There are few things more despicable than individuals who, for personal gain or sport or merely their own edification, would make public the private lives of others.  They take advantage of others for a laugh, or maybe a bet or for their own sense of self-righteousness, to show how much “better” than they are than others.

They don’t think about the human being whose private life they invade and exploit.

Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi “leaped to his death after his roommate allegedly secretly filmed him during a ‘sexual encounter’ with a man and posted it live on the Internet.”  Why would this one young man want to make public the private life of his roommate?  Did he think people would like him more if he streamed live footage of a young gay man’s private sexual activities on the web?

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gets it

As the father of a 17-year-old…I can’t imagine what those parents are feeling today, I can’t. You send your son to school to get an education with great hopes and aspirations, and I can’t imagine what those parents are feeling today. . . .  There might be some people who can take that type of treatment and deal with it, and there might be others, as this young man obviously was, who was much more greatly affected by it. . . .  I have to tell you, I don’t know how those two folks are going to sleep at night, knowing that they contributed to driving that young man to that alternative.

Exactly.  Exactly.

These two probably just thought they were pulling a prank, but they didn’t consider consider the feelings of Clementi.  He was so young and while ready to act out his feeling for men, not yet ready to have his sexuality made public.  It takes time to deal with the public ramifications of our difference.  Not just that, even when we are comfortable with our sexuality, our private life is just that, private life.  Many of us, not just a 18-year-old just coming to terms with his difference, would be embarrassed if strangers, friends even, witnessed our sexual activity.  It is the most private, the most personal of things. (more…)

On Monday, in the Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary (available by subscription), Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote about how Oliver Stone’s film South of the Border, “which lauds Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez as the nation’s messiah, has flopped spectacularly in, of all places, Venezuela”

To be fair, the film is about more than Mr. Chávez. It also praises the region’s latest crop of left-wing authoritarians, from Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Brazil’s Lula da Silva and Mr. Stone’s favorite Latin bad boy, Fidel Castro. In Mr. Stone’s mind, however, none is more unjustly maligned than Mr. Chávez. The director pulls no punches in his admiration for the Bolivarian bully. “I think he is an extremely dynamic and charismatic figure,” he told the press last year. “He is open and good-hearted, as well as a fascinating personality.”

And this got me wondering why so many liberals in America’s cultural élite, particularly self-described intellectuals. have become so fascinated with despotic rulers like Chávez and Castro.  (I doubt their views would change if they talked to some of the refugees from those tyrannical paradises, including a number of gay people of my acquaintance.)

For such cultural élitists, a critique of Western society has become admiration for, if not adoration of, its enemies, no matter how diabolical their ideas or record (in office).  These tyrants may preside over systems far worse than those the élite criticize, but so long as they oppose such systems, they are (to the élite at least) by definition, worthy of adulation.

——–

*and other demagogues.

As I was revising the conclusion to the chapter of my dissertation that I sent out earlier today to my committee chair, I wondered if I needed cite some of the observations I made in those final pages.  Once I had completed the body of the chapter, I set my books aside (save for two quotations I wished to use at the end), cleared my desk and just wrote, using primarily notes I had scribbled (i.e., independent observations I had made) during the course of my research.

Yet, as I wrote I found that I was occasionally expressing certain ideas and interpretations that very likely would not have come to me had I not read some of the secondary material I had consulted.  That said, the idea was there in my head.  I wondered if maybe I needed go back and find the book (or article) which allowed me to offer the observation that I had.  To be sure, in that particular case, the notion of the Phaeacians as the “most civilized” people in the Odyssey, I recalled that several scholars had made that or a similar observation.

Which brings me to blogging.

Whenever another blogger links an article or blog post, I strive to tip my hat to him (either with “h/t” or “via”).   Sometimes I may forego those expressions, but link the blogger so as to indicate my gratitude to him for tracking down the post.

But, there are times when I am blogging, similar to my experience writing the conclusion to this latest chapter, where I find myself reporting a fact or offering an opinion that I know I had encountered somewhere else, but can no longer remember where.  Sometimes, I can find it by searching the history on my browser, other times, a google search will yield the source.  In many cases though (usually with facts), I am able to find a source to confirm the fact, while uncertain that it was my original source.

In short, sometimes you can’t always cite your original source.

And one more thing.  Every now and again (particularly  now when I have less time to read blogs than I normally do), I find one blogger links a post on another blog I often check, but had not yet checked (and may be intending to check that very day).  And I wonder if I need hat tip someone who alerts me to a post I would have almost certainly found on my own.

Last week, I finished up what may well have been the most difficult chapter of my dissertation where I wrote about the goddess Athene’s role in the Iliad where that owl-eyed Olympian is, well, not the most attractive of figures. She does have her moments, particularly at the beginning where she restrains Achilles from rash action, but on the whole, she’s pretty ruthless, wanting to destroy the city of Troy, largely because its prince found her sister Aphrodite to be fairer than she.

Difficult the chapter was because the goddess is not as appealing as I would like her to be, but I did enjoy the research, appreciating the epic much more than I ever had and agreeing, against my own wishes, that is it is better than the Odyssey, long one of my favorite books in all literature.

Almost immediately after sending that chapter in, I plunged into the final stages of research for the next chapter, one that much happier epic, the chapter I have most wanted to write since the idea for this project came to me. In this epic, that of Odysseus’ homecoming and his son’s coming of age, Athene is a far more appealing figure, helping that young man, Telemachus, shed his youthful insecurities, find his father and stand up for himself while guiding the hero home.

Anyway, all this work (but enjoyable work it is) coupled with tax season has, alas, prevented me from blogging at the pace I have been in recent weeks. Do expect to get back up to speed in a couple of days, once I have reached the point in my research where I am ready to continue writing the chapter. I say, “continue,” because I have already started writing the chapter, indeed, its introduction was the first part of the paper I wrote since I drafted my “Concept Paper” while still taking classes.

(H/t:  The Corner.)

I had thought to make this a very slow blogging week.  I’m finishing up research on another chapter of my dissertation–and am learning what a true and utter geek I am.   When I discover a good book of scholarship on the Iliad, I find myself reading the whole thing, even the chapters not entirely relevant to my project.  And while a lot of the scholarship is indeed jargon, given how much there is (on that great epic), it’s easy to weed out the crap and focus on the good stuff.

But, given that this is yet another week for the Democrats’ health care endgame, a game which responsible politicians would have ended five months ago, there could be some interesting blogging ahead.

For now, I’ll make this observation:  the Democrats can still win this battle legislatively, but no matter what the outcome, they’ve already lost it politically.

If they pass the bill, they will have done so, not in an open process, but through devious means, crafting the bill in secret, offering payoffs to wavering Senators to get that chamber to pass it and using procedural shenanigans to force it through the House.  They’ll have exposed themselves as putting legislative victory ahead of all other considerations, even and especially the “good government” issues they ran on in 2006 and 2008.

And if they lose, well, David Freddoso says it best:

Consider: If Obama wins, he gets a very unpopular bill whose higher taxes and Medicare cuts materialize immediately, years before its benefits kick in. If he loses in the coming weeks, he doesn’t even get the satisfaction of blaming the Republicans. He’s already past the stage at which a GOP filbuster can stop this thing. Instead, he will have lost in a House vote, with members of his own party striking the death blow against his top legislative priority.

About two-and-one-half years ago when I submitted my “Concept Paper” outlining my dissertation, I anticipated that the second chapter would introduce the goddess Athene, starting with her Minoan-Mycenaean origins and leading up her guidance and support of the (male) hero in Greek myth.  Just over a year after that, I promised the chair of my dissertation committee that chapter on February 1, 2009.

Every time I started to write it, however, I didn’t seem ready.  Some perhaps might say it was laziness.  And perhaps it was.

Only when I saw the parallels between Sonny Corleone and Achilles, whose rage at the outset of the Iliad is about to ignite a civil war in the Achaean camp, did I realize that I couldn’t introduce the deity who restrains him until showing first the nature of his rage.  Achilles was not alone–in Greek myth or human society.  Other men have close to letting their anger getting the best of them before mastering it, while some never do.

In short, I had to show why  the owl-eyed goddess was necessary and to introduce the a problem she addresses in Greek myth (and hence culture) and so show her meaning to that society–and, by extension, to our own.  So, I added in a second chapter, an extended exegesis of the Bronze Age barroom brawl which begins the oldest of Greek epics.  A female friend dubbed it my “testosterone chapter.”  I submitted that two weeks ago.

And now, I’m about to submit the chapter I was supposed to have completed one year and 17 days ago.  It came together in a matter of days (I took four days off in the two-week period).  I had done most of the research (and all that I had used in the first week of writing) well before the initial “deadline.”  It came together not then when the research was complete, but after that new chapter was.

There is something in this, though I am, at this moment, perhaps not qualified competent to express it in a succinct catch phrase.  Perhaps, one of you can.  I struggled over something for nearly a year, only to find it falling into place in little over a week.

All that said, I’m pretty drained from all this writing and may take the whole weekend off from blogging.  I’ll see how I feel.  While Bruce blogs up at storm from CPAC on Friday, I’ll be at the Getty Library where I do my research.  And I won’t be bringing my laptop.

I’m up in Carpinteria right now where I just heard a friend defend her dissertation and have basically spent the past day focused on myth (and movies), all but oblivious to politics.  In the past few weeks, after revisiting the myth of Phaeton and realizing how relevant it was to my dissertation, I have been writing it at the most furious pace since I started this project.

Now, I’m here also to have some meetings relative to my paper and won’t be back in Los Angeles until later in the afternoon–at which time I to do hope to get back to blogging, but with a friend visiting from Utah and his daughter wanting her Uncle Dan to take her to Disneyland coupled with the head of steam I have built up for my dissertation, I may not have as much time to blog as I have had in recent days.

Sometimes it’s just nice to get away from politics.

On my pile of things to blog about has long sat a pamphlet by Robert Spencer, The Islamic Jihad Against Gays:  Why isn’t the Muslim Students Association speaking out? Published by the conservative David Horowitz Freedom Center, the pamphlet addresses an issue which most (but fortunately not all) liberal groups and gay organizations care to consider, the plight of our fellows in Islamofascist nations like Iran.

Now, another one of David’s media enterprises is addressing anti-gay attitudes among Islamic scholars, an issue to which many gay organizations seem blind.  On yesterday’s Front Page Magazine, straight blogger Eric Golub reported on a “lecture last week at the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES)” where Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, offered some theories which, if offered by a conservative would raise the hackles of gay organizations from coast to coast.

Golub calls the talk “anti-gay,” but from his report, it sounded just plain bizarre to me:

Massad . . . explained that “Queer is about resistance to Islam.” Similarly, he said that “There is no Arabic transliteration of queer. It is a judgmental notice of deviance.” In a particularly striking claim, Massad insisted that, for Muslims, concepts like “hate and sexuality are only translatable to English-speaking people.” Muslim honor killings, presumably, are only a figment of non-Muslims imagination.

Massad also used the occasion to present a novel – and decidedly homophobic – conspiracy theory. “Queer is an imperialist term,” he announced. “It is part of the Anglo-American gay agenda.” Indeed, according to Massad, “queer is an example of cultural imperialism.”

Now, I’m not particularly partial to the term “queer,” but wouldn’t even consider calling it an “imperialist” term.

It’s good to see mainstream conservative organizations addressing the plight of gays in Iran and confronting the prejudiced attitude certain Islamic scholars have toward people like us.  It would be nice if our home-grown gay organizations also took note of these prejudices.

Since seeing in the Godfather‘s Sonny Corleone a characteristic which defined the early Achilles (of myth and not the recent cinematic misrepresentation), I have begun writing the second chapter of my dissertation which will likely slow my blogging output for the next week or so.

I will still blog, but apologize in advance for not weighing in on as many subjects as I have in recent weeks.

The first part of the scene below helped me realize what was missing from the first part of my dissertation.

Since the President won the Nobel Peace Prize based on his good words and anticipation of future accomplishments, can I now get my Ph.D. based on the good idea I have for my dissertation and the anticipation that I’ll write a great thesis, even if I haven’t completed it yet?

Perhaps because I had planned a short post on equality–and how gay leaders, in making that notion the watchword of our their movement have lost sight of the American ideal of freedom, that a post that Glenn linked caught my attention as I was preparing for bed.

It’s a story we’ve heard before; it’s just the facts are different.  Students at NYU Law School protested the appointment of Dr. Thio Li-Ann, a law professor from Singapore because of her support for a law in her homeland criminalizing homosexuality.   748 students signed a petition including this paragraph:

By bringing Dr. Thio to NYU, the Law School is acting in opposition to its own policy of nondiscrimination and undermining its commitment to advancing human rights world-wide. This is a step backwards in the Law School’s longstanding support of the LGBT community.

In opposing Dr. Thio’s appointment, the students were discriminating against her point of view. Disagree with her I most certainly do, but shouldn’t people be able to challenge her positions through argument?  I mean, isn’t law school supposed to teach students how to think and argue?  You know that old Socratic method and all.

So, once again, the advocates of “diversity” and “tolerance” have shown themselves remarkably intolerant of different points of view.  Academic freedom takes a back seat to political correctness.  As Wendy Kaminer puts it:

. . . gay students (and members of other historically disadvantaged groups) are said to suffer actual discrimination when the administration hires faculty members who argue against anti-discrimination laws.  This confusion of speech and action — of advocating for discrimination and actually engaging in it — is common in academia, where academic freedom is too often limited to the freedom to advance prevailing ideals of equality.

According to Kaminer in response to Dr. Thio’s withdrawing of her appointment,

NYU law school dean Richard Revesz smartly finessed questions about her appointment by noting that while her views should not have disqualified her, despite their variance from the university’s ideals, the quality of her arguments in support of her views were relevant to her evaluation.

(Emphasis added.)  What is it about so many on the left that they’d rather shun or discredit their ideological adversaries than engage them?  If they were so confident of their views, they would welcome such an adversary as it would give them an opportunity to show the strength of their arguments by contrasting them to the weakness of hers.

in addition to my research for my dissertation, I have been reading Mary Lefkowitz’s Not Out Of Africa: How “Afrocentrism” Became An Excuse To Teach Myth As History.  While this book may well help me with my work,* I’m reading it largely for my own edification.

In her book Lefkowitz explains her frustration at having to refute theories about the supposed African origins of Greek thought which, for political reasons, have gained wide currency in our universities (and even in the media) despite being based more on political conjecture than serious scholarship:

To respond to the kinds of allegations that are now being made requires us in effect to start from the beginning, to explain the nature of the ancient evidence, and to discuss what has long been known and established as if it were now subject to serious question.  In short, we are being put on the defensive when in ordinary circumstances there would have been nothing to be defensive about.  Worst of all, making this sort of defense keeps us from going on to discover new material and bring our attention to bear on real interpretative problems. Instead of getting on with our work, we must rehearse what has long been known.  But, nonetheless, the case for the defense must be made.

Emphasis added.

Sometimes, I feel that we intellectual conservatives are in the same boat as serious classicists in needing to debunk misrepresentations which have gained wide currency.

How many times have our readers, many of whom have only read left=wing tracts (and blog posts) about the origins (and ideas) of the modern American conservative movement, who have never attended a Republican event (save to search only the most extreme elements and report on them as if they were representative of the entire gathering) and never socialized with thoughtful conservatives, told us exactly what the GOP and American conservatism is all about?  When we report our experiences as openly gay men and women at Republican or conservative events, they ignore our experiences.

(Never happened, they say, doesn’t fit their narrative.)  After all, they read the DailyKos and the Daily Dish, they know us better than we do ourselves.

It doesn’t matter if we point how how we criticized George W. Bush on spending; they know that we were unfailing in our infatuation.

it would be nice if they could see us as we are and address the arguments that we make.  As it would be nice if politicized scholars would address the Greeks as they were, acknowledging Egyptian influence on Greek culture without seeing that influence, significant thogh it may well have been, as the source of all that was great about Greece.

And it’s too bad that we, like serious classical scholars, have to devote so much time to rebutting silly allegations instead of promoting our ideas– and our candidates.  But, then again, maybe that’s their strategy, to get us bogged down in defense so we don’t have time to develop a serious offense.

* (more…)

Since our traffic increased significantly last summer (about the time of the GOP convention), I have been trying to write a few posts every night before I go to bed on the West Coast so y’all can have fresh content when y’all check the blog first thing in the morning.  But, I find that when I blog on night, not only do I sleep in, but I also check the blog myself in the morning.  And that cuts into the time I devote to my dissertation research (and writing).  (I found mornings work best for such reading.)

So, at least for the rest of the summer, I plan on blogging a lot less in the evenings, will still try (as best I can) to schedule one new post for your morning reads, but will return to the past practice of doing the bulk of my blogging in the afternoon PST (late afternoon/early evening EST).

Also, I don’t know that I’ll be jumping into the comment threads as much as I have in the past.  In the early days of the blog, I almost never checked the threads, only to be upbraided by a reader who encouraged to me to jump in.  I may also try to do a kind of “random thoughts” post (like Jennifer Rubin’s Flotsman & Jetsam at Commentary Contentions where I offer cursory commentary on the news of the day or on life in general.

The long and short of it is that I have fallen way behind on my dissertation–and want to complete that in a timely manner, so need to adjust my blogging to give myself adequate time to devote to my scholarship.

Hopefully, with Nick blogging more regularly, we should be providing you just as much reading material as we have in the past.  And maybe Bruce will find a bit more free time in his day as well. 

–B. Daniel Blatt.

As college tuition skyrockets, the debt of recent graduates increases.   As I pondered this after following two Instapundit links, something struck me about our left-leaning university faculty.  I was wondering if any of them had taken a pay cut as have many in the private and nonprofit sectors.

It seems that these recent graduates will be spending a number of years paying off those who promote a left-wing ideology.  Is this, I then wonder, emblematic of what is happening in America at large, with Obama burdening succeeding generations with debt to pay off those who implement the left-wing ideas taught on university faculties?

Just a thought.

ADDENDUM:  Jim Hoft speculates that the reason these graduates “can’t live on credit is because [the President] needs them to pay off his loans.”

Today, Glenn links a post by my law school Civil Rights Professor endorsing my favorite left-wing law professor to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.

I have to agree with Glenn that, “We could do worse, and probably will.”

There would be few things more entertaining than to watch Pam Karlan go head-to-head with Justice Scalia on points of law.  I have met few lawyers with a mind as sharp as her and an appreciation for her adversaries’ opinions. She could offer the court’s most articulate conservative a run for his money.

After taking her Voting Rights’ class my First Year, it didn’t surprise me to learn how many conservative law students swarmed to her classes.

One of my peers, a member of Law Review and the Federalist Society, boasted that he had taken every course Karlan taught while he was at U-VA.  I recall in our Criminal Procedure class when she took fifteen minutes to debate a conservative student who took issue with her interpretation of a particular case.  She didn’t berate him.  She let him talk, then responded to his points rationally and respectfully.  He thanked her for her consideration.

When I directed the Federalist Society’s Annual Symposium held at U-VA in 1994, one of our liberal speakers had to cancel at the last minute.  The only solution we could come up with to keep the ideological balance on that panel was to ask Karlan to step in–meaning she’d be on two panels at the national conference of a conservative/libertarian law group.

She agreed. (more…)

In writing about the reaction to my fellow Williams students to a lecture by Phyllis Schlafly, I recalled thw while students welcomed a controversial speaker, a number of factulty members either urged me to rescind our invitation to the speaker or angrily decried her presence on campus.  Perhaps that recollection has led me to speculate that we might see less intolerance on campus were professors to do their job, promoting respect for those holding different politic viewpoints and strongly discouraging intellectual intolerance.

Yet, more often than not, professors seem to be the most intolerant people on university campi.  To be sure, many times, they are the most tolerant.  Kurt Tauber, an avowed Marxist was quite possibly the most broad-minded Political Science Professor when I was at Williams.  Every (that’s not an exaggeration) thoughtful conservative student who taken a course from him held him in high regard.

In the past week alone, I have read two stories of attempts by campus leftists to silence conservative speakers.  While they succeeded at the University of North Carolina (UNC), they failed at the University of Texas (UT).  In both cases, faculty were involved, indeed, may have spearheaded the opposition.

So, I wonder, how much different the situation might have been, had the faculty, in the true spirit of a university, encouraged the students to be civil, to listen courteously to the speakers and to ask probing questions afterwards.

When David Horowitz spoke at UT, he

was greeted — if that’s the word — by a raucous protest organized by a professor and self-styled Bolshevik, Dana Cloud. Forty protesters hoisted placards high in the air and robotically chanted “Down With Horowitz,” “Racist Go Home,” and “No More Witch-hunts.”

Emphasis added.  Fortunately, a representative of the university administration threatened “the disrupters with arrest if they continued on this course.”

Tom Tancredo, who spoke last June at the Santa Barbara retreat of Horowitz’s Freedom Center, was not so fortunate when he traveled to Chapel Hill to address students at the UNC.  There,

Hundreds of protesters converged on Bingham Hall, shouting shouting profanities and accusations of racism while Tancredo and the student who introduced him tried to speak. Minutes into the speech, a protester pounded a window of the classroom until the glass shattered, prompting Tancredo to flee and campus police to shut down the event.

During the speech, “geography professor Alpha Cravey joined protesters in chanting the names of Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus.”  She should have been quieting them down, telling them to listen and raise their objections later.

(more…)

The Tea Parties showed how conservative and libertarians could use new media to organize and promote their ideas. Now, Glenn provides us with an example of how conservative students are using the web to protest their school’s choice of a mean-spirited partisan to deliver a commencement address:

About 130 American University students have signed an online petition of sorts asking the school’s administration to withdraw an invitation to Barney Frank, who is slated to deliver a commencement address at AU’s School of Public Affairs in a few weeks.

It seems these students are smart enough to read beyond the headlines and the MSM coverage of the financial meltdown.  They know that Republican politics and corporate greed did not cause the collapse, writing on their Facebook page

As young Americans across the country continue to lose their jobs and “rising” college graduates struggle to find employment post-grad, should American University honestly be honoring a man who helped lead us and the world into a global economic meltdown?

In addition, Frank is excessively partisan and notoriously divisive during times when compromise and bipartisanship is needed the most.

Well said.

While I believe Mr. Frank has a right to speak on a university campus should the school, one of its departments or student groups, invite him, I wonder at the school’s choice of such a partisan figure to speak at a commencement celebration.

Whatever the result of their online petition, we have an example conservative students are using the web to make their concerns known.  Let us hope that this is the harbinger of more challenges to the biases in American academia.

I believe that Barney has been so nasty toward his critics, in large part because he has, over the years, escaped criticism for and censure of his mean-spirited attacks.  The MSM has fawned all over him and refused to hold him account not just for his angry rhetoric but also for policy mistakes.

With the new media, we can bypass the gatekeepers who once blocked criticism of this unhappy man from appearing in print, and hold his rhetoric and his record up to scrutiny.  Just as these students at American University are doing.  Kudos to these young people.  May the right learn from their example.

Of the events I organized when I was an undergraduate at Williams, one lecture stands out as genuine accomplishment.  It made a difference in campus dialogue and so helped define the quality of the college U.S. News and World Report regularly names the nation’s finest liberal arts college (the tie resolved in the older school’s favor by a football game).

Offended that angry feminist Mary Daly spoke at the college, yet refused to take questions from men, I spearheaded a group of conservative students to set up the James A. Garfield Society (named in honor of the President shot on his way to his Williams reunion).  We raised money from the Political Science Department, the college’s Lecture Committee, College Council and the Young America’s Foundation to bring Phyllis Schlafly to Williamstown.  Mrs. Schlafly agreed to take questions from male as well as female students.

The Women’s Studies program refused to support the event while a number of left-wing faculty members, one since denied tenure, threw a hissy fit, upset that this leader of the movement to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment would speak at our college.

While these faculty members couldn’t bear to hear an opposing point of view, students, including many left-of-center ones, were preparing for the lecture.  My peers checked out all her books from the library.  Some searched out her articles and public statements through the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature–how we tracked down news in the days before the Internet.

They were helped out by one distinguished professor.  Rosemarie Tong, a feminist professor of Philosophy, alerted them to articles by and about Mrs. Schlafly.  Professor Tong joined conservative students at the dinner we held before the lecture.

Liberal students prepared themselves to “do battle” with this conservative icon by familiarizing themselves with Mrs. Schlafly’s ideas.  And when she spoke to a crowd of well over 1,000 (we will never know the exact number because the hall was filled beyond capacity), they listened.  There were no cat-calls, no hissing, just a polite silence.

(more…)

Back when I was regularly writing screenplays and trying to determine a strategy to market my work, I paid careful attention to the weekly box office.  I would study those charts to see which movies were flashes in the pan and which held up over time.

Sometimes, after watching a film’s preview, considering its stars and its plot (as least what I could gather from the previews and publicity), I would guess how it would fare among film-goers.  I recall my delight when films like Josie and the Pussycats and Gigli tanked as I had predicted they would.

My forecasts, however, were not always accurate.  (I was convinced, for example, that Double Jeopardy wouldn’t earn back its production costs.)  I made sure to see a film which did much better at the box office than I predicted it would, particularly if it earned over $100 million.

After watching it, I would try to figure out why it had done so well.  Now I wish I had typed up my notes.

If a movie continues to draw audiences over several successive weekends, something in its story (or its star or its spectacle) resonates with the public.  And if it holds up over time, it has succeeded in tapping into something in what Jung called our “collective unconscious.”

As it is with movies so it is with books.

That’s why I think it’s wrong for people to dismiss the significance of books like Atlas Shrugged.  That book has continued to sell well long after its publication now over a half-century ago.  It’s not just today that the book is flying off shelves.  Despite negative reviews when it was first published, its sales have remained strong in the five subsequent decades.  In 1998, it was ranked #1 in a on-line poll of the “hundred best novels of the twentieth century.”

As I read it for the second time, I see its flaws more clearly than I did when I first read it as an adolescent.  Its characters are one-dimensional, the prose is often flat, the dialogue would sound clunky if spoken and goes on way too long, yet the story is compelling.  I kept reading it last night even as my eyelids were becoming increasingly heavy.

In dismissing books which continue to sell well over time as have Atlas Shrugged and The Lord of the Rings, literary scholars discount what once defined literature we now consider classic, its ability to illuminate, through a fictional narrative, something essential about the human condition.  And for that illumination to resonate with readers.

Despite her stylistic flaws, Ayn Rand does that.  Otherwise, her books wouldn’t have found an audience.