Reading in USA Schools / A2A by that NSA-attracting author name

[Will Layman]

I simply cannot believe that anyone would even vaguely equate the overblown
bullshit of Ayn Rand with Pynchon.

Even if you don't much like Pynchon, you'd have to admit that the cat can
WRITE.  Whereas Ms. Rand was little more than a temporarily hip polemicist
with a libertarian chip on her shoulder whose sentences, characters and
storylines are each as forced and clumsy as a dog playing the saxophone.

As a parent and teacher, I can tell you that they are NOT reading Rand in
the schools today.  And thank goodness for that.

-- Will

On 3/26/06 10:23 PM, "Michael Bailey" <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 3/26/06, Henry Musikar <hmusikar at speakeasy.net> wrote:
>> Doo, doo-doo doo-doo, doo-doo,
>> Reading in the USA
>> 
>> http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/education/14175174.htm
>> 
>> Henry
>> 
> 
> from the article:
> "In 1999, novelist Francine Prose decried the move toward digestible
> literature."
> -- with such a name, excellent career choice!
> 
> also this (referring to the College Board's "101 Great Books" for
> college-bound students):  "Willa Cather, Ralph Ellison, James Agee,
> Herman Melville and Thomas Pynchon all make the cut, but not the
> perennial favorites of school districts like Amy Tan, J.R.R. Tolkien
> and Ayn Rand."
> 
> Brings back some memories.
> This was pre-Amy Tan but gee, Tolkien and Rand - nobody read those in
> class!  Lord of the Flies maybe...
> 
> One girl from our school took Ayn Rand to heart, majored in physics
> and philosophy in college, and worked at Bell Labs and NASA later.
> 
> But she certainly didn't read TF or AS as an assignment!  I remember
> reading AS in my grandma's house, kinda wincing at times ("Hey
> Frisco!"  "Hey Slug!") and skimming the long speeches...best part for
> me was the cigarettes with the dollar sign logo...I guess I wondered
> if all those smart people were so all-falutin' smart how come they
> couldn't convince the rest of humanity to go their way...and also did
> they never screw up, was it always somebody else's fault?
> 
> Still, hard to fault good old Ayn Rand - as Bonnie Surfus wrote,
> "Rand, who died about 5 years ago, had rather a cult following,
> particularly for her _The Fountainhead_ and _Atlas Shrugged_; the latter,
> a title that is brilliantly simple yet so FULL.  In terms of Pynchon, you
> can most likely "see" something of the associaten simply by considering
> this title alone.  But the book is rather short and it _is_ compelling
> reading, so you may want to have a look."
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9410&msg=391&keywords=bonnie%20sur
> fus%20atlas%20shrugged
> 
> But they're making them read Ayn Rand in school now?
> And Tolkien?  Gosh, that was practically subversive not so long ago...
> 
> (Was anybody else bummed out about Peter Jackson taking most of the
> poetry and songs out in favor of more battle scenes?  (still enjoyable
> tho - but no Tom Bombadil? He's only, like, the coolest cat in Middle
> Earth!))
> 
> Kids these days!
> ---------
> In between trying to move ahead in IJ, I've had a couple peeks at
> "From Asininity to Assassination" by "Pyro Atomic Bomb"
> Much in there brings to mind TRP's official opuses, but one thing that
> may not even be significant is the citation of "Bodin" (French
> philosopher who argued against revolution because progress occurs only
> during political stability)
> I've always held that Pig Bodine is meant among his other conjurations
> to remind us of Bodin's valuable contributions
> 
> 
> --
> "Acceptance, forgiveness, love - now that's a philosophy of life!"
> -Woody Allen, as Broadway Danny Rose
>