Posted on 05/23/2009 7:14:53 AM PDT by Publius
The same way he nailed the part in Brokeback Mountain?
Never saw "Brokeback Mountain." Have you seen "The Dark Knight?" Leger deserved the Academy Award for that character portrayal.
Mark
Good job.
V.C. Carson
- "that he would give his life for he power not to have committed the action he had committed."
Rand obviously didn't get the memo.
Rearden had taken to carrying a gun and according to the current gun control crowd, it would have been impossible for him not to have used it.
LOL - yeah, or it would have just gone off all by itself. I have to get one of those - it would sure save range time.
And you hit the nail on the head for what became for me the first crack in my admiration ( need I say heroine worship !) of Rand nearly forty yrs ago when I first read this chapter.
. It just rang so false. Men don't act like that in real life. Here's a couple of tough guys caught in the same room with a woman both of them have been sleeping with and one of them slaps....not punches, or kicks in the balls....but SLAPS!........the other one and the slapee just friggin walks away. In front of the woman, no less !And for this act of timidity or cowardice or whatever, we are supposed to feel admiration for the guy as a paragon of self control. Give me a break. Nobody I know would do that.
I can't say it better than you:
It is here that Rands sexual theories reach the far shore of adolescent fantasy.
And I agree about the God like references. But when I first read AS I thought she was writing like a modern day Homer, with all those multiple gods interacting with mere humans. I knew she was talking about real men but it had that Greek Pagan quality for me. Maybe because at the same time I was reading Homer for school. Who the hell knows what she was thinking. Except to say she never really could grasp what actual sexual desire is all about...at least from the man's side......and it ain't your mind, cowgirl ! In her fiction or her real life. Witness her Nat Brandon interlude.
Hear, hear. And not an honest punch in the chops, but a slap! Could he get any more demeaning?
Just stay away from the .45mm caliber that authors sometimes mention.
It’s a good start.
It's not about trains.
ML/NJ
It just gripes me no end to see conservatives sifting the ashes of that half-century old novel, while ignoring equally good fiction that is up to date in all areas.
And you can't get more up to date than my third novel, published 2 weeks ago.
http://www.amazon.com/Foreign-Enemies-Traitors-Matthew-Bracken/dp/0972831037/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1242785988&sr=1-2
ML/NJ
I agree with your post, ML/NJ.
Trains, cigarettes, chrome, etc., all are props and have modern equivalents.
I find it easy to explicate the 50 year old references as I read.
Who is John Galt?
(Francisco tells her the road to understanding leads to Atlantis - Publius post1)
Where is Atlantis?
These are questions pertaining to a destination or ending, however, the true value of Atlas Shrugged is in the journey. Rand is blazing a trail for us to follow.
That’s right, and I saw someone on here the other day singing the praises of the 0.050 caliber. I think that one and the one you mentioned are actually flechettes.
It was .45mm, and it was a joke, based on common news reporter errors.
I know, although I did see a post the other day where an actual Freeper referred to 0.050 caliber. My flechette comment was a joke as well (this is hugh and series). I’m a little too dry for most people.
I only post this review snippet because it relates to the thread.
Gotcha. My favorite is when authors put thumb safeties on Glocks and the like.
Rand’s dialogue and plot construction can be annoying, but they have to be taken in their own context. Your profile says you enjoy detective fiction, so you’re familiar with the hilarious lowbrow dialogue that is just as comical as the highbrow dialogue found in older fiction. I picked up a copy of I, The Jury at a used book sale a few years ago and found myself laughing out loud at parts that Spillane never intended to be lol’d.
Throughout the novels I read in school, my most common thought was, “WHO TALKS LIKE THIS?” Answer: authors. Realistic dialogue was not wanted. Dialogue reflected the writer’s style and intelligence, not the characters’. One teacher described the disposition to such verbiage plainly.
“Why write a book full of dialogue that you could hear in any tavern?” That’s what they were thinking. Nowadays, we seem to have the opposite problem. Dialogue is so realistic, so street smart, and so clever, that its use is often preposterous.
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