Mike Wallace interviews Ayn Rand and Mickey Spillane on their reasons for becoming authors, their view of what makes a hero, and why, despite being viciously denounced by critics, they both maintain a large popular appeal. Hear Ayn Rand’s straight-to-the-point analysis of her own and Mickey Spillane’s work in this 1961 interview.
Audio licensed courtesy of The Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
Mickey Spillane is one of the best-selling writers of all time, with estimated sales of 225 million copies. Mike Hammer, his most enduring hero, is a private detective who pursues justice with physical and moral courage. Mike uses his gun, his fists, and his mind to avenge the innocent, to destroy the evil, and to guard the good. Many reviewers dismissed or condemned Spillane’s writing; many readers, undeterred, have devoured the books anyway. Ayn Rand admired the Mike Hammer books and praised them publicly. This talk surveys the range of Spillane’s writing career (including his ideas for films starring his friend John Wayne), with emphasis on the voice and virtues of his crusading hero.
Recorded live on July 3, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.
Victor Hugo’s Hernani was more than a play. It was “the rehearsal of a revolution,” a bold theatrical rebellion that defied Classical dogmas and made way for a new Romanticism. On the centenary of Hugo’s birth, writer Edmond Rostand would pay worshipful tribute to his hero with a poem called Un Soir à Hernani. In this lecture, I will tell the thrilling story of Hernani, share excerpts from Rostand’s never-translated tribute, and highlight all that Hugo and Rostand have to show us about how to be a Romantic.
Recorded live on July 6, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.
Maeterlinck’s Monna Vanna, set in Italy during the Renaissance, has a timeless theme: Romantic love ennobles the human soul. One rises in love. But how can one recognize true love? What price is worth paying for it? What risk is worth taking for it? This talk will consider the play’s special qualities, salient virtues, and significant history, including its role in Ayn Rand’s life and work.
Fyodor Dostoevsky was a novelist of ideas. Ayn Rand praised his “enormous intelligence” and “superb mastery of plot structure”; some of her fiction even has parallels with his. As a writer, he dramatized principles with passionate intensity and psychological complexity. As a man, he took part in Russia’s debates and dangers (including hard labor in Siberia). Powerful convictions inspired his characters’ actions–and his own. (No advance reading required.)
Recorded live as part of The Objectivist Conference on September 01, 2021.
According to Ayn Rand, the theme of Atlas Shrugged is “the role of the mind in man’s existence.” In this session, we explore how Rand conveys her distinctive theory of free will, that the operation of the mind itself is volitional. In particular, we focus on a key conflict in the plot that is resolved only when one character realizes that the mind is volitional. Recorded live at OCON on June 27, 2019
Ayn Rand described Romanticism as “a category of art based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition.” In this session, we discuss how her novel “Atlas Shrugged” fits into this category. Drawing on the framework Rand establishes in her essay “What Is Romanticism?,” we explore how the major conflicts in the plot of “Atlas Shrugged” express Rand’s commitment to the premise of volition in man’s existential action, and how the major value-conflicts faced by central characters in the novel express the same commitment in regard to man’s consciousness. We also highlight the importance of each of these features of Rand’s Romanticism and how they contribute to the enjoyment of the novel.
Architecture is in a class of its own among the arts, combining utilitarian function and expressive power. How, though, can a building, which is nonrepresentational, convey meaning? In this lecture, Dr. Wood draws on Ayn Rand’s writings on architecture, including The Fountainhead and The Romantic Manifesto, to deepen our understanding of how great buildings concretize abstract values. The talk includes analyses of several works of world architecture from an Objectivist perspective.
This lecture was delivered on July 5, 2018 at OCON 2018.
This talk argues that the prime mover in creativity is the conscious mind even though the subconscious plays a critical role. The conscious aspect includes: having a purpose or goal, passionate love of the goal, active thinking, vision, independent judgment, tenacity and objectivity, and the willingness to change goals or strategies in the face of failure. The role of intelligence and the subconscious will be explained. Dr. Locke gives specific examples from literature, business and science.
The goal of this talk is to help you fall in love – or more in love – both with poetry and with love itself. With a symphonic integration of all the resources of language, great love poets take the most elusive nuances, thrills, mysteries, and motifs of love and throw them into sharp relief. During this talk, you will see these facets illumined by such timeless poets as Tennyson, Donne, Millay, and Browning.
You will experience the power of poetry to sharpen our vision, intensify our feelings, deepen our souls, and expand our capacity to love.
Recorded live at OCON 2018.
The goal of this talk is to help you fall in love – or more in love – both with poetry and with love itself. With a symphonic integration of all the resources of language, great love poets take the most elusive nuances, thrills, mysteries, and motifs of love and throw them into sharp relief. During this talk, you will see these facets illumined by such timeless poets as Tennyson, Donne, Millay, and Browning.
You will experience the power of poetry to sharpen our vision, intensify our feelings, deepen our souls, and expand our capacity to love.
Recorded live at OCON 2018.
Mr. Christensen, co-founder of Denmark’s Saxo Bank and founder of the private equity firm Seier Capital, has had a long, successful career as an innovator in banking and finance. In this talk, he discusses his business career and the role that Objectivism has played in his personal and professional development.
This talk was recorded at Objectivist Summer Conference 2018.
Is one of your goals as a parent or teacher to nurture a passion for reading in your children? Do you wonder about the role of reading instruction or screen time on the decline of reading in our culture? This presentation offers inspiration and practical advice for: – Building intrinsic motivation in children – Developing critical skills through a phonetic base and “total reading” – Choosing books (includes suggested reading lists by age) – Preparing your home or classroom environment – Exploring morality through literature.
The reading list mentioned can be found here: http://bit.ly/reader2019
Recorded live on June 24, 2019 as part of OCON 2019
Hugo was a giant. He created brilliantly Romantic novels, poetry and plays, and he did so with dedicated purpose: “Everything in a work of art is an act of will.” Learn about the life, works and impact of the man Ayn Rand considered “the greatest novelist in world literature.” His writing, he said, “knocks on the door and says, Open up, I have come for you.” Let’s accept his invitation.
This talk was recorded live on June 25th as part of OCON 2019.
John Keats lived a tragically short and miserably tragic life, and yet in his twenty-five years he wrote poetry that has brought insight, joy and beauty to readers for centuries. This talk weaves together the story of Keats’s life with some of his most beautiful works of poetry. Though what happiness Keats enjoyed was fleeting, he left an enduring legacy of art that can contribute powerfully to ours.
Recorded Wednesday June 26 in Cleveland as part of OCON 2019.
In the Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand reports that before she heard the name “Aristotle,” she had accepted his principle “that fiction is of greater philosophical importance than history, because history represents things only as they are, while fiction represents them ‘as they might be and ought to be.’” The aim of this talk is to explain the role of this principle in Aristotle’s esthetics and Ayn Rand’s, and to note other parallels between the Poetics and Romantic Manifesto.
Recorded live on June 27, 2019 in Cleveland, OH.
The Romantic Manifesto is a rich and philosophically penetrating book. It is, Rand states in her introduction, a “declaration of my personal objectives or motives” as an artist and “of the theoretical grounds that entitle me to these objectives and motives.” We explore some of the insights into Objectivism we get from her manifesto and some lessons to take—or not to take—from the book to increase one’s enjoyment of art and of life.
Recorded live at OCON 2019 in Cleveland, OH.
A central message of The Romantic Manifesto is the value of enriching your life with great art. But how? Dr. Brook has long pursued a passion for bringing Romantic art to Objectivists and other buyers and seeking out great art around the world. Join him for a discussion of the difference between great art and art you like; how to define your personal favorites; and how, over time, to elevate your taste in art.
Recorded live in Cleveland on June 24, 2019
One essential condition of fulfillment and happiness is the philosophic conviction that your life belongs to you. But it is only a condition. A truly fulfilled and happy life requires a sense of meaning. How to achieve that meaning is a question for which we have few tried-and-true, culturally established answers. Thankfully, one resource we do have for answering that question, or even knowing how to go about considering it, is great art. This talk explores how classic literature can contribute to the vital quest for meaning.
Recorded live in Cleveland on June 26, 2019
Yaron Brook, Onkar Ghate and Robert Mayhew have a panel discussion and Q&A on various aspects of Ayn Rand’s perspective on art.
Recorded live at OCON 2019 in Clevland, OH on June 23, 2019.
At the turn of the millennium, two different polls were held. The question was: What’s the best English-language novel of the twentieth century? One poll questioned literary experts—they picked Ulysses by James Joyce. The second poll questioned internet users—their choice was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
Is there any objective way to settle who is right? And is art (painting, sculpture, music, architecture) objective or subjective? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?
Join Harry Binswanger as he presents Rand’s revolutionary answer to the question: What is art and what are the standards for judging art?
Cultural observers have often noted that Europe — and, more broadly, Western civilization — despite historically unprecedented success, is in danger of losing itself. But what exactly is being lost, and why? And what can be done about it?
In a recent panel discussion entitled “What Is Killing Western Civilization?,” Yaron Brook (chairman of the board of the Ayn Rand Institute) and Douglas Murray (author of The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam) met at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers lecture theatre in central London to discuss the future of Western civilization in the context of its own identity crisis and the growing trend of immigration to the West from those outside it — and, in some cases, hostile to it. The panel, moderated by Claire Fox (director and founder of Academy of Ideas), addressed such questions as:
On a Pedestal: Sport as an Arena for Admiration
This talk explores the value of admiration in the realm of sports. At a time when much in the world around us seems distinctly un-admirable, spotlighting athletes’ achievements offers a refreshing antidote. Even those who aren’t sports fans can gain a deeper appreciation of how admiration itself is a value and can contribute to the admirer’s own flourishing. We explore how the sight of an achievement (as Ayn Rand observed) is, indeed, a glorious thing.
This talk was recorded live in Newport Beach, California, at Objectivist Summer Conference 2018.