Rand-O-Rama

Ayn Rand's long shelf life in American culture.

From the March 2005 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

LOUIS: I could have you arrested you....creep. They'd think I put you in jail for beating me up.

JOE: I never hit anyone before, I...

LOUIS: But it'd really be for those decisions. It was like a sex scene in an Ayn Rand novel, huh?

JOE: I hurt you! I'm sorry, Louis. I never hit anyone before, I...

--from Angels in America, by Tony Kushner, conversation between lovers (1992)

"Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit, I am never reading again." --police officer Barbrady, South Park (1998)

"However completely you think you preside over your own schedule, there are inflexibilities there. Inflexibilities which not even one of Ayn Rand's heroes could do very much about." --William F. Buckley Jr., Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography (2004)

"Unlike...any other Marvel [Comics] author, [Spider-Man co-creator Steve] Ditko received plotting credit as early as Amazing Spider-Man #25 (1965), an unprecedented concession that was most likely the result of Ditko's contemporaneous discovery of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, with its hatred of creative dilution and unearned rewards." --Andrew Hultkrans in Give Our Regards to the Atom Smashers!: Writers on Comics (2004)

"The Incredibles...suggests a thorough, feverish immersion in both the history of American comic books and the philosophy of Ayn Rand....Luckily, though, [writer and director Brad] Bird's disdain for mediocrity is not simply ventriloquized through his characters, but is manifest in his meticulous, fiercely coherent approach to animation." --A.O. Scott, The New York Times (2004)