If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Dak]

The point is that something can't be a successful epic poem if it tells its story in prose. It can't be a succession tragedy if it's a romantic comedy. It can't be a novel if it's a manifesto.

Atlas Shrugged is a bloated manifesto. Any novelistic characteristics it has are window dressing, and carry no formal significance beyond that fact. It fails as a novel because it offers nothing of substance beyond the manifesto at its core.

Well I can't respond in an informed way to this critique of Rand's novels because I haven't read them. Playing a bit of a "devil's advocate" here, isn't it possible the disagreement with the "manifesto" means that any other "substance" is thrown out with the proverbial bathwater?

 

[Einherjar86]

Well I can't respond in an informed way to this critique of Rand's novels because I haven't read them. Playing a bit of a "devil's advocate" here, isn't it possible the disagreement with the "manifesto" means that any other "substance" is thrown out with the proverbial bathwater?

Rand probably thinks so--but no, not at all. Additional substance--whether it be formal, stylistic, conceptual, etc.--would potentially invite skepticism and additional contemplation on the reader's part beyond any point of view depicted in the text. It would make possible the activation of irony, defamiliarization, ambiguity, and other fictive notions that would move a work like Atlas Shrugged beyond manifesto and toward novel.

I'll do a comparison with a novel by an author whom I know you don't like: Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I choose that novel because it's possible to read (and many have read) the character of Judge Holden as the mouthpiece of the novel, and to read the novel's basic stance as being that of the judge. The judge speaks significantly more than any other character, and his lines are by far the most memorable and quotable.

Yet the judge is also a psychopath. He murders children and drags along a mentally handicapped person as a king of gimp. He might make some poignant observations about modern culture and history, but overall his philosophy is detestable. It inspires disagreement and discomfort in and among readers.

But Blood Meridian isn't interested in pushing a point of view on anyone, especially not the judge's. It invites readers to throw out the judge's manifesto(s), but not the text's formal arrangement, its stylistic flourishes, its narrative perspective, and other non-thematic elements. The playfulness and interaction of those novelistic elements facilitate readings beyond content, beyond the deplorable specifics of the judge's rhetoric (and of the novel's relentless violence generally speaking). A novel shouldn't have a singular moral or thematic view, for which it is the only purpose of its formal components is to reinforce. Novels permit us to doubt the moral systems of their characters by virtue of their formal elements, and not only through recourse to our personal feelings or reactions.

 

[Dak]

Rand probably thinks so--but no, not at all. Additional substance--whether it be formal, stylistic, conceptual, etc.--would potentially invite skepticism and additional contemplation on the reader's part beyond any point of view depicted in the text. It would make possible the activation of irony, defamiliarization, ambiguity, and other fictive notions that would move a work like Atlas Shrugged beyond manifesto and toward novel.

I'll do a comparison with a novel by an author whom I know you don't like: Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I choose that novel because it's possible to read (and many have read) the character of Judge Holden as the mouthpiece of the novel, and to read the novel's basic stance as being that of the judge. The judge speaks significantly more than any other character, and his lines are by far the most memorable and quotable.

Yet the judge is also a psychopath. He murders children and drags along a mentally handicapped person as a king of gimp. He might make some poignant observations about modern culture and history, but overall his philosophy is detestable. It inspires disagreement and discomfort in and among readers.

I'm not sure why you think I think that he is an author I don't/wouldn't like. I haven't read his novels but not out of spite but out of time's sake. I did enjoy NCFOM (movie) and I would read that and other books at this point had I the time.I don't know how, though, some novelist setting up the main protagonist as the presumable villain is somehow an argument. It's just an approximation of the opposite approach to the same thing re:values.

But Blood Meridian isn't interested in pushing a point of view on anyone, especially not the judge's. It invites readers to throw out the judge's manifesto(s), but not the text's formal arrangement, its stylistic flourishes, its narrative perspective, and other non-thematic elements. The playfulness and interaction of those novelistic elements facilitate readings beyond content, beyond the deplorable specifics of the judge's rhetoric (and of the novel's relentless violence generally speaking).

This take is why we disagree so much on so many things.

Edit: Is why = is an example, anyway.

 

[CiG]

A 12-year-old African-American girl who claimed three white classmates pinned her down and cut her dreadlocks has admitted the claims were fabricated, her school said.

"We can now confirm that the student who accused three of her classmates of assault has acknowledged that the allegations were false," Stephen Danish, head of Immanuel Christian School, said in a statement Monday.

She claimed the boys held her hands behind her back, covered her mouth and clipped her hair, calling it "ugly" and "nappy."

Kids and their wild imaginations, this definitely isn't learned behaviour or anything.

 

[rms]

Reading blood meridian now! Watch the spoilers!!

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

impeachment inquiry - Google Search

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm not sure why you think I think that he is an author I don't/wouldn't like. I haven't read his novels but not out of spite but out of time's sake. I did enjoy NCFOM (movie) and I would read that and other books at this point had I the time.I don't know how, though, some novelist setting up the main protagonist as the presumable villain is somehow an argument. It's just an approximation of the opposite approach to the same thing re:values.

I thought I recalled a conversation in which you said you didn't like his prose. Carry on.

I have no idea what Cormac McCarthy's values are, so I can't see the judge as the opposite of them.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

yeah i remember Dak shitting on McCarthy the last time you guys were all talking about him.

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

So fucking brave. Look at those evil fucking fascists trying to spread their hatred to the other side of the street.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

So fucking brave. Look at those evil fucking fascists trying to spread their hatred to the other side of the street.

 

[Dak]

I thought I recalled a conversation in which you said you didn't like his prose. Carry on.

I have no idea what Cormac McCarthy's values are, so I can't see the judge as the opposite of them.

I criticized his disuse of punctuation. Doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy the book as a whole. Tolkien could have made the LoTR trilogy somewhat shorter without losing all that much, but I still like the story.

 

[CiG]

Trans athlete claims lesbians are transphobic for not liking penises.

McKinnon is a vocal trans advocate who has spoken out in favour of trans women competing in women’s sports, has physically dominated biological women in her own sport of cycling, and, most recently, has taken to Twitter to pen endless threads against the so-called “cotton ceiling.”

If you haven’t heard of the cotton ceiling, consider yourself lucky. Per Curve Magazine, the phrase was “coined by porn actress and activist Drew DeVeaux in 2015. It’s been used to refer to the tendency by cisgender lesbians to outwardly include and support trans women, but draw the line at considering ever having sex with them.”

Dissident lesbians and TERFs are slowly becoming my favourites for entertaining drama.

 

[Onder]

Trans athlete claims lesbians are transphobic for not liking penises.


Dissident lesbians and TERFs are slowly becoming my favourites for entertaining drama.

Rachel McKinnon is hilarious.

EDIT:

In fact, the gay rights movement was able to gain mainstream societal acceptance precisely due to the claim that homosexuality is not a choice, but an innate characteristic, just like heterosexuality, or green eyes.

Ok this part talks about something I've been saying for a while, although probably not in here, that I think the T agenda is inherently different to the L, G, and B agenda, and even collides with those. While LGB groups want to erase the stupid society stigma about sexuality and LGB's being sick people, Trans agenda is feeding off of the gender differences expected and perpetuated by society while at the same time healing their difference as a sickness with surgery and pills.

So far nobody has explained to me why the T is included in the movement. Because I like the idea that society needs to accept all minorities and I'm all for erasing unnecessary gender-based prejudice - I think it should be ok to dress like a girl and have a dick and vice-versa, just as it should be ok to be attracted to the same gender. The very thing I like about the pride movement is that it's the society that needs to heal, not the different individuals. Those hardcore trans people like McKinnon make it really hard for me to understand. Her bullshit just doesn't make sense.

 

[CiG]

Rachel McKinnon is hilarious.

 

[Onder]

View attachment 21890

Yeah I know those pictures.

Edited the post with a little more response btw.

 

[CiG]

I agree with everything you edited in.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Trans rights = the right to fuck lesbians

 

[CiG]

 

[HamburgerBoy]

To me it's pretty remarkable how well MtF trannies prove the immutability of biological sex by being so aggressive and sexually predatory. I don't think I've ever seen an FtM that was a notably bad person, but it's like half of these MtF trannies are closeted, wannabe-rapists.

 

[CiG]

The emergence of transtrenderism as trans politics/culture got more and more popular has absolutely added to this phenomenon. A lot of sex pests and degenerates realised that joining some kind of protected identity group is as good a bulletproof vest as they might get. Put on a dress and watch little girls pee at the public pool.