So apparently Bill O’Reilly has decided to boycott Sean Penn movies. He recognizes that Penn is a great actor but doesn’t like the man’s politics, and so he has decided to protest with his dollars, as is his right.
It’s also completely childish.
Several years back, I did the same thing. Except for me, it was John Wayne who was to be shunned. A sometimes strident right-winger who made movies like The Green Berets, I decided that the man was an ignoramus and could safely be ignored. I went on like that for years. (I wasn’t so crazy about Clint Eastwood, either, for exactly the same reasons, and stayed away from his films as well. Dirty Harry? Please.)
(There was one exception made: The Quiet Man. But that’s because the movie was set in Ireland and made by the great John Ford, so I rationalized the exception by saying it was an atypical movie more about Ford than Wayne, and in it Wayne played a man desperate for peace after a lifetime of fighting. Plus it had Maureen O’Hara and her streaming red hair, and who could resist that?)
At the same time, I vociferously stood up for Jane Fonda’s right to speak out. And Vanessa Redgrave’s. Even though I didn’t always agree with them, damn it all, surely they had the right to speak their mind like anyone else! And yet never once during that time did I stop to question my own hypocrisy.
And then I saw The Searchers. Another John Ford film, and a truly great movie. At this point I had a dilemma: in order to catch up on the ouvre of John Ford, I was going to have to watch a lot of John Wayne films. What to do? What to do? (Then I discovered that Ford was himself pretty right-wing. Curses!)
And I thought, You know, Wayne gave a pretty damn great performance in The Searchers. Can it be possible that I’ve been, o horror at the thought, a bit unfair to the man? I watched Stagecoach, with that brilliant zoom-in on Wayne’s first appearance that made him an instant icon. I began to appreciate his incredible physicality (no one else, ever, has been able to walk like that), and I began to find levels to his performances that I’d never have been willing to grant before. And Fort Apache followed, also a truly great film. And Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with one of my favorites, Jimmy Stewart. (Another dilemma: how could I reconcile the fact that I loved Jimmy Stewart but that he was great friends with both John Wayne and Ronald Reagan?)
(I even watched Dirty Harry, and by gum, it’s pretty damn entertaining. Plus of course there was Unforgiven, which in a stroke turned me around on Clint Eastwood--and which Bill O’Reilly claims is one of his favorite movies. Mine, too--see, there is room for agreement here1)
I now knew for sure that by denying John Wayne I had been denying myself an awful lot of good movies. But what about the Wayne flicks that weren’t directed by John Ford? The Shootist answered that question as well. John Wayne was a terrific actor, and I’ve had hours of pleasure and edification catching up on his movies for the last couple of years. People can have whatever opinions they want, and they can say what they want no matter what those opinions may be. And I can choose to listen or not to listen. It’s fine, I’m an adult, I can handle it.
And so we come back around to Bill O’Reilly, who is older than me and really ought to have figured this out by now. He says he’s a movie guy, he loves watching movies, and he also says he realizes Sean Penn is a great actor. So I can only say to him, Grow up already!
Monday, March 30, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Wallowing in Nostalgia
My junior year of high school, some friends of mine were in a one-act called "Did You Ever Go to P.S. 43?" by Michael Schulman. In it, a woman sits on a park bench, minding her own business, when a man comes up and asks her whether she went to the school listed in the title. We soon learn that he was once a star athlete at that school who had one fantastic game, one perfect night, early on in his life--and that nothing was ever so good again. So he roams the city, asking random strangers whether maybe they were there, whether they can validate his life by remembering that one perfect night with him.
A group of people I went to high school with has slowly gathered on Facebook, over the past couple of months, and I have found myself nearly obsessed with the group. I started scanning old photos, even old programs, and of course started to actively seek out people I hadn't seen in something like a quarter of a century. A formal group got created on Facebook just for the performers at that school in certain years, which had the effect of creating an ongoing high-school reunion where only the people you liked showed up. (As opposed to the one actual reunion I attended, my tenth, where I ended up disappointed because most of the performers weren't there.)
No question, it's been great reconnecting with some people I hadn't seen in all that time; there are even a couple folks I really hadn't known that well back then, but who are now becoming actual friends, not just of the Facebook kind. The old artificial distinctions of age drop away (who cares now whether someone was a year ahead or behind?), and we can all just be people with a certain specific connection, sharing the old stories--indulging ourselves, as much as we want, in a bit of harmless nostalgia.
And as I wallow, my memory of those days has become golden. All the pictures in my head look something like this...
That's me looking goofy on the right, but smiling and cheerful, with old friends, some of whom are now members of that Facebook group. (And one of whom, Rudy Prieto, in the red shirt with his back to the camera, passed away years ago, alas.) But why shouldn't I be smiling? By my senior year, I was completely in command. I had leads in both the major shows, completely knocking it out of the park as Fagin in Oliver! The school created a closed-circuit TV system that year, so my best friend David Hernandez and I did the morning announcements as a pair of oddball TV anchors, playing as many pranks as we could possibly dream up--and since I was on TV every morning, absolutely everyone in school knew me, and said hi, and kinda sucked up in the way that only happens when you're on TV, even closed-circuit TV that never leaves that one building. Every morning I would get to school half an hour early, just so I could hang out near the Drama classroom with my friends before classes started. I was in Advanced Placement classes, got good grades, and didn't have to take math. What more could a fella want?
But here's the thing. A few days ago I wanted to look up some specific information that required pulling out the journals I started keeping my first year of high school. And there, in horrifically bad writing, was the truth of how I felt back then. Which is to say, miserable.
Every stupid little insult. Every moment at a party when I felt snubbed. Every unrequited crush. Every moment that didn't meet some unattainable standard of perfection, I dwelled on all of it, and refused to enjoy all the moments that were, in fact, pretty damn great. It was as if I were that guy in Schulman's play, who has in fact found people who remember his big game--but who has now discovered that even when he was having his great moment, he was completely unable to enjoy a second of it. Best moment of his life and all he did at the time was gripe.
(By the way--I am not that guy. Plenty of great moments since high school, thank you very much. Most recently, watching my name scroll across a movie screen for the first time, in a crowded theater, that was just plain fantastic. Plenty more of those moments to come, too--I feel like I'm only just beginning to peak, right now. So there.)
(And, of course, all of the above could also be summed up thusly: I was a teenager, and that's what we do. C'est la vie.)
Still, I can't escape the conclusion that the only reason I was miserable was because I wanted to be. And that if I'd been able to simply make the other decision, the Buddhist decision to simply be where I was and experience life as it was rather than as I desired it to be, I'd have had a hell of a lot more fun back then.
Of course it's all a vicious cycle: if I'd been able to enjoy myself a little more, doubtless there wouldn't have been quite so many stupid little insults, awkward moments at parties, or unrequited crushes. When I wrote Thereby, I discovered the one theme that has come to dominate all my work: that our lives are like stories, and we're the tellers of those stories. Whether they go well or badly is entirely up to us.
Now I learn that lesson again, through my own awful high-school journal entries. A perfectly lovely time made miserable by nothing more than my decision to be miserable. A story that could have gone so much better, if only I had allowed myself to tell it that way.
A group of people I went to high school with has slowly gathered on Facebook, over the past couple of months, and I have found myself nearly obsessed with the group. I started scanning old photos, even old programs, and of course started to actively seek out people I hadn't seen in something like a quarter of a century. A formal group got created on Facebook just for the performers at that school in certain years, which had the effect of creating an ongoing high-school reunion where only the people you liked showed up. (As opposed to the one actual reunion I attended, my tenth, where I ended up disappointed because most of the performers weren't there.)
No question, it's been great reconnecting with some people I hadn't seen in all that time; there are even a couple folks I really hadn't known that well back then, but who are now becoming actual friends, not just of the Facebook kind. The old artificial distinctions of age drop away (who cares now whether someone was a year ahead or behind?), and we can all just be people with a certain specific connection, sharing the old stories--indulging ourselves, as much as we want, in a bit of harmless nostalgia.
And as I wallow, my memory of those days has become golden. All the pictures in my head look something like this...
That's me looking goofy on the right, but smiling and cheerful, with old friends, some of whom are now members of that Facebook group. (And one of whom, Rudy Prieto, in the red shirt with his back to the camera, passed away years ago, alas.) But why shouldn't I be smiling? By my senior year, I was completely in command. I had leads in both the major shows, completely knocking it out of the park as Fagin in Oliver! The school created a closed-circuit TV system that year, so my best friend David Hernandez and I did the morning announcements as a pair of oddball TV anchors, playing as many pranks as we could possibly dream up--and since I was on TV every morning, absolutely everyone in school knew me, and said hi, and kinda sucked up in the way that only happens when you're on TV, even closed-circuit TV that never leaves that one building. Every morning I would get to school half an hour early, just so I could hang out near the Drama classroom with my friends before classes started. I was in Advanced Placement classes, got good grades, and didn't have to take math. What more could a fella want?
But here's the thing. A few days ago I wanted to look up some specific information that required pulling out the journals I started keeping my first year of high school. And there, in horrifically bad writing, was the truth of how I felt back then. Which is to say, miserable.
Every stupid little insult. Every moment at a party when I felt snubbed. Every unrequited crush. Every moment that didn't meet some unattainable standard of perfection, I dwelled on all of it, and refused to enjoy all the moments that were, in fact, pretty damn great. It was as if I were that guy in Schulman's play, who has in fact found people who remember his big game--but who has now discovered that even when he was having his great moment, he was completely unable to enjoy a second of it. Best moment of his life and all he did at the time was gripe.
(By the way--I am not that guy. Plenty of great moments since high school, thank you very much. Most recently, watching my name scroll across a movie screen for the first time, in a crowded theater, that was just plain fantastic. Plenty more of those moments to come, too--I feel like I'm only just beginning to peak, right now. So there.)
(And, of course, all of the above could also be summed up thusly: I was a teenager, and that's what we do. C'est la vie.)
Still, I can't escape the conclusion that the only reason I was miserable was because I wanted to be. And that if I'd been able to simply make the other decision, the Buddhist decision to simply be where I was and experience life as it was rather than as I desired it to be, I'd have had a hell of a lot more fun back then.
Of course it's all a vicious cycle: if I'd been able to enjoy myself a little more, doubtless there wouldn't have been quite so many stupid little insults, awkward moments at parties, or unrequited crushes. When I wrote Thereby, I discovered the one theme that has come to dominate all my work: that our lives are like stories, and we're the tellers of those stories. Whether they go well or badly is entirely up to us.
Now I learn that lesson again, through my own awful high-school journal entries. A perfectly lovely time made miserable by nothing more than my decision to be miserable. A story that could have gone so much better, if only I had allowed myself to tell it that way.
Monday, March 16, 2009
The Charter for Compassion
I could quibble. "Charter for Compassion" is a phrase that doesn't quite sing, and I think they've got the wrong word: empathy rather than compassion is what they really seem to be going for. But I like what they're going for, so to hell with the quibbling.
Well okay, a little quibbling. The OED defines compassion as "sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others," while it defines empathy as "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another." Certainly they're similar, but judging by Karen Armstrong's description of the Charter's purpose, empathy, which has a broader reach than sympathy, seems the more apt:
(Ayn Rand, by the way, would probably think this is all a crock. But Ayn Rand can--well, I've been down that road already.)
In 2005 I wrote a long entry here that noted my lifelong belief that our enemies are not our enemies. There seems to be something in the way I'm made, or the way I was raised, or both, that makes me distrust propaganda and dogma--and it's probably the same thing that made me an actor, that makes me a writer. After all, the first job of an actor, of a writer, is to try his/her damnedest to get inside someone else's skin, to understand someone Other and then relay that understanding to an audience.
Here's a story that Laurence Olivier used to tell. He was playing Sergius in Shaw's Arms and the Man, and he hated the character. So one night he's walking somewhere with the director Ken Tynan, and said what he thought of Sergius. "A rotten little shit," or some such language. Tynan immediately said back to him, "Well if you don't like the man you'll never be able to play him well, will you?" Which stopped Olivier cold--and made him a better actor.
So as soon as I heard Ms. Armstrong on Bill Moyers's show, talking about compassion, and the golden rule, and the audacious idea of crafting a document extolling these virtues on a global scale, trying to reinsert into the human conversation something that should have been there all along, I immediately responded. My heart sang, and I even found myself, for just a moment, thinking that maybe I could get along with Ayn Rand after all if I would just make the effort.
The golden rule. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I mean come on. What else is there?
Well okay, a little quibbling. The OED defines compassion as "sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others," while it defines empathy as "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another." Certainly they're similar, but judging by Karen Armstrong's description of the Charter's purpose, empathy, which has a broader reach than sympathy, seems the more apt:
Compassion doesn’t mean feeling sorry for people. It doesn’t mean pity. It means putting yourself in the position of the other, learning about the other, learning what’s motivating the other, learning about their grievances...
(Ayn Rand, by the way, would probably think this is all a crock. But Ayn Rand can--well, I've been down that road already.)
In 2005 I wrote a long entry here that noted my lifelong belief that our enemies are not our enemies. There seems to be something in the way I'm made, or the way I was raised, or both, that makes me distrust propaganda and dogma--and it's probably the same thing that made me an actor, that makes me a writer. After all, the first job of an actor, of a writer, is to try his/her damnedest to get inside someone else's skin, to understand someone Other and then relay that understanding to an audience.
Here's a story that Laurence Olivier used to tell. He was playing Sergius in Shaw's Arms and the Man, and he hated the character. So one night he's walking somewhere with the director Ken Tynan, and said what he thought of Sergius. "A rotten little shit," or some such language. Tynan immediately said back to him, "Well if you don't like the man you'll never be able to play him well, will you?" Which stopped Olivier cold--and made him a better actor.
So as soon as I heard Ms. Armstrong on Bill Moyers's show, talking about compassion, and the golden rule, and the audacious idea of crafting a document extolling these virtues on a global scale, trying to reinsert into the human conversation something that should have been there all along, I immediately responded. My heart sang, and I even found myself, for just a moment, thinking that maybe I could get along with Ayn Rand after all if I would just make the effort.
The golden rule. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I mean come on. What else is there?
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
A Simple Desultory Apologetic
Billy Graham?
Okay, so I got the words wrong. The title of the preceding entry, which quoted Paul Simon's "A Simple Desultory Philippic" (his Bob Dylan parody), should have read: "I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded / Communist, 'cause I'm left-handed." I have what I call "interesting hearing"--it's not very accurate, but it sure does make the world more interesting. Personally, I think Mr. Simon should consider redoing the lyrics my way.
(Oh--bonus points to anyone who knows, off the top of their head--honor system!,--the next line of the song.)
Randiacs!
Speaking of the preceding entry, apparently there are Ayn Rand devotees who troll the web regularly, because I got responses to that entry faster than to any other entry I've ever written. I'm half-tempted to keep stirring the pot for a while, just for the fun of it, but I think it has already been clearly demonstrated that from their point of view none of my points can ever possibly be valid, and that from my point of view, they're just plain wrong.
(But no, really: are there any Ayn Rand fans with a sense of humor? They're all so bleepin' earnest!)
A Music Video?
Yes, I'll be in a music video. For a truly demented act called "Renfield." Hard to describe, but the MySpace page tells part of the tale. My friend Ezra is directing it, and asked me to be in it.
I have absolutely no idea what to expect. Which is of course the whole fun of it.
I think.
Okay, so I got the words wrong. The title of the preceding entry, which quoted Paul Simon's "A Simple Desultory Philippic" (his Bob Dylan parody), should have read: "I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded / Communist, 'cause I'm left-handed." I have what I call "interesting hearing"--it's not very accurate, but it sure does make the world more interesting. Personally, I think Mr. Simon should consider redoing the lyrics my way.
(Oh--bonus points to anyone who knows, off the top of their head--honor system!,--the next line of the song.)
Randiacs!
Speaking of the preceding entry, apparently there are Ayn Rand devotees who troll the web regularly, because I got responses to that entry faster than to any other entry I've ever written. I'm half-tempted to keep stirring the pot for a while, just for the fun of it, but I think it has already been clearly demonstrated that from their point of view none of my points can ever possibly be valid, and that from my point of view, they're just plain wrong.
(But no, really: are there any Ayn Rand fans with a sense of humor? They're all so bleepin' earnest!)
A Music Video?
Yes, I'll be in a music video. For a truly demented act called "Renfield." Hard to describe, but the MySpace page tells part of the tale. My friend Ezra is directing it, and asked me to be in it.
I have absolutely no idea what to expect. Which is of course the whole fun of it.
I think.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
I've Been Ayn Randed and Billy Graham'ded, I'm Communist 'Cause I'm Left-Handed
I recently watched the movie version of The Fountainhead. And I think I can now say, with perfect confidence, that Ayn Rand can bite me.
Prior to this, I knew effectively nothing about Ms. Rand. I had never read any of her work, had never had any conversations about her that went beyond "You should read such-and-such." Never looked her up in an encyclopedia, never read any articles about her, never watched Biography Channel programs about her, never ran across anything about Objectivism in any works on philosophy. I had a vague sense that her work was controversial, and that was absolutely it.
So I really truly did come to The Fountainhead with an open mind. Ten minutes later...
Apparently, the history of the movie is this: the novel was very popular, so Ms. Rand was hired to write the script, and she demanded that there be no interference whatsoever with what she wrote. (Exactly the sorts of demands Howard Roark makes repeatedly.) When the director, King Vidor, trying his level best to make a movie, tried to tighten up that nearly six-minute speech she'd written for the end, Rand threw a fit, went to the head of the studio, demanded that Vidor film only and exactly what she had written, word for word, and got her way.
The result is awful. It's a bad, bad, bad movie, entirely because of the script. (I will submit that Gary Cooper's particularly wooden performance had a lot to do with his dislike of the script.) Leaving aside for the moment the philosophy espoused in the film, my initial adverse reaction was purely as a writer responding to the writing. And bear in mind, I'm not complaining because the film is preachy and didactic--I'm a huge fan of Bernard Shaw, and no one can ever say that Shaw wasn't preachy and didactic (the plot of Man and Superman is interrupted for about an hour by a speechfest called "Don Juan in Hell"). But Shaw had a sense of humor, and Rand doesn't at all. This makes a huge difference. Shaw was also a much better writer of dialogue, which is partly a function of his sense of humor, but it goes deeper than that--writing dialogue is a specialized skill, and clearly, Shaw had mastered it and Rand hadn't.
To be fair, I've still never read any of Rand's prose, and it may be that she was a good novelist but a bad screenwriter. I'm completely happy to accept, for the moment, that this is true, and to move on.
But here's the thing: the whole philosophy espoused by the movie is that the individual artist must never be interfered with in any way, that only the pure, untrampled creations of such artists can ever advance art and society. And this movie? It's a bad movie. By being left alone to create exactly what she wanted, without interference, Ayn Rand wrote a bad movie. The work itself completely undermines the very idea it seeks to advance.
Probably the reason why my dad has from time to time suggested I read Ms. Rand's work is because I seem to share her affinity for the supremacy of the artist. I am, after all, the writer of Thereby Hangs a Tale, which is a challenging novel written very much according to its own dictates, and resolutely not a casual beach-read. But at the same time, I'm also a former actor, and one thing I learned very clearly in my days on the stage is that the work isn't for the performer, it's for the audience. A bad actor is one who is only interested in exploring his own psyche onstage, which is that peculiar form of Narcissism that insists that the rest of the world watch the actor love himself.
Ms. Rand's architect, Howard Roark, continually insists that his buildings be constructed as designed, and he refuses to ever consider any other points of view about what's in his designs. (The movie stacks the argument ridiculously: opposing points of view are never balanced or thoughtful, they are only deadly literal recitations like this one: "You can't hope to survive unless you learn how to compromise. Now, watch me! In just a few short years I'll shoot to the top of the architectural profession because I'm going to give the public what it wants.") Since his opponents are all manifest idiots, there's never any real Socratic dialogue, never any attempt to play one idea against another in order to arrive at a new truth--art here is an excuse for a predetermined ideological position, which is exactly why it fails as art--and, again, undermines Rand's own purpose. Roark is that bad actor, just as Rand is--they're not actually interested in the art for its own sake, they're only interested in their own self-aggrandizing freedom of expression at all costs.
To be Buddhist about it, the thing that is most missing from Rand's work is any sense of humility. A humble artist can still insist on the importance of following his own muse without allowing it to be watered down, but the key to that is to let the work itself lead where it must, without imposing preconditions on it--without insisting that the art support your philosophy of Objectivism, for example.
Again, we come to Shaw. You might well ask, isn't that exactly what Shaw's plays did? Weren't they often just excuses for him to espouse Socialism, or some other pet theory he had? In rebuttal, I will only offer Saint Joan. The reason why it's his best play, I've often thought, is because Joan surprised Shaw--that he originally wanted to write the play for didactic reasons, but as he went along the work started to take him to different places, places that surprised him. The character came alive, and he was a great enough artist to let that happen, to let the work lead him where it would, and didn't try to wrest control of it back to his ideological purpose. That is what makes great art--being humble enough to let the universe speak to you, to accept that you are not superman, that you don't know everything, and that sometimes the work is best when you just get the hell out of its way.
Plus, there's nothing at all wrong with finding some smart people whose opinions you respect and asking them what they think of the work you've made. Thereby is definitely a better work because I sought, and respected, and incorporated, the opinions of some very smart people.
There's more. I've now read up on Ms. Rand, and Objectivism. I can certainly see why someone who was a child in St. Petersburg during the 1917 revolution would come to hate any form of collectivism, and I certainly feel some empathy for how she came to reach that conclusion. But I can also see that she swung so far in the other direction that Objectivism became one short step away from Fascism, and it now comes as no surprise to discover that proponents of laissez-faire capitalism (Alan Greenspan, Dick Cheney, etc.) are huge fans of Ayn Rand. Her work often appeals to just the sort of person who has no humility, who believes himself to be a superman who must never be interfered with, who feels no need to "cater to the stinking masses." Her work becomes, in essence, one of the excuses they use to convince themselves that their own personal Fascism is perfectly okay, that they best serve society by ignoring society. And that's just plain wrong. There's a balance to be struck, and it's a difficult balance to be sure--but without the essential thing, without a little humility, listening to Ayn Rand will only lead you way down a dark, dark road.
Or, to say it again: Ayn Rand can bite me.
Prior to this, I knew effectively nothing about Ms. Rand. I had never read any of her work, had never had any conversations about her that went beyond "You should read such-and-such." Never looked her up in an encyclopedia, never read any articles about her, never watched Biography Channel programs about her, never ran across anything about Objectivism in any works on philosophy. I had a vague sense that her work was controversial, and that was absolutely it.
So I really truly did come to The Fountainhead with an open mind. Ten minutes later...
Apparently, the history of the movie is this: the novel was very popular, so Ms. Rand was hired to write the script, and she demanded that there be no interference whatsoever with what she wrote. (Exactly the sorts of demands Howard Roark makes repeatedly.) When the director, King Vidor, trying his level best to make a movie, tried to tighten up that nearly six-minute speech she'd written for the end, Rand threw a fit, went to the head of the studio, demanded that Vidor film only and exactly what she had written, word for word, and got her way.
The result is awful. It's a bad, bad, bad movie, entirely because of the script. (I will submit that Gary Cooper's particularly wooden performance had a lot to do with his dislike of the script.) Leaving aside for the moment the philosophy espoused in the film, my initial adverse reaction was purely as a writer responding to the writing. And bear in mind, I'm not complaining because the film is preachy and didactic--I'm a huge fan of Bernard Shaw, and no one can ever say that Shaw wasn't preachy and didactic (the plot of Man and Superman is interrupted for about an hour by a speechfest called "Don Juan in Hell"). But Shaw had a sense of humor, and Rand doesn't at all. This makes a huge difference. Shaw was also a much better writer of dialogue, which is partly a function of his sense of humor, but it goes deeper than that--writing dialogue is a specialized skill, and clearly, Shaw had mastered it and Rand hadn't.
To be fair, I've still never read any of Rand's prose, and it may be that she was a good novelist but a bad screenwriter. I'm completely happy to accept, for the moment, that this is true, and to move on.
But here's the thing: the whole philosophy espoused by the movie is that the individual artist must never be interfered with in any way, that only the pure, untrampled creations of such artists can ever advance art and society. And this movie? It's a bad movie. By being left alone to create exactly what she wanted, without interference, Ayn Rand wrote a bad movie. The work itself completely undermines the very idea it seeks to advance.
Probably the reason why my dad has from time to time suggested I read Ms. Rand's work is because I seem to share her affinity for the supremacy of the artist. I am, after all, the writer of Thereby Hangs a Tale, which is a challenging novel written very much according to its own dictates, and resolutely not a casual beach-read. But at the same time, I'm also a former actor, and one thing I learned very clearly in my days on the stage is that the work isn't for the performer, it's for the audience. A bad actor is one who is only interested in exploring his own psyche onstage, which is that peculiar form of Narcissism that insists that the rest of the world watch the actor love himself.
Ms. Rand's architect, Howard Roark, continually insists that his buildings be constructed as designed, and he refuses to ever consider any other points of view about what's in his designs. (The movie stacks the argument ridiculously: opposing points of view are never balanced or thoughtful, they are only deadly literal recitations like this one: "You can't hope to survive unless you learn how to compromise. Now, watch me! In just a few short years I'll shoot to the top of the architectural profession because I'm going to give the public what it wants.") Since his opponents are all manifest idiots, there's never any real Socratic dialogue, never any attempt to play one idea against another in order to arrive at a new truth--art here is an excuse for a predetermined ideological position, which is exactly why it fails as art--and, again, undermines Rand's own purpose. Roark is that bad actor, just as Rand is--they're not actually interested in the art for its own sake, they're only interested in their own self-aggrandizing freedom of expression at all costs.
To be Buddhist about it, the thing that is most missing from Rand's work is any sense of humility. A humble artist can still insist on the importance of following his own muse without allowing it to be watered down, but the key to that is to let the work itself lead where it must, without imposing preconditions on it--without insisting that the art support your philosophy of Objectivism, for example.
Again, we come to Shaw. You might well ask, isn't that exactly what Shaw's plays did? Weren't they often just excuses for him to espouse Socialism, or some other pet theory he had? In rebuttal, I will only offer Saint Joan. The reason why it's his best play, I've often thought, is because Joan surprised Shaw--that he originally wanted to write the play for didactic reasons, but as he went along the work started to take him to different places, places that surprised him. The character came alive, and he was a great enough artist to let that happen, to let the work lead him where it would, and didn't try to wrest control of it back to his ideological purpose. That is what makes great art--being humble enough to let the universe speak to you, to accept that you are not superman, that you don't know everything, and that sometimes the work is best when you just get the hell out of its way.
Plus, there's nothing at all wrong with finding some smart people whose opinions you respect and asking them what they think of the work you've made. Thereby is definitely a better work because I sought, and respected, and incorporated, the opinions of some very smart people.
There's more. I've now read up on Ms. Rand, and Objectivism. I can certainly see why someone who was a child in St. Petersburg during the 1917 revolution would come to hate any form of collectivism, and I certainly feel some empathy for how she came to reach that conclusion. But I can also see that she swung so far in the other direction that Objectivism became one short step away from Fascism, and it now comes as no surprise to discover that proponents of laissez-faire capitalism (Alan Greenspan, Dick Cheney, etc.) are huge fans of Ayn Rand. Her work often appeals to just the sort of person who has no humility, who believes himself to be a superman who must never be interfered with, who feels no need to "cater to the stinking masses." Her work becomes, in essence, one of the excuses they use to convince themselves that their own personal Fascism is perfectly okay, that they best serve society by ignoring society. And that's just plain wrong. There's a balance to be struck, and it's a difficult balance to be sure--but without the essential thing, without a little humility, listening to Ayn Rand will only lead you way down a dark, dark road.
Or, to say it again: Ayn Rand can bite me.
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