Can someone explain Ayn Rand to me?!

this horrible English teacher at my high school taught a senior elective called "political lit" only it turns out he was a crazy libertarian. as far as i know, the only female author he ever assigned in that class was ayn rand. >:[

can't even believe all these fancy books y'all read in high school

high school is just plain fucked up

at any rate re: Rand, I still stand by what I wrote upthread; regardless of how terrible we find her in 2010, I have at least one concrete example of how she inspired a dude facing a lot of discrimination and economic hardship growing up to get a PhD and run a lab for a Fortune 100 company and it was all very beneficial to my life as a child, so I am not going to hate

oh yeah we did a bunch of Shakespeare too - Macbeth stands out as the most memorable, cuz we were shown bits of the Polanski version and the Orson Welles version (which is awesome) in its entirety. Also Othello, something else... not Hamlet

oh yeah Midsummer Night's Dream

tbh i was one of the worst students of all time and basically never did homework ever (one of my best friends used to boast about not even owning copybooks for loads of subjects) and i used to just bring my own books to class and read them and wait for school to be over for good. i'm still so glad it is!

a terrible man for the studying

we werent allowed watch the polanski version bc my teacher said "unlike in the ACTUAL PLAY they show duncan being murdered, and i know that most of you wont bother reading this or even paying attn. to me right now or ever. but i cant deal w/ reading any essays where you describe the murder scene"

we did Julius Caesar in 9th grade, no Shakespeare in 10th grade (American lit), King Lear in 11th grade (best ever), and then senior year was electives and some years a Shakespeare elective was offered, but not my senior year.

it's like, you already think you're the most important person in the world and should be able to do whatever you want, now here's a "grown-up" "philosophy" that says it's OK, go out and have fun!

OTM. It's just a philosophy which allows people to put a fancy name on self-serving, self-congratulatory asshole behaviour. No wonder so many celebrities are fans - they have the same sense of entitlement as your average teenager. I fucking hate Ayn Rand.

lol we watched one of the older film versions of Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade, which the teacher apparently forgot to prescreen and therefore forgot that in the bedroom scene there is a fantastic moment where naked Juliet leaps out of bed and lunges for something behind the camera, filling the screen with boob

that would be the one with Olivia Hussey. that scene is forever imprinted into my brain.

she is v v pretty

i was one of the worst students of all time and basically never did homework ever ... and i used to just bring my own books to class and read them and wait for school to be over

oh hai me

i remember watching a pretty messed-up film version of edgar allan poe's 'the masque of the red death' in an english lit class, which involved a decent amount of gore and heavy duty incest.

the film involved that, not the class.

Good that we've moved on to Olivia Hussey's boobs though.

my sister did a room w/ a view the movie for her leaving cert (you can do a movie) in an all girls school w/ a nun for a teacher and they watched the dick-flopping-skinnydipping scene loads of times. we watched it as a family at christmas shortly after and my dad was shifting uncomfortably and my sister was all "oh yeah i forgot this used to seem kindof awkward before you see it a million times"

omar the one with vincent price??

I graduated college with a 2.4 simply cuz I have such a procrastinator's attitude that I flat out didn't show up to class and would just show up for tests and would skid by.

I remember we also watched a the end of a filmed stage production of "Oedipus Rex" where the dude playing Oedipus had to deliver his final monologue with hamburger meat in his eyes (because he had gouged them out, see)

we watched apocalypse now as part of heart of darkness study, which was ayokay with me

i still have never read oedipus rex should i y/n?

uhm isn't that bad for your eyes

we watched apocalypse now as part of heart of darkness study, which was ayokay with me

oh we did too, it made me actually appreciate the core story underneath the layer upon layer of distracting racism

uhm isn't that bad for your eyes

We assumed so!

xp you should read it if you feel a lack of greek tragedy in yr life. reading those things is fun but kind of a stilted experience.

it was this one, cad:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097844/

I'm starting to see why I was so bored in school. We read SOME of those books on your list, but only like 35%.

We were taught to write formulaic (re: boring and pedestrian) essays. Senior year, we were given an assignment for our Senior Paper to read one of a list of approved books, and we would do assignments and tests on it.

I chose Les Miserables, then got busy as over winter break I had 10 nights where I was performing so I got 30 pages in. Stupid teacher admits to me she's never read Les Miserables. The test was just us answering vague questions based on our reading of the book.

I used Cliff Notes for some of the answers, and invented the rest. I invented whole plot points that didn't happen and even characters that weren't even in the book. I got an A+.

if you get a good translation it is good

this one was great (also a breeze to read)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oedipus-King-Greek-Tragedy-Translations/dp/0195054938/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1281721013&sr=8-5

we had to read antigone in 9th grade. (that's what it's called, right?) i liked it! i feel like a significant proportion of the stuff i read in high school was (self)righteous-woman-is-misunderstood-and-persecuted. i ate that shit up.

too bad it wasn't the vincent price one because that is a rad movie

thanks, plax!

oh just remembered we also read The Awakening senior year

As if on cue, from McSweeneys: OUR DAUGHTER ISN'T A SELFISH BRAT; YOUR SON JUST HASN'T READ
ATLAS SHRUGGED

When little Aiden toddled up our daughter Johanna and asked to play with her Elmo ball, he was, admittedly, very sweet and polite. I think his exact words were, "Have a ball, peas [sic]?" And I'm sure you were very proud of him for using his manners.

To be sure, I was equally proud when Johanna yelled, "No! Looter!" right in his looter face, and then only marginally less proud when she sort of shoved him.

lol that's why this got revived

it's been a while (like, almost 2 decades) since i've thought about it, but i did read some pretty heavy-duty books in HS. i remember four shakespeare plays (one per year); "crime and punishment;" "sons and lovers;" "billy budd;" "les miserables;" and "oedipus rex" are the ones that come to mind. we also read "anthem," which compared to those other books was pretty paltry.

Anthem is terrible, terrible writing

Yeah we did one Shakespeare play a year, too. 9: Romeo and Juliet, 10: Julius Caesar 11: Hamlet 12: King Lear

One Shakespeare/year, plus a senior research project on another. I did Much Ado About Nothing because the Branagh movie was recent and easily available at Blockbuster. Senior AP teacher threw in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead for kicks.

All I can remember from AP was Metamorphosis, Crime & Punishment, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

we read Things Fall Apart to counterbalance Heart of Darkness

to repeat something i said years ago upthread: besides the (lack of) quality of anthem, what struck me at the time i read the book (i was 15) was that it was so OFF about what life in a communal/communistic society was REALLY like. i had family that had lived in a bona fide communist country (i.e., Poland) and anthem in no way was like what life was like there. and while Rand was Russian and not Polish, i seriously doubt that Bolshevik Russia was like what she wrote in anthem either. then there was the story's basic conceit about someone whose ego had been totally eradicated by a coercive communal society -- even at 15 and with no knowledge of psychology, i figured that there was something pretty fishy about that from a psychological viewpoint.

DOH we read Things Fall Apart too

also Cry, The Beloved Country was in there somewhere as an elective option on one year's reading lists

Haven't read any AR:

I don't think her fiction is that hot either but it is illuminating, again for its historic relevance. In the same way that detective fiction might be. I thought the "great books" model died with postmodernism.

It hasn't, and many of the detective novels are in no way historical curiosities - they are good, can be re-read and are still good.

xp = gotta say I might have to read Anthem

speaking about dystopian novels: we read animal farm and 1984.

eisbaer OTM about anthem

nobody is trying to take away your first person singular, ayn rand

lol I read Animal Farm and 1984 for fun in junior high

also read Flatland then

it's really no wonder that I only ever want to read trashy sci-fi/fantasy now

according to the wikipedia entry on anthem, there are apparently some thematic similarities w/ it and zamyatin's we (a book i've been curious about for a long time but haven't actually read). particularly w/ characters have numbers instead of names and a collective "hive mind" having some sort of hold over people psychologically. i would be curious to know if anyone has read both and just how similar anthem is to we.

We is a masterpiece. Anthem is a piece of shit.