A little about me: I read books like I watch television. Lots of flipping between channels/books, much to the apparent annoyance of any female in the room. I typically have about 4-7 books on the go at one time, which means it takes me a long time to finish any one volume but tend to finish a whole bunch at once.

This is all by way of an awkward mea culpa. Since my last update on the Ayn Rand investigation, I have only managed another 80 pages. Look, it’s not my fault. Rysard Kapuscinski‘s The Emperor is too damn good. And Rand’s turgid prose is slow going at the best of times.

Nevertheless, there have been some interesting developments. But first, the rankings:

• Rage at the depredations of strangers: 5/10 (this week has been characterized by a forest of hairy eyeballs)
• Rage at taxes: 1/10 (pending the outcome of the City Council garbage strike vote, anyways)
• Consideration for others (where the lower the number, the greater the consideration): 4/10
• Extent to which romantic relationship has become a titanic struggle: 1/10
• Sense that I am being dragged down by mediocre society: 7/10
• Desire to build tall buildings: 4/10 (I now kind of want to build a house like Austen Heller’s.)

General Comments:

I’ve got to hand it to that crafty little minx. She’s wearing me down, either by appealing to my intellect or my ego. I suspect it is the latter. Somewhere in the murky depths of our subconcious, we all believe we are a little exceptional. We all yearn to do something pure and brilliant. Rand fairly screams at you, “yes, you are brilliant. Now go out there and build something without compromise. And if you don’t, you’re a moral failure.” Lucky for Rand, my ego is vast and wildly vulnerable to this kind of message.

My experience with The Fountainhead has been improved by the addition of actual events to the narrative. Roark built a house! Keating met Dominique! The pawns are in play! Of course, everyone still spends an inordinate amount of time talking about things that are happening or have just happened. But as long as one important thing goes down per chapter, I’m along for the ride.

I would very much like to read the phonebook for 1920′s New York to see if Rand’s crazy character names have any basis in fact. Howard Roark, Guy Francon, Alvah Scarlett, Ellsworth M. Toohey…it’s a veritable orgy of fantastical syllables and wondrous, sonorous vowel/consonant combinations. I’ve actually taken to jotting little character notes in the margins, as the sheer bulk of crazy-named people popping in and out of the story makes it difficult to keep track or everyone.

Oh, and by any clinical standard, Howard Roark and Dominique Francon are sociopaths. Just saying.

Onward into the viscous stew!

Heh. Roark.

Oh science. You teach us so much.

New research out of the University of Helsinki indicates that the sexy, sexy forces of evolution are making women more attractive. Apparently beautiful women have more children than their less attractive counterparts. More to the point, these women have significantly more daughters, amplifying hotness through the generations. Of course, the downside is that men are immune to this process, and remain the ugly, grunting, hairy buffoons we always were.

Now, I’m a bit suspicious of this study, since “attractiveness” is largely subjective. The conclusion is probably better stated as “Evolution is producing more women that Finnish scientists find attractive.” Still, if one puzzles though the implications, the future will be an interesting place. Herds of supermodels will fight viciously over middling-to-ugly men; I can only hope my marginally handsome grandsons will be alive to enjoy it.

But it gets worse. As the generations pass, the human race will split in twain, with hauntingly beautiful women inhabiting an idyllic surface world, with troll like men toiling in underground salt mines. H.G. Wells was right!

And that’s all we are, men. Just three or four thousand generations from Morlockification.

Photo: Billy Joel, leading the genetic charge of strange looking men with inexplicably attractive women.

Regular readers of this screed will know I have no love for Sarah Palin. The mere sight of her makes me angry. The sound of her voice sends me into paroxysms of rage. No surprise then my deep pleasure at her resignation this weekend.

The question, however, remains: what are we to make of Ms. Palin’s short tenure as the “great white hope” of American conservatism? In many ways, the former Governor of Alaska is the apex of the dominant trends in contemporary right-wing politics. It’s all there: The paranoid media victim complex; the triumph of “values” over policy or leadership; the axiomatic rejection of anything approaching the intellectual; and the disturbing desire of large segments of the voting public to elect “someone just like me”, with little thought for actual ability. These trends have been around for a long time. But never have they been so starkly apparent as in Palin’s populist hucksterism.  As John McCain learned far too late, she has an infinite capacity to distract, but almost no substance on which to build a meaningful political career.

No one seems to know why Palin resigned. Some claim it was the mounting pressure of endless (and justified) ethics complaints. Others cite a potential 2012 White House bid, or the ugly economic fact that the erstwhile governor could make much more money writing vapid books and giving speeches than she ever could in public office. It has even been suggested that Palin just doesn’t really like governing. All of these factors have likely played a role. But the overriding reason has more to do with what Palin is rather than what she has done or plans to do.

Palin’s primary – indeed, only – appeal lies in the populism at the heart of her image. She plays to the insecurities, the ignorance, and the excitable emotion of her supporters. To the fundamentally dumb, Palin represents novelty without challenging their stupidity. For Palin, actually being in public office actually weakens her ability to leverage this popular appeal into a career. When her wagon is hitched to a specific job, like the Governor of Alaska, intelligent observers can counter her popularity with frequent and glaring examples of both her ineffectiveness as a leader and the utter lack of substance beneath the dynamic exterior. To maximize her populist gifts, Palin has to stay out of any position of substantive responsibility.

There’s an obvious irony here. Palin’s electability evaporates the second she is elected. But, if she intends to bamboozle the citizenry into voting her into high office, she needs to be free from the shackles of actual political work. If she is only subconciously aware of this fact, then I fully expect her to run for President in 2012. But if she has some measure of self-understanding, she may avoid future campaigns altogether, instead opting to be a kind of freelance culture warrior bankrolled by her ability to dazzle the simpleminded.

Of course, even the simplest of souls can recognize a con under the right circumstances. Palin’s resignation may prove to be a fatal miscalculation. While it was calculated to free her from the constraints of actual work, it may have also served to highlight her inadequacies. In a poll conducted last week, 53 per cent of Americans had a negative view of Palin, and only 40 per cent view her favourably. Contrast that to her poll numbers a year ago, when six in 10 Americans held a positive view. The sharp focus on her record caused by her resignation may be the charm that finally breaks the spell.

Sarah Palin, and the type of politician she represents, is bad politics. Bad for democracy, bad for debate, and bad for a nation that needs strong leadership in the face of unprecedented challenges. It’s a cliche, but its application seems appropriate here: the empress has no clothes.

Exempting the thousands of dollars of togs bought for her by the Republican Party, of course.

Well, I am now three days and 70 pages into my crucial experiment to determine whether reading Ayn Rand makes you a big, big jerk. Here’s how I’m doing at the 1/10 waypoint (for a complete explanation of the measurement criteria, click the link above):

• Rage at the depredations of strangers: 2/10 (the only thing I’m mad about this morning is the wasp that flew into my neck and stung me in the throat. But that is not effectively captured by any of my metrics)
• Rage at taxes: 1/10
• Consideration for others (where the lower the number, the great the consideration): 4/10
• Extent to which romantic relationship has become a titanic struggle: 2/10
• Sense that I am being dragged down by mediocre society: 5/10 (although to be fair, I usually feel like this)
• Desire to build tall buildings: 5/10 (Rand is spectacularly effective at making architects seem like gods. I tried to make a thrilling spire of light and steel out of mashed potatoes on Wednesday, which ended in predictable failure. But I refuse to accept blame; the potatoes are WEAK.)

Overall, I would say that 72 hours of moderate Ayn Rand exposure has note made me any more of a jerk. However, I do have the following general comments:

• No author – ever, anywhere – should be allowed to write a forward to their own work. And if that author is Ayn Rand, then martial law should be imposed to prevent it. You can only read so many lines like “Certain writers, of whom I am one, think or write on the range of the moment” without wanting to stab yourself in the eye.
• Ayn Rand needs an editor. It’s not that she’s a bad writer, she’s just a startlingly inefficient one. I’m quite sure we could get The Fountainhead down to 400 pages with no appreciable loss in narrative. On the other hand, I would pity any editor given this task. Given Rand’s views on the immutability of art and the human spirit, she’d probably messily eviscerate anyone who dare suggest her work be cut. Imagine this shrieking harpy coming at you, angular features twisted in a howl of rage, crazy eyes looking, well, crazy, and armed with the sharpened femur of the last editor who has the temerity to remove one of her precious adjectives:

Terrifying. This picture alone goes a long way to explaining The Fountainhead’s hefty page count.

• People spend a lot of time talking about things in this novel. The only event of significance so far – Roark’s expulsion from the architecture school – happened before the novel even started, and everyone seems to want to just talk about it. A lot. For pages on end.
• Hee hee.  Roark.

So there you go. Tune in next Friday for the second update on this important – nay, essential – experiment.

Roark.

Nunc Scio is pleased to announce a new feature on the site – The Pop Culture Experiment. The concept is simple: I’ll take a cultural touchstone and conduct an experiment on it. Does watching “Boys on the Side” make you a lesbian? Will Slayer’s “Reign in Blood” turn you into Satan, or at the very least, a lesser demon? Find out here!

Ah, the indiscretions of youth. As a young university student, I was a suburban champagne Marxist. I did the whole deal. I read Gramsci and The Communist Manifesto. I had a bright red bowling shirt with a picture of Lenin on it, sporting the slogan “Join the Bowlsheviks!” I listened to outrageously left-wing music. Often, I would un-ironically discuss the oppression of the working classes while drinking a Starbucks latte. It was a strange and giddy time.

Convinced that the free market was a devilish construct hell-bent on the destruction of decent humanity, I was deeply suspicious of Ayn Rand. She was not only an advocate of market economics. No, Rand went one stop further and espoused a sort of freaky super capitalism and hyper individualism totally anathema to my ideas about “the greater good”. This, coupled with several distasteful run-ins with my university’s Objectivist Club, led me to conclude that reading Ayn Rand would turn anyone into a total ass for at least three months.

Now that I am older and balder, I have come to realize this is unfair. I have never actually read any Ayn Rand, so it’s a bit specious for me to rail against it. Mt politics have also mellowed, and I find the free market to be a sort of comfy companion to my daily activities- an economic bunny rabbit that hops along contentedly beside me, furnishing me with excting toys. Say what you will, but Soviet Russia could never have produced the iPhone. Well, it could have, but it would be 75 pounds, filled with vacuum tubes, and powered by kerosene. Beyond all that, I also have many good friends who have read, enjoyed, and taken some lesson from Rand and her oeuvre. They are not asses, so it appears something may be wrong with my arithmetic.

In the face of these revelations, I have decided to shine the harsh light of science upon this vexing question. Nunc Scio’s inaugural Pop Culture Experiment will attempt to determine if there is anything worthwhile to reading Rand, or if her work is better left to tiresome angry young men and aspiring architects.

Hypothesis: Reading Ayn Rand makes you a jerk.

Methodology: For the purposes of this investigation, I will be reading Rand’s 1952 classic, The Fountainhead. Why? Because her other giant-ass book, Atlas Shrugged, has recently enjoyed a kind of renaissance among people searching for some deeper meaning to the current financiapocalypse. Since I have dedicated my life to avoiding anything “cool” or “popular” or “enjoyable”, The Fountainhead seemed like the logical choice. Plus, the last name “Roark” makes me giggle.

At regular intervals throughout my read – and since the book is 700 pages, I expect to be finished in early 2010 – I will report my reaction using the following metrics:

• Rage at the depredations of strangers
• Rage at taxes
• Consideration for others
• Extent to which my romantic relationship has become a titanic struggle
• Sense that I am a genius being dragged down by mediocre society
• Desire to build tall buildings

Each of the above will be evaluated on a ten-point scale, where ’1′ is ‘low’ and ’10′ is ‘huge’. This scale may seem incoherent, but such are the vagaries of cutting-edge cultural research.

My first update will be on Friday. Let the investigation commence!

-

P.S. I just read the first line:

Howard Roark laughed. He stood naked at the edge of a cliff.

This does not fill me with confidence.

I am a George Orwell fan. Or, to be more precise, Orwell is locked in a perpetual cagematch with Kurt Vonnegut for the coveted “Graeme’s favourite author” prize. I’ve read all of his novels, and as I write this, his collection of essays is sitting on my desk.

Due to this enthusiasm for all things Orwell, I’m always a little put out when I sense his legacy is being shanghaied by people who do not really understand his writing.  They use Orwell as a kind of cultural shortcut to imply malfeasance, and they end up diluting  his ideas in the process.

This weekend served up a perfect example. On Friday, owners of Amazon’s Kindle device were justifiably annoyed to find that their copies of 1984 and Animal Farm had been remotely deleted due to a copyright dispute. Observers, apparently seduced by the delicious irony inherent in censoring Orwell, fell all over themselves to describe Amazon’s behaviour as “Orwellian“, “a Big Brother move“, and even casting the books  into the “memory hole“. It may seem obvious to appropriate Orwell’s language in this case. It is certainly easy. But it is also entirely incorrect.

First of all, the term “Orwellian” is a bit tricky. Orwell wrote six novels, three nonfiction books, and countless essays. He wrote on everything from politics to religion to shooting elephants to English culture. So really, just about anything could be considered “Orwellian”. However, in modern usage, the term usually applies to the political ideas he develops in 1984 and, to a lesser extent, Animal Farm. And here is where the trouble starts. Orwell’s political project is specific; it deals with how a totalitarian regime can achieve and maintain control over all aspects of an individual’s life, the so-called “boot stamping on a human face forever.” It is not about copyright disputes and consumer rights.

As tempting as it is, likening Amazon to a totalitarian regime strains credulity. Yes, its behaviour in this case is reprehensible. But it isn’t “Orwellian”. It is not a state, not does it possess coercive authority over any significant proportion of the population. And the things it can apparently control – the content of its E-Readers – is sufficiently prosaic to fall well short of Orwell’s dystopian vision. Say nothing of the fact that you can buy a copy of 1984 at any bookstore. Or read it totally free online, without dropping $400 on a Kindle.  Sure, copyright laws are a mess and Amazon shouldn’t jerk around its customers. But this is a corporate public relations disaster, not the heavy hand of Big Brother.

More to the point, the sheer volume of outrage voiced over Amazon’s bad behaviour tells us we’re a long ways from an Amazon-dominated Airstrip One, festooned with “Jeff Bezos is Watching You” posters. Orwell imagined a world where the expression of dissent was not only impossible, but the state was also working to make even the formulation of dissenting thoughts impossible. Judging by the state of Internet rage, dissent and criticism is alive and well, despite Amazon’s depredations.

So, a humble plea: stop hijacking the work of brilliant writer to make unrelated points. It is at best lazy, and at worst weakens the descriptive and critical power of Orwell’s language. And in a world of government-sanctioned surveillance and state-approved torture, we need his language more than ever.

“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

July 20, 1969, 15:17:40 PM (EST).

Let’s go back.