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AVENGING_RAND

                                                          January 11, 2005
                                                              
                                       Collected in "The Romantic     
Quotations from Ayn Rand's             Manifesto" (1971).             
"Bootleg Romanticism", dated                                          
January 1965:                                                        
                                                     
   "Thrillers are the product, the popular
   offshoot, of the Romantic school of
   art that sees man, not as a helpless
   pawn of fate, but as a being who
   possesses volition  ... "
                          
   "Romanticism is a value-oriented,
   morality-centered movement: its material
   is not journalistic minutiae, but the
   abstract, the essential, the universal            An interviewer once
   principles of man's nature -- and its             commented to Rand that
   basic literary commandment is to portray          her works were outside
   man 'as he might be and ought to be.'"            the mainstream.  She
                                                     responded "The mainstream
   "Thrillers are a simplified, elementary           of American literature is
   version of Romantic literature.  They are         a stagnant swamp."
   not concerned with a delineation of
   values, but, taking certain fundamental
   values for granted, they are concerned
   with  ...   the battle of good against
   evil in terms of purposeful action"

   "Thrillers are the kindergarten arithmetic,
   of which the higher mathematics is the
   greatest novels of world literature."

   "The last remnants of Romanticism are
   flickering only in the field of popular
   art  ...   Thrillers are the last refuge
   of the qualities that have vanished from
   modern literature: life, color,
   imagination  ... "

   "The social status of thrillers reveals
   the profound gulf splitting today's
   culture -- the gulf between the people
   and its alleged intellectual leaders."

                                            
   "A sample of that cultural gulf -- a small  
   sample of a vast modern tragedy -- may be        
   seen in an interesting little article in  
   TV Guide (May 9, 1964), under the title            
   'Violence Can Be Fun' and with the eloquent      
   subtitle: 'In Britain, everybody laughs at       
   'The Avengers'-- except the audience.'"          
                                                           
   "The Avengers is a sensationally successful British   
   television series featuring the adventures of secret    
   agent John Steed and his attractive assistant           
   Catherine Gale -- 'surrounded by some delightfully      
   ingenious plots ...'  states the article.  'The      
   Avengers is compulsive viewing for a huge audience. 
   Steed and Mrs. Gale are household words.'"           
                                                        
   "But recently 'the secret sorrow of producer John    
   Bryce was revealed: The Avengers was conceived
   as a satire of counterespionage thrillers, but
   the British public still insists on taking it
   seriously.'"      


   "Nobody takes thrillers literally, nor cares
   about their specific events, nor harbors
   any frustrated desire to become a secret
   agent or a private eye.  Thrillers are
   taken symbolically; they dramatize one of
   man's widest and most crucial abstractions:
   the abstraction of moral conflict."     
                                             
                                             
   "What people seek in thrillers is the     
   spectacle of man's efficacy: of his
   ability to fight for his values and to
   achieve them.  What they see is a
   condensed, simplified pattern, reduced to
   its essentials: a man fighting for a vital
   goal --  ... "

   "Far from suggesting an easy or 'unrealistic'
   view of life, a thriller suggests the
   necessity of a difficult struggle; if the hero
   is 'larger-than-life,' so are the villains and
   the dangers."

   "An abstraction has to be 'larger-than-life' ... "

   "In the privacy of his own soul, nobody
   identifies himself with the folks next
   door, unless he has given up.  "

   "It is not a leader or a protector that
   they seek in a hero, since his exploits are
   always highly individualistic and un-social.
   What they seek is profoundly personal:
   self-confidence and self-assertion."


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