Literary News

[Druidic]

I've never felt a desire to read Rand but I'd check her out before I'd read someone like Hubbard. Rand believed in her philosophy; L. Ron was a cynical opportunist who was probably mentally ill in his last decades. Actually I've gone out of my way to say some nice--and vague--things about her. I figure anyone so despised had to get something right. As Wilhelm Reich said, The truth is so big every system has a little of it.

[Frater_Tsalal]

Robert Adam Gilmour, I would agree with you on The Fountainhead, though I probably rate it a little more highly. Having said that, I've never been able to make it through more than one hundred pages of Atlas Shrugged.

I will admit to admiring her single-minded dedication when it came with writing her novels: she seemed to have the ability to work on something for years without getting distracted by side-projects (would that I could say the same). And unlike many fiction writers who keep writing long after they've exhausted all their ideas, she knew when to stop.

[ChildofOldLeech]

I'm far from an admirer of Elron and his works - I'll always remember when I was in middle school and my father took me and a friend to LA to see Phantom of the Opera and in the course of the looking for a restroom on Hollywood Blvd. we ended up in front of the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition, where a matron with a glassy-eyed expression and a scottish burr somehow talked us all into taking the full tour which involved watching a disturbing short film ostensibly about drug abuse - and will not hesitate to call Ronnie a manipulative, money-grubbing, mentally disturbed a-hole, but in my mind he's still far less loathsome than the unapologetically sociopathic Aynnie Rand, who tried to make lack of empathy and total self-centeredness into virtues and had a soft spot for a serial killer.

(Of course, the fact that Hubbard was a passable writer of pulp fiction (his Fear is entertaining for what it is) prior to going looney-tunes doesn't hurt either)

[miguel1984]

Well, comparing Rand and Hubbard is comparing apples to apples; putrid, rotten, unedible apples, infested with disgusting worms and maggots.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I think what Hubbard did is way more monstrous. So many lives have been destroyed. So many families still torn apart. Rand said obnoxious things and was terrible to certain people but Hubbard is directly responsible for so much more suffering.
Similar to Hubbard she did lose in her mind (in a different way to her early concentrated "sane" madness)

I think it ridiculous when people blame America's economic disasters on Rand. Yes, republicans use her as sort of validation of their ways but they have to completely ignore VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING about her philosophy, including her hatred for republicans. In most ways she is the opposite of the politicians who have embraced her.

The worst thing about Rand that I know is her justification for the massacre of native Americans.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I once seen Laveyan Satanism dismissed as Ayn Rand's objectivism "with gothic props".
I thought that was funny but I don't know if it's fair.

[miguel1984]

I agree Hubbard was worse than Rand; he really ruined people's lives. His son Quentin committed suicide in 1976 at age 22 because he was a homosexual and that was against Scientology's doctrine, his organization was responsible for the worst case of internal espionage in United States' history and some ex-members like Paulette Cooper were harassed for years.

His followers are worse, though. David Miscavige has a prison for disgraced members called The Hole, for example, and they still have to answer for Lisa McPherson's death in 1995. I recommend Tony Ortega's work at The Village Voice and his blog, The Underground Bunker (http://tonyortega.org/), to anyone interested; he also has a book about Paulette Cooper coming out in May, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology Tried to Destroy Paulette Cooper.

I hate them with all my heart and I am even more concerned about this since I found out they installed offices in my country, Argentina, fairly recently. My country is a disaster right now, and Scientology's presence makes it even worse.

One point in common between Hubbard and Rand is that they filmed atrocious films based on their work, Battlefield Earth and the Atlas Shrugged trilogy, which, thank Xenu, won't attract any new converts. Well, maybe Rand gets a pass, since I heard that The Fountainhead film from 1949 is not bad.

By the way, Alan Moore said his wife, Melinda Gebbie, told him she hanged with La Vey's daughter in the 70s and went to La Vey's house and said it was "a rubber Satan show. It's carnival Satanism; it's just anti-Christianity." He also says that Satanism is a disease of Christianity, so you really have to be a Christian in order to be a Satanist. Here is the interview: Blather: The Alan Moore Interview: Aleister Crowley the man.

[Frater_Tsalal]

The acting in the 1949 The Fountainhead isn't anything to write home about, but the cinematography and set design is pretty good.

[Druidic]

Miguel, I sympathize with you. Dianetics, as it was originally called, was a poison concocted by Hubbard with the sole aim of making himself rich. He told Ted Sturgeon in the Forties that SF wasn't where it's at, you should invent a religion and grow wealthy.

[Coa]

Miguel -

"you really have to be a Christian in order to be a Satanist' - So many good examples for that, absolutely true. But it's really hard to define - to be precise about it, is it pagan disease or maybe atheist ? Both were accused, both have their followers.

And about Rand, I like her excessive side, I don't think she was aware of it. There's beauty in it, it's vulgar, even her ideological compatriots are ashamed of her.