Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. Shakespeare as the father of naturalism is an odd view. Hugo incidentally describes Shakespeare as the father of romanticism — which is perhaps also odd, but I think less so. Have you read Peikoff’s book on dra…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. I’ve read Holzer’s Double Crossing and Eye for an Eye; I enjoyed the former more than the latter (despite the howler where she describes, without irony, a would-be defector in the Soviet Union practicing Englis…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. Something just occurred to me about this: I suspect she may have had in mind Dreiser’s novels Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, in both of which a central character sort of stumbles their way almost accidentally into…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. I used to do Rand’s “Thematic Apperception Test” when I taught aesthetics, i.e., had the students listen to maybe ten musical selections, then write down what images, if any, spontaneously popped into the…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. I don’t have any associations with “Cocaine,” but I do with “Layla”: mid-winter in Chicago. I was visiting with a dear friend who lived there. “Layla” came on the radio. I snorted …

In reply to Roderick T. Long. The only novel I’ve read by a Rand-influenced writer (in the narrow sense of one who was part of her circle) is Erika Holzer’s An Eye for an Eye, which later became a major film with Sally Field and Kiefer Suth…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. I see that one of us has more pull with WordPress than the other. I can’t get images to work in the comments. LikeLike

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. “Rattigan isn’t mentioned at all.” I was thinking of an article on Rattigan in the newsletter, not in RM. But now I see that the article was by Kay Nolte Smith, not by Rand. (Though presumably it had Rand’…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. There’s a passage in John Gardner’s “October Light” where a character considers what images go with the French horn piece he’s listening to: “… he’d tried various ideas: the idea that…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. Oops, I misremembered. It wasn’t R.B. who accused me of “malevolent tribalism,” it was I who accused him of “malevolent tribalism”!! Oopsie. Well, he accused me of plenty else. LikeLike