Otherwise known as, "Why I Love the SLOG." For those of you game enough to click the link in my last post, here's the contest decision, cut and pasted for your reading convenience:
"We the judges of this contest believe Ayn Rand serves a critical purpose. She’s the ideal author for a teenager to read and be captivated by because she enshrines the primary value of teenagerdom—the idea that the self is the unquestionable center of the universe—as a kind of moral imperative. By the time you begin to outgrow that sense of self-enshrinement and recognize yourself as connected to a larger world, the stiff, fascistic humorlessness masquerading as heroism of Rand’s writing should become one of those things (maybe the first one) you realize you thought was brilliant, but only because you were young, and selfish, and WRONG. She’s a skin you shed. And essay number one is the best evidence of someone prepared to use this portrait to help future generations shed that skin. So, Bill, the portrait is hereby yours and no one else’s."
To read the winning submission and some others of note, click here.
If you can make it through the cuntberries, you're home free.
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5 comments:
1) Thanks for the nightmares of cuntberries I'll be having tonight. Can't wait to see what they look like.
2) This was my favorite line: "They are unable to see past the end of their own noses to the grim reality that if writers were countries and bullshit were crude oil, Ayn Rand would be Saudi Arabia."
"Her teeth are outside of her mouth even when she closes her lips"!!!!!!!
This was a little too close to home, since we have an AR essay contest at work every year. No one really enters, though, thankfully. About once in 4 years....
The woman hated communism so much, that it turned her into a fascist!
Wait, aren't those the same thing? At least my students seem to think so...
I willingly open myself to criticism and severe beatings when I say this (*bending over coyly to be spanked*), but... I still kinda dig her and don't think I'd be the (foxy and wily) individual I am today if I hadn't read her back in high school. And I don't consider myself an idiot and a blind consumer of bullshit.
I think the idea of her "enshrining the primary value of teenagerdom--the idea that the self is the unquestionable center of the universe--as a kind of moral imperative" may be true but also overlooks the fact that in a lot of ways, she is wonderful for teenagers to read because she empowers the self during a time period when teenagers are notoriously trying to sublimate the self to fit in; she writes characters who could care less about how they're perceived by others, and who forge ahead towards their own ideals even in the face of criticism and castigation by "the masses." And when you're growing up feeling as though you don't fit in, I think it's a good thing to read about characters like this. Which is why I can seriously say that I credit her in a big way for who I am today. (*bending over again*)
Granted, now that I have a bit more critical eye, I see what a load of horseshit so much of her philosophy is. But regardless: I still dig her shit. Then again, I am "over 25," "(a) white and (b) an asshole." (*bending over a final time and hoping that you're not catching on to the fact that I'm enjoying this much more than I'm letting on*)
Lindy Loo, you can come to my blog and argue and bend over as much as you want. In fact, I wish you did it more. I'd be lying if I didn't have a sort of nostalgic fondness for _Anthem_ and the enthusiasm it occasioned in my misguided teenage breast. Believe me, I speak as a complete example of this type. In high school, I cruised through the Ayn cannon, read select chapters at poetry readings, quoted her to anyone who would listen, you get the picture. Then I grew up. You have to worry about that people who never do, who never figure out that objectivism is at best misguided and at worst inhuman.
Where I have to disagree with you, naughty Lindy Loo, is that I'm not so sure that teenagers need her as much as you're saying. The teenagers (17-19) who fill my composition classes have no discernible lack of self-esteem. Indeed, it's quite the opposite and so prevalent that my curmudgeonly TA friends and I have dubbed it "snowflake syndrome." This is loosely defined as the conviction prevalent in young people that everything that comes out of them is perfect as is, and if you don't think their writing is up to snuff, they can chalk it up to a difference of opinion. We call it "snowflake" because we imagine them being told their whole lives that each and every one of them is perfect, special, and unique. While this might be true in some metaphysical sense, it doesn't have much gravity in college or life, for that matter! You know of what I speak, yes? It may be, I think, that her appeal lies in the way her philosophy speaks to the self-centeredness that typically characterizes people (teenagers) who've yet to acquire anything like a social consciousness! I don't mean to speak for you, L, maybe you weren't a soul-less fuck in high school like I was. Indeed, if I had any sense that the high schools of America were packed with curious, Fountainhead reading Lindy Loo's, I'd pack in this whole PhD caboodle and go back to high school ala _Never Been Kissed_ (of Drew Barrymore fame).
With that said, though, I'm glad she was there for you, Lindy Loo, just as she was there for me. I'm more glad that we both outgrew her.
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