Lectures with Fountainhead References

Robert Bidinotto spoke this morning on: Is There an Objectivist Sense of Life? His answer was a qualified no.

Probe a bit, and you will find
Under your conscious state of mind,
Automated premises.

They color how you react to art,
And guide your deciding who plays the parts
Of Heroes and their Nemeses.

Bidinotto mentioned, by way of example, an argument in the pages of the New Individualist - between Roger Donway and my wife. Roger wrote:

Where the purpose of bourgeois morality is to survive by means of prudence, frugality, industry, and perseverance, the purpose of Continental Romantic morality is to experience the edgy, stylish, stimulating, and contemporary. Bourgeois man desires a decent life secured by doing what he can with what he has scraped together. But the Romantic burns with the vision of all that he could be and do, if only he had the means, which he would have if true Reason and Virtue prevailed.

In reply Marsha wrote that if Roark was trying to secure a decent life with what he could scrape together, she would "eat her house."

That got a laugh from the crowd.

Bidinotto described this as a sense-of-life disagreement, and went on to describe Roger as leaning toward the Eddie Willers perspective.

Marsha, defending Howard Roark,
Declared he wasn't an edgy dork.

Roger was said to favor Eddie:
Not too romantic but pleasantly steady.

Duncan Scott then presented video interviews with Iris Bell and Patricia Neal. Bell worked with Rand in the early NBI days. Neal played a certain troubled heroine in the Fountainhead film.

Patricia Neal
Kept things "reel"
And gave us a juicy peek
Into how she played Dominique.