could create a canoe a week, say.

With experience you can predict the pace unless you're trying something new and difficult. Then it may be more of a crap shoot. Or it may just turn out to be crap ...

2. How much do you feel you have to offer something different up to your readers? That is, people buy thrillers partly because they are the same thing as before, with some variations. How conscious are you of changing up the mix, so to speak?

I try to figure out what works and stick with it but build on it. For me, I seem to do best with a female protagonist and a male villain. I don't know why;  it's just the way my mind works. Maybe the image of Diana Rigg in her skintight jumpsuit on The Avengers impressed itself so deeply in my preadolescent brain that I cannot get away from the idea of a female crime fighter. (That was one hell of a jumpsuit.) I have written male protagonists and, once, a female villain, but the male heroes tended to be flat and the female villain bore a disconcerting resemblance to Cruella de Ville. So I stick with the tried and true.

But I do like to evolve and try new things and stay apace with the market. For instance, standard cop-vs.-serial-killer books are pretty old-hat now. My last three books either did not involve a serial killer (Dangerous Games, where the villains were a pair of kidnappers), or put the serial killers into new situations (Next Victim, where a serial killer gets hold of a terrorist's weapon; In Dark Places, where a serial killer is mixed up in a conspiracy of dirty cops).

When I do new things, I alienate some fans but probably attract new ones. For instance, the killer of In Dark Places was a realistically depicted street criminal with a foul mouth and a streetwise attitude. Some readers were quite offended by him - they prefer the debonair, suave, Hannibal Lecter style of killer, I suppose. That's understandable, but I had already written my share of urbane killers, and I wanted to try a  more "urban" one instead.

3. How carefully do you outline beforehand?

I write up the whole plot as a 10- to 13-page synopsis. Normally I adhere to this fairly closely, but I feel free to invent new incidents as I go along, or to rearrange things. With Last Breath, I added a whole second climax that was not part of the synopsis. So I'm not married to the synopsis, or if I am, then I'm married to it in the same way that Bill is married to Hillary - for convenience.

4. I read somewhere, that usually the sale of a first book, if it's good, can garner a modest advance, and depending on how that book does, can garner a 2-book deal that is more generous. How common is this, do you think?

It's hard to say what conditions in the industry are like right now. What you describe was true when I was getting started back in the 1980s, and it remained true in the '90s. But most first (and second and third) novels are paperbacks, and there has been a big drop-off in paperback sales because of distribution problems. Supermarkets and drugstores have cut back on the number of paperbacks they display, leading to big drops in print runs. As a result, the situation today is more unpredictable.

In theory, if your first book sells well, it will lead to bigger advances. But ordinarily you have already signed your second contract before the first book has even come out. And to be honest, most first novels do not sell very well, anyway. Publishers are often willing to give a writer time to develop, but retailers are much less patient and will often be reluctant to order many copies of Book # 2 if Book #1 sold poorly. This is very shortsighted on the retailers' part, because it takes time to build an audience. In consequence, there is more pressure than ever to hit big right away - which is easier said than done.

Despite all the obstacles, though, new writers are published in large numbers every single year.

5. Do you have anyone in law enforcement fact-check for you after the first draft? For details and such?

I used to, but at the moment I don't. When I lived in L.A., I knew an LAPD officer who gave me a lot of inside info and was very helpful. But I'm not in L.A. anymore, and he's retired from the force anyway. Lately I have mostly done books with an FBI focus, and it is almost impossible to get anyone from the FBI to talk to you. Their rules forbid it even if the agent is retired. They are quite paranoid about the Bureau's image (it's a strange, insulated culture, the FBI). So I have had to rely on research - mainly Internet research, and also books.

Thanks for your questions. I appreciate your interest, but maybe you can see why I don't talk about this stuff too much. There are always so many negatives and difficulties to be faced in the publishing business that dwelling on them can get a little depressing. That's why I have not followed industry news or author blogs over the years, and why I don't want to do an author blog myself. It always turns into a whine-and-moan session.

The same thing happens when authors get together in person, by the way. It's just the way we are - miserable by nature!

Still beats working, though.

Fun with skeptics

It's amazing the lengths to which die-hard skeptics will go in order to defend their position. Winston Wu, in his valuable online essay debunking skepticism, mentions a particularly funny example of how the cornered skeptic refuses to yield to common sense.

He points out that skeptics often dismiss any "anecdotal" evidence as worthless, even if there is a great deal of it. Then he writes:

To give you an example of the ridiculous extent they will carry this argument to, I once tested the skeptics on my own list by asking them if they a) considered the feedback rating on Ebay.com to be of any significance, and b) if they would trust someone more if they had a higher feedback rating rather than a negative one, and c) if they would bid on an item from a person with a 99 percent positive feedback rating or someone with much less and many negative comments in their seller profile.  This was a no-win situation for them, for if they admitted that feedback ratings mattered in their decisions, then they would be acknowledging that anecdotal evidence was evidence after all.  If they didn’t, and remained consistent, then they would be denying a simple reality that every user of Ebay, even fools and children, knew, which was that the higher the positive feedback rating on a seller, the more reliable and trustworthy, and vice versa.  Yet these skeptics on my own list chose the latter, giving plenty of technical outlandish reasons for doing so, admitting that feedback ratings didn’t affect their decision, even claiming that they were too easily faked.  It was obvious they knew nothing about Ebay and the mechanisms set in place to prevent such things. 

Of course, knowing nothing of eBay did not prevent the die-hards from asserting absolute certainty about their (erroneous) positions. Wu concludes:

Obviously, this big argument of theirs that “anecdotal evidence is invalid” doesn’t even work with simple down to earth venues like online auctions, so why use it as a measuring tool for reality and truth?  Anyone with common sense knows that in regard to the Ebay test, they are utterly and completely wrong.  Yet, as I mentioned, these skeptics are not about truth or reality at all, but about playing philosophical word games.

To read the full account of the skeptics' latest humiliation, go to http://www.geocities.com/wwu777us/Debunking_Skeptical_Arguments.htm and scroll down to "The eBay Feedback Test that Skeptics Failed," under the heading of Argument #5.

Life before life

Although I am pretty well convinced that our minds survive death, I have never been partial to the reincarnation hypthesis. I realize that the majority of people on Earth do believe in reincarnation, and there are sophisticated religious and mystical traditions that endorse the idea. Personally, however, I just dislike the idea of an endless round of lives ... the dull repetition of the same heartbreak and disappointment ... and worst of all, having to go back to high school again and again!

Luckily, while there are a lot of data suggestive of reincarnation, other possible explanations are available.

The most impressive work in this field has been done by Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychology professor (emeritus) at the University of Virginia who has investigated and logged thousands of cases of "spontaneous past life recall." Most of these cases take place in countries where belief in reincarnation is widespread - India, Pakistan, and Lebanon are three examples. Typically, a very young child, with no prompting, begins to talk about a past life, giving names and details that can be checked and verified. These cases differ from s0-called "past life memories" induced by hypnosis, which are much more dubious, since hypnotized subjects have a known tendency to confabulate. Of course, little kids can confabulate, too, but when their claims are tested by taking them to the site of their alleged past life, they have often proven remarkably adept at identifying friends, relatives, and significant locations from the life of the deceased.

Anyone who has studied Stevenson's work (and plowed through his rather dry prose) would be hard pressed to explain away the stronger cases in his collection as coincidence or fraud. Much of this material does seem to be paranormal in origin. But there are problems with ascribing all the case histories to reincarnation.

In a few (admittedly rare) cases, the child remembers a past life as a certain person, but it later develops that this person didn't die until after the child was born. This would cast doubt on the idea that the spirit of the deceased was actually reincarnated as the child.

Also, in most cases, the child remembers a past life that was relatively recent (within a generation) and that was lived in the same geographical area (maybe two or three villages away). But why would reincarnation involve spirits coming back to the same place and time?

And in a very large majority of cases, the deceased person died young, in pain and trauma because of some illness or violent act. "Past life" memories of old people who died peacefully in their sleep are rarely, if ever, found by Stevenson.

The deceased person typically has strong feelings of attachment to his family and home, often impelling the child to visit and "reestablish" old ties. In some cases the deceased seems anxious to bring his murderer to justice or to rectify some wrong done to him, or done by him.

When I add all this up, what I get is not reincarnation but  a different though equally outre explanation: earthbound spirits.

What, you ask, are earthbound spirits? According to centuries of mystical tradition and to many accounts delivered by mediums, some people are so severely traumatized by their own death that they remain stuck (for a time) on the earth plane, lingering near their old homes and families, trying to communicate in any way they can.

My guess is that such spirits, if they exist, would find it particularly easy to influence a small child, whose own personality has not fully developed. (They may also find it relatively easy to influence an adult whose ego has broken down because of mental illness - perhaps explaining the common psychotic symptom of "hearing voices" or experiencing personality shifts. And if the material obtained under hypnosis is of any value, possibly these spirits can influence a hypnotized mind more readily than an alert mind.)

Let's assume, for argument's sake, that these wayward spirits do linger near their old haunts (so to speak), trying to find some way to "get through" to the living. Now let's say that one of them finds a receptive child - a child who serves as a natural medium. Wouldn't the spirit channel its memory and personality through the child, using him as an instrument to get what it wants? And the child, unable to clearly distinguish between his own thoughts and those impressed on him, could easily mistake the alien memories for his own. What we would have, then, is an explanation that incorporates aspects of (unconscious) channeling and outright spirit possession - two phenomena that have been well documented in parapsychology literature.

I think this hypothesis addresses Stevenson's cases at least as well the reincarnation idea. Better, actually. Even the birthmarks found on some of these children, which are said to correspond to marks or wounds on the deceased, could be interpreted as a result of the effort of the earthbound spirit to impress itself on the child, just as stigmata, rashes, lesions, and similar features are sometimes observed in cases of possession.

Unlike memories that allegedly surface under hypnosis, the spontaneous "past life" memories of children typically fade as the children grow older. I wonder if the child's ego, as it develops, gradually pushes out the intruding spirit consciousness. Or perhaps the earthbound spirit loosens its hold on its former life and goes "toward the light."

Beach reads

My friend and fellow author J. Carson Black recently posted a list of some great summer reads on her blog. This led me to think about books I'd recommend for beach or poolside. It's not a complete list by any means, but it's a start.

The Pillars of the Earth and Lie Down with Lions, by Ken Follett. Two terrific stories, the first set in the Middle Ages, the second in wartorn Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion.

Cujo, by Stephen King. The  book that convinced me I could write commercial fiction. From the very first page I felt a kinship with King, who clearly had grown up reading some of the same books and watching some of the same movies that I loved as a kid.

J. Carson Black lists Michael Connelly's The Last Coyote - an excellent choice, but just to be different I'll name Connelly's debut novel, The Black Echo. All of Connelly's early books are finely crafted police procedurals. 

River God, by Wilbur Smith. Spellbinding story of ancient Egypt - a gripping saga with fascinating, dynamic characters.

She, by H. Rider Haggard. Classic tale (which has been filmed at least three times) of an ageless beauty worshipped by an ancient cult high in the Himalayas. 

The original Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. "The Red-HeadedLeague," "A Scandal in Bohemia," The Hound of the Baskervilles ... Need I say more?

Gates of Fire, by Steven Pressfield. Superb telling of the Spartans' heroic stand against the Persians at Thermopylae. Pressfield recreates the warrior culture of Sparta with incredible artistry and empathy. A stirring evocation of the soldier's code of honor and sacrifice.

1984 and Animal Farm, by George Orwell. Everybody should read them. (Aldous Huxley's Brave New World may sadly prove even more prophetic, but I don't think it's as good a story.)

Bram Stoker's Dracula - still a great penny-dreadful, and arguably the most influential tale of horror ever penned. (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a bit of a snooze by comparison.)

For younger readers:

Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan and/or Pellucidar books. Everybody knows Tarzan from the movies, but the books are even better. As for Pellucidar, it's a vast, dinosaur-infested world at the center of the earth (which, you see, is hollow).

The Lost World, by Arthur C0nan Doyle. The irascible Professor Challenger leads an expedition to an uncharted plateau where dinosaurs and apemen still roam.   

I, Robot and the Foundation trilogy, by Isaac Asimov. Wonderful imaginings of a possible future. Also check out Asimov's Fantastic Voyage, based on the movie script but considerably fleshed out, and both entertaining and informative.

The original Conan the Barbarian stories by Robert E. Howard. The burly Cimmerian stalks a world of fantastic monsters, exotic maidens, and high adventure. Contrary to popular impression, he does not speak with an Austrian accent, and he rarely refers to his adversaries as "girly-men."

The importance of being earnest

One of the most useful intellectual skills to cultivate is the ability to enter into sympathetic engagement with any idea or argument you are considering. The only way to really understand what another person is saying is to listen closely, and the only way to listen closely is first to find, or at least pretend to find, some common ground between the other person and yourself. You need not maintain this sympathetic engagement, this provisional or illusionary agreement, for very long -- just long enough to absorb and grasp the points at issue.

On the other hand, an inability or an unwillingness to drop your guard and make room, even temporarily, for an idea that you may find distasteful is the main impediment to really understanding what other people are saying and, therefore, to being able to effectively refute what they say.

I thought of this today when flipping through a book that I admit to having bought in the expectation of a cheap laugh, and not for any intellectual merit that it may possess: Ayn Rand's Marginalia. That's right, her marginalia. In their continuing effort to publish every word that Ayn Rand ever committed to paper during the course of her 77 years, those in charge of her estate have published her private letters, her private journals, and yes, even the scribbled notes in the margins of books she was reading.

Supposedly, these notes give us an insight into Rand's brilliant mind at work. No doubt this was editor Robert Mayhew's intention, and no doubt this is how the collection of jottings will be received by her more uncritical admirers. Not being an admirer of Ayn Rand myself, I had a rather different reaction. I was simply amazed -- and amused -- at how consistently she failed to understand the most basic points points of the books in question.

In his introduction, Mayhew says he did not include many of Rand's positive comments because they were generally insubstantial. This collection, then, is not a representative sample of her reactions to her reading material. Even bearing this in mind, I found the fury and frustrated rage exhibited by Rand in these remarks to be extraordinary. Hardly a page goes by without encountering angry exclamation points, and even double and triple exclamation points, sometimes augmented by question marks in comic-book fashion. ("!!?!") The terms "God-damn" and "bastard" are unimaginatively and gratingly repeated. Repeatedly I came across another burst of venom to the effect that whatever sentence or paragraph Rand had just read is the worst, most horrible, most abysmal, most corrupt, most despicable thing she has ever, ever, ever encountered!!! The woman lived in a simmering stew of her own bile.

She came at the books she read, it would seem, not from the perspective of honestly and conscientiously trying to understand the author's position, but instead by assuming an adversarial and combative stance from the very start and then finding the most negative and malicious spin to put on the author's formulations. This approach enabled her to vent a considerable amount of rage. It does not seem to have aided her comprehension of the material in front of her.

To me this is most obvious in her treatment of The Abolition of Man, which, other than John Herman Randall's Aristotle and Ludwig von Mises's Bureaucracy, is the only book in this collection that I've read. (I suppose someday I should get around to reading Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which is considered a classic of free-market polemic -- though Rand of course finds it poisonously wrongheaded. The rest of the books, except for von Mises's Human Action and two books by Henry Hazlitt and John Hospers, are largely forgotten today.)

Lewis's book is hardly a difficult read. It was aimed at an educated but not highbrow segment of the public, and his cautions on the potential misuse of science seem chillingly prescient in these days of genetic engineering, animal cloning, and embryonic stem cell research. He develops his case methodically, building on the premise that man's power over nature translates into the power of some men over others. Rand furiously contests this idea, though she makes precious little argument against it, relying mainly on personal invective against Lewis himself, who is variously characterized as an "abysmal bastard ... monster ... mediocrity ... bastard ... old fool ... incredible, medieval monstrosity ... lousy bastard ... drivelling non-entity ... God-damn, beaten mystic ... abysmal caricature ... bastard ... abysmal scum." (These quotes give you the tenor of the master philosopher's coolly analytical mind.)

In one marginal note Rand scrawls, "This monster literally thinks that to give men new knowledge is to gain power (!) over them." Of course what Lewis says is that it is the holders and utilizers of new knowledge, who do not "give" it to others but use it for themselves, who gain de facto power over their fellow human beings. He is fearful of the emerging possibilities of "eugenics ... prenatal conditioning [and] education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology," which may someday be wielded by an elite he calls the Conditioners. "Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men." And "the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means ... the power of some men to make other men what they please." Should this come to pass, "the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the power of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique ... They [will] know how to produce conscience and [will] decide what kind of conscience they will produce."*

Lewis was clearly arguing against one possible vision of the future, the dystopia best fictionalized in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I find his points compelling, but of course they are debatable. In order to be properly debated, however, they must first be understood. Rand shows no interest in even trying to understand what Lewis is saying -- which is unfortunate, since recent headlines have made his concerns more relevant than ever.

Earlier, Lewis develops the argument that basic moral values cannot be rationally defended but must be accepted as given, as part of the fabric of human nature, common to all communities and societies, though not always equally well-developed or implemented. This view, known as moral intuitionism, is a serious ethical position and one that has been defended by many prominent philosophers, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (It is enjoying something of a resurgence today.) Rand was vehemently opposed to this view, believing that it smacked of faith, which was, as she understood it, the archenemy of reason.

Lewis argues that in the realm of values, as in other realms of thought, you must begin with certain fundamental assumptions; "you cannot go on 'explaining away' forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things forever." Rand furiously rejects this idea, and you can practically hear her pen stabbing at the page as she writes, "By 'seeing through,' he means: 'rational understanding!' Oh, BS! -- and total BS!" But Lewis's entire point is that "rational understanding" must start somewhere, just as geometry or set theory must begin with certain axioms that cannot themselves be proven by the system in question. It takes more than declarations of "BS!" to vanquish this argument -- or, for that matter, any argument.

Rand is always telling the authors she reads what they "actually" are saying. Most of the time what she thinks they are "actually" saying bears no relationship whatsoever to anything they have written or even implied. With regard to Lewis, she says that his view boils down to the claim that the more we know, the more we are bound by reality: "Science shrinks the realm of his whim. (!!)" This is a thorough misunderstanding of Lewis's essay -- an essay, let me repeat, aimed at the intelligent general reader and not requiring any special expertise to to decipher.

Thus, although Ayn Rand's Marginalia hardly demonstrates the genius that Rand's admirers believe she possessed, it does unintentionally serve an instructional purpose. It shows how important it is to enter into a temporary but sincere sympathy with an author whose view you are trying to understand -- that is, if you are trying to understand it at all. To put it another way, in reading, it's important to be earnest -- to embrace a spirit of respect, honest consideration, and goodwill. You'll find those qualities in most serious thinkers. You will not find them, I'm afraid, in Ayn Rand's marginal notes.

P.S. Although it is not relevant to the above essay, I can't help sharing a few things in Ayn Rand's Marginalia that I found funny.

Rand the historian:

A book on the history of philosophy points out that Immanuel "Kant's sympathies were ... with a democracy, such as had just been established in North America." This is a well-known fact, evidenced by Kant's sympathetic writings on liberty and individual rights. But since Kant served as Rand's bogeyman, her avatar of evil, she cannot accept the statement. "Good God, no!" she exclaims in outraged ignorance.

Rand the self-aware:

In 1975 Rand filled out a newspaper quiz called "What's Your Love Quotient?" This embarrassing revelation should never have been printed, if only out of respect for the deceased author's memory. But for anyone familiar with Rand's long history of chronic, angry altercations with friends and followers, it is darkly amusing to read her answer to the first question: "Do you find it hard to take criticism?" Rand: "Not if it's rational."

Rand the lover of nature:

A newspaper piece on industrial pollution in Greece observes, "The beach at Marathon, where the Greeks fought the Persians in 490 B.C., is now pocked with tar and littered with refuse." Rand's astute comment: "So what?!"

Rand the lover of knowledge:

An article suggesting strategies for increasing the number of serious readers in America advocates promoting "the love of knowledge for its own sake." Rand underlines these words and writes in the margin: "So long as this continues, you'll never get the people's interest!" Love of knowledge for its own sake is apparently not a worthy goal for the committed Objectivist -- which perhaps explains why Rand was such a poor reader.

Rand the lover of literature:

The same article laments that "so many people can't see why any sensible person would want to own books." In one of her most bizarre outbursts, best-selling author Rand, who derived virtually all of her income from book royalties, exclaims: "I don't either!"

Well, at least I can partly agree with her on this one. I don't see why any sensible person would want to own Ayn Rand's books.

Except for a laugh, of course.

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* The synopses of The Abolition of Man provided by Marginalia's editor Robert Mayhew are sometimes inaccurate. For example, with a few words in square brackets Mayhew summarizes part of Lewis's argument in a quoted passage: "[Those who reject tradition] are not men at all: they are artefacts." But Mayhew has conflated two different sentences, which have two different subjects. The actual passage reads: "It is not that they [i.e., the Conditioners] are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artefacts."

Thus, while "they are not men at all" does refer to the Conditioners (whom Mayhew somewhat inadequately labels "those who reject tradition"), the words "they are artefacts" refer to the Conditioners' helpless victims, who have been remade (via eugenics, prenatal conditioning, education and propaganda) into something no longer human.

Perhaps such inaccuracies are explained by a comment Mayhew makes in his introduction. A true acolyte, he unabashedly praises Rand, writing, "I do not recall a single case [in her marginalia] where what she said was unfair." It's good to know that when Rand railed against Lewis as a bastard, monster, scum, etc., she wasn't being unfair. Mayhew continues, "In fact, I was often filled with admiration for her patience, and for the strength of her stomach, in being able to go through some truly horrible book that she had decided was worth reading. (I, for one, could never have completed C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man.)"

I suppose if Mayhew wasn't actually able to read Lewis's book, he would have been hard-pressed to summarize it accurately.

Self-esteem (second try)

(Earlier today I posted a brief comment on self-esteem, but was reliably informed that it came across as angry and harsh. So I have deleted it, and will try again.)

I genuinely do think that self-esteem is overrated. One of the cliches of our time is that we must all foster as much self-esteem as possible. Yet when we look at people who are sated with self-esteem, who positively drip with self-esteem, whom do we see? Loudmouthed real estate tycoons, arrogant sports celebs, blathering talk show pundits. These people are "full of themselves," as the saying goes. Do we really want to emulate them?

I remember a study conducted a few years ago, which somehow determined that the more highly a person rated his on-the-job abilities, the more likely he was to be judged incompetent by his colleagues and customers. In other words, people who thought they were doing everything brilliantly were actually screwing up. Meanwhile, the people who had doubts about their abilities, or were modestly self-effacing, were much more likely to be above-average in competence. (I wish I remembered the details. If I knew the source, I'd link to it.)

This study dovetails with what I've observed. Competent people tend to undervalue themselves and their skills. Less-than-competent people tend to have an inflated opinion of themselves and what they have to offer.

And I wonder if this isn't why the less competent often seem to succeed faster, and more visibly, than the more competent. It's not supposed to work that way, of course, but all too often it does. Is it because the less competent people think more highly of themselves and are less reticent about saying so? Do they manage to "snow" other people into buying the self-image they project?

Many people misinterpret bravado as confidence. They see the blusterer as he sees himself: a genius. And they give him the big promotion or the golden opportunity he thinks he deserves. Meanwhile, the quieter, humbler, but actually more able employee is passed over. (The same thing happens in other spheres of life: friendship, romance, etc. It's just the way things are.)

In The Merchant of Venice, Portia asks each of her her suitors to select from three symbolic boxes the one that best represents himself. Two of three suitors choose opulent gold and silver boxes, respectively, but the successful suitor chooses a cheap lead box. The failed suitors overvalued themselves and showed their hollowness. The winning suitor, by displaying a certain modesty, demonstrated greater inner worth. It's something we ought to think about before we get too caught up in the enticements of "self-esteem."