I get the appeal of her point of view to many -- what's odd to me is the suggestion that she's a good writer.

This is an odd case of substance trumping style. Her writing is flat out awful.

Jennifer Beals IS John Galt.
 

The following a propos exchange was in this Sunday's S.F. Chronicle:

• Dear Mick LaSalle: I was intrigued to find "Flashdance" on your list of movies with great endings: Our heroine, who has never studied ballet, is admitted to a classical ballet company on the basis of an audition that combines a gymnastic floor exercise with break dancing. Never happen!
  Nancy Lambert, Pinole
  
  Dear Nancy Lambert: That's just one more reason it's a great ending. If life were like the movies, movies wouldn't be necessary.

Name me a more influential English-language novelist.

Dickens. Seriously. Put aside his influence on other novelists, which itself would win the argument over Rand and so is not fair to raise here. Invented modern Christmas, which began the Victorian era as the least of four minor religious observances and now thanks to Dickens's enshrinement of personal sentimentality consumes free market economies for an entire quarter of a year. Meanwhile, exhaustively depicted a world that made socialism seem like a moral imperative. Rand merely tries to tear down what Dickens unintentionally created.

Half of what Britain thinks of itself is influenced by Shakespeare and the authors of the KJV, who are ineligible for the honor in question, but easily half of what Britain is was influenced by Dickens. I doubt there is any single American who could compete with Dickens (again, in terms of influence on the culture).

eta This argument is an insanity and I bring shame upon myself and this dojo to continue it. Google hits for "Ayn Rand": 2,570,000. Google hits for "Orwell OR Orwellian": 16,700,000.

Novelist with most direct creation of wealth would be Ian Fleming, once you count movie gross and consumer product placement. If it weren't for him, the American military industrial complex would have collapsed under its own weight, the British car industry would have been entirely dead by 1967, and the NRA would be going around saying automatic handguns were for dead Nazis, girls and pussies. Somewhere in heaven there is a steamroom where lots of white men are lined up to give Ian Fleming handjobs.

Good point. Ayn got me laid in college, when I met a girl at the Rathskeller who applied what she called the Ayn Rand Dealkiller Test. If you liked The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged, well . . . let's just say that, fortunately for me, my school was filled with proto-fascists running around with worn copies of the two in their back pockets.

Norman Mailer

Barbara Cartland. Jesus H.

The Volokh Conspiracy has some guests with interesting posts about the Duke lacrosse scandal.

This is an example of why "influential" is a bad word for this sort of question. Or why this is just a bad question, in the "Who's better? The Stones or Beatles?" sort of way.

What has Orwell influenced? He's made people aware and vigilant, but is 1984 or Animal Farm influencing any writer? They're not terribly complex books.

I'd say his short story "A Hanging" explained more eloquently all the reasons I loathe capital punishment than I ever could. But it hasn't influenced me in any way.

Actually, Orwell's essay on writing is absolutely mandatory for anyone who would make their living by their words. It may not be as pithy or as well-known as Elements of Style but it's part of the writer's canon in contrast to Strunk and White's popularity with high school english teachers.

Some criticism of the Iraqi bonds thing I posted the other day.

I've not read the book Wonkster mentions, but I will look for it tomorrow. But Orwell is hardly Animal farm and 1984, and move on.

Down and Out in Paris and London is a great read. you would like it, I bet. He has other novels that are quite good, and cover very tiny little things in very simple people's lives.

Keep the Aspidistra flying or Coming Up for Air are examples.

I'll look for it online. You can find a lot of his essays free for some reason.

BTW, this is a good book on writing:
http://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Throug.../dp/0446691437

Skip this.

That's an amusing essay. And it stands my earlier comment that his style is simple on its head.

The problem with those essays - and there are many like them - is that they assume language can be captured and made better. They destroy the idea of prose as poetry as they argue in favor of that result.

But it was amusing. I still think he's better doing a simple riff on an Indian walking to the gallows.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

I cannot believe that you, with all your rants on legalese and the way lawyers torture the truth, do not recognize that simplicity in language is a cornerstone of speaking the truth.

Hemingway, Burroughs, John D. McDonald. All these writers and others express themselves with directness and simplicty.

Even politicians, sometimes, embrace this in their communication. Can anyone deny that, whatever else you think of Ronald Reagan, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" is one of the most memorable and enduring quotes of the 20th century?

Sebby Misses the Point
 

You're mixing apples and oranges here, Wonk. Simple language is a hallmark of the truth, but its not necessarily a hallmark of interesting writing. I love Vonnegut and he wrote as simply as one could. He also wrote wild fiction. You can have simple prose in fiction, non-fiction, journalism, etc. And in each of those areas, you can also have poetic prose. Orwell fails to distinguish between the art of writing prose and what he sees as poor, opaque use of language. When writing a simple essay or legal papers, simple writing is good. But when writing something for the reader's enjoyment and entertainment, the "poetic value" of numerous literary tricks and interesting flow or language is important. There's a distinction between "poorly written" and "not written as simply as it could have been."

And for somebody as intellectually pretentious as Orwell to suggest his prose is anything approaching simple is a bad joke. He writes in a deliberately snotty style recently cribbed by Hitchens. I love reading Hitchens and I never think "Wow, this guy should write in a simpler fashion." That would destory the beauty of his work, which to me lies in the prose. But YMMV. Most people fixate on the message, and if that's what Orwell is suggesting we should do, in a simple way, then I'd suiggest, were he alive, he take some of his own medicine before penning anything as dense as that fucking essay.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

Burroughs? He is not one of the greatest writers of the last century. And he is not simple.

Oddly, if you want to talk simple prose, Ayn Rand's is among the least complicated. Which might be why I couldn;t stand any of her shit. It's all "see spot run" with a tirade here and there.

And you'd think I'd like that.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

Richard Dawkins did a TLS book review of "God Is Not Great," which is kind of like Ty doing a book review of Gravity's Rainbow. Still, even he had to blush over the controversy of Hitchens's line about the Catholic church's policy on child abuse being, in the Latin phrasing, "No child's behind left." The point being that sometimes Hitchens's wicked style gets in the way of his point.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

Being a grandstanding class clown most of my life, I appreciate that. And the book is highly readable. It's filled with great little tricks like that, which, IMO, you need to lighten an otherwise vicious polemic.

I think Hitchens knows he gets in his own more than any rebuttal to his usually well grounded arguments. My suspicion is that he does that on purpose for amusement.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

if you respond to someone commenting on Orwell, when he has clearly not read Orwell, then you are as much the fool. of course, i realize that you haven't even read the guy you're talking about, so you get a pass, but I don't want others to start responding when Sebastian goes into troll mode.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

Troll? Jesus, do you masturbate to photos of Orwell or something?

Sebby Misses the Point
 

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shot...5637118-00.gif

I read Animal Farm in eighth grade.

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/mkombat.gif

Sebby Misses the Point
 

It's simple and didactic -- she bludgeons you with her points, always telling and never showing.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

I think Hank meant that Sebby had not read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" and that you were wasting your time responding to him.

Sometimes it's like I'm the only one who understands you, Hank.

Are there any actual women who find Fred Thompson sexy?

Sebby Misses the Point
 

Exactly. Balancing the showing and telling is tough. She's an essayist masquerading as a novelist.

It also speaks a lot about her intelligence that she couldn't make her point without swinging a fifty pound hammer onto people's heads. The ability to let a reader fill in the blanks is, IMO, a mark of smart writer.

But then, she wasn't stupid. Her concepts are dense and well considered. Maybe she was emotionally retarded.

Maybe? Jesus. Did I say that? Of course she was.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

I agree with most of this, although I find the worlds she creates entertaining and her philosophy interesting. Her writing style is nothing special.

But don't you think it would be difficult for her to "show" the points she is trying to make? As I see it, those point pretty much require the "tell." I view her as a philoshoper masquerading as a novelist.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

Has this board really descended to the level of talking about Ayn Rand?

Can we get Penske to come back and raise the level of discourse?

(Damn. That's like saying Beetlejuice-- no one repeat what I just said.)

Maybe in the over-70 group. I think he looks like someone's grandpa.

In disappointing news, the US Representative from my district announced yesterday he is not going to run for another term. He was a more of a centrist and thus a Republican I didn't have to hold my nose to vote for. Now I suppose all the arch conservatives will come crawling out to vie for that seat (which will almost surely go GOP).

IIRC, that district went for Bush by only 51%, so it doesn't seem a lock to go to the GOP next year.

We'll have to see. The Dems have never run a strong candidate and I never knew if it was because Ramstad was so popular or because the district was a lock for the GOP.

The really unfortunate thing is that there will be heavy campaigning for that seat in the next election. Ramstad ran almost no TV commercials and that was a nice break.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

Well, we can make fun of Duke for this - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070920/...justice_center in light of these http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1190036571.shtml

Thanks to Ty for the link earlier.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

Well, we can make fun of Duke for this - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070920/...justice_center in light of these http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1190036571.shtml

Thanks to Ty for the link earlier.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

Honest, self-actualized, conciliatory and mostly correct -- this may very well be your best post ever.

Sebby Misses the Point
 

This, OTOH, is not as condescending as some of your best efforts.

I'm not a woman, but...

Sebby Misses the Point
 

Didn't I chase you out of here years ago?