Work ethic healthy in Beatty Brothers

The Beatty brothers have written a book detailing how they have, since childhood, been making money Pulling Weeds to Picking Stocks. Now in their advice book they share the principles of hard work, organization, and business savvy that they learned from their parents.

The 7 x 5 inch 100-pager, written on a 9-12 year old reading level had, just four days ago, an Amazon ranking of around 560,000th. Not good.

Then on Friday, David Beatty called the Rush Limbaugh radio program and stated his intention to donate about a third of the profits to the Marine Corps for their service to the country and their family.

Today? Monday morning? The Beattys’ book has leaped to the number five position! A now sold-out bestseller. They earn money teaching marketing principles and have just provided a powerful object lesson.

What’s the chief lesson here? Hard work? Excellence in parenting? Good teen models? Only in America?

All of the above. And I also know that the publishing industry generates more stories of serendipity and human interest that often supersede the actual content of what they publish. Sequel? ” Meet the (Beatty) Parents.

Has “Atlas Shrugged?”

Atlas

In Ayn Rand’s last and most defining work, Atlas Shrugged, the world’s most gifted, innovative thinkers and inventors, the great minds of the nations, literally go on strike. In a socialist, government dominated, stifling society, these men and women of brains, brawn, and business acumen prefer going underground to benefitting those who lack all of the above. Many people, no doubt, identify with these Randian heroes as they struggle to pursue and produce excellence among those who lack the ability to apprehend or appreciate their talent. They go on strike, too, abandoning such people leaving them to their own inferior devices.

Though Rand was what one writer calls a “liberatrian atheist,” her ideas, her philosophy resonate with me on a fundamental level. There is truth here. It has mostly to do with freedom and man’s Godlike ability to imagine and create and achieve glory. It shows the nasty, fallen side, too – selfishness, cowardice, and jealousy.

Rand articulates her Objectivism in mellifluous prose making all 1,168 pages entertaining reading, that and also the longest novel in a European-based language. Her characters are exquisitely drawn and the good guys, hopefully not inimitable in reality.

Not everyone is or was thrilled with the novel. The National Review has posted a somewhat negative review by Whittaker Chambers from the 1957 archives, the year of the novel’s publication. Definitely worth reading.

Not intending to provide a traditional review (they abound,) I’ll change the novel’s ubiquitous query, “Who is John Galt?” to “Has Atlas Shrugged? ” Have those whose ideas, integrity, and independent self reliance create and inspire excellence abdicated their place leaving the rest to survive on their meager wits?

No? Then where are they? In our classrooms? In our courtrooms? In our capital city?

Finally I recommend William F. Buckley’s novel Getting it Right and the d’Anconia speech on money excerpt(Capitalism Magazine.) Also read the John Galt 90-page radio broadcast, a novella in itself, and Rand’s manifesto.

While it took me nearly a year to finish this novel, I’ll never regret or forget the experience. Today I rummaged used book stores for a copy of The Fountainhead.

Christian leaders not shacking up with novel

William Young’s The Shack is a best-seller for BN and has topped the NYT list. It’s a Christian genre book and that’s what makes its success surprising — and controversial. Albert Mohler, in a full-length radio program,  has called it “heresy,” and Lifeway has apparently pulled it. But in addition to sales, customer reviews say the book is enriching and renewing.

For me and other would -be writers the most interesting thing here is the book’s publishing history. Young, recently bankrupt and having lost a home of 19 years, wrote the book for his children and a few friends. They loved it, word of mouth marketing kicked in, and a best seller was born.

“Dear Mr. Young, we regret to inform you . . .”  Yes, the book, like so many other successes, was rejected by both Christian and secular publishing houses. Undeterred Young formed Windblown expressly for publishing his own novel. Then came a webpage. Barnes and Noble bought a few copies and when sales soared, ordered more. Many more.

Issues? Christian leaders say the book may be harmful. Fans say it’s the best Christian book they’re read. By the way, in the book God is a black woman.  A quick read will tell. I’m waiting for it to hit the used bookstores or be available at the library.

Young’s website gives the front matter and chapter one for readers. NYT Books has another review. And of course, blogs are weighing in on both sides.

First attempts by Ayn Rand

  I picked up an old, yellowed copy of The Early Rand (Signet, ed. Leonard Peikoff, 1984) and have thoroughly enjoyed reading from her early unpublished fiction. Peikoff and Rand were friends. In fact, she was influential in his move from studying medicine to philosophy.  He was one of those invited into the salon circle of disciples where Rand discussed her views.

For one thing, what the unpublished writings offer is her early struggle with the English language. She had emigrated to America from Russia in 1926 at 21 and had to learn everything from scratch. But the stories show the maturing of a great writer. In “The Husband I Bought” the language usage is rough, and the diction is imprecise.  The plotting is immature with more telling than showing. But the men and women, her characters, are predictive of the giants of fiction that Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden are today — people of strength and integrity and self reliance.

Having read Buckley’s Getting it Right, an enjoyable and fairly accurate fictional account of the formation of the conservative movement, I know that Rand didn’t support Buckley or The National Review. She thought it “the most dangerous” publlication in America since she felt that Buckley wanted to merge conservatism with religion. He didn’t favor some of her views, which were conservative, but Godless. The novel is just plain good reading.

I reject Rand’s views of religion and some of her views on man. I thoroughly relish her postulations that show man as heroic, purposeful, determined, the ruler of the world, capable of anything for his own self interest and thereby the good of others. It’s a vision that lauds man’s creativity and ability to produce and to derive from his efforts a deeply abiding satisfaction, confidence, and love of life — capitalism. (Some of the works in this anthology are vehemently anti-Communist.)

In her fiction, the evil characters are the lazy, inferior men who resent and envy those who do produce and are successful. Her fictional situations show people who are despised for their want of vision and talent — characters who function best in at atmosphere of regulation and bureacracy enforcing status quo operations and considering anyone who is not content with that and cannot abide mediocrity a threat. The bad guy is a jealous, petty man.

Peikoff recommends reading the novels first and then trying the early work. I agree that this makes a fascinating study.

You might enjoy these articles:

From The Atlasphere, bio and some good articles on social and political topics, mostly conservative

On Rand  — http://txpayervoice.blogspot.com/2008/01/ayn-rands-birthday.html

Manybooks.net has only Anthem available free online and as an audiobook here.

 

Misogyny and gullible women

Jincy Willett’s catchy title for her 2003 novel, The Winner of the National Book Award, is about a novel that did win the coveted award in the book. Willett’s didn’t, but is nonetheless worth the read.  The fictional winning novel is about the narrator’s portly, promiscuous twin sister, who, along with her spinster twin, befriends a poet and his wife, his old college roommate now a successful writer of salacious horror novels, and a small assortment of artsy oddballs.

While much of the book is about the amusing differences between the two sisters, these are highlighted by their relationship to the horror writer., Conrad Lowe. Conrad is handsome in a slippery, used-car salesman way, but possesses intelligence, wit, and a keen inerest in women. The wise, spinster twin shuns his flirtations; the looser twin falls in love.

The abuse starts on the honeymoon — verbal abuse, physical abuse, humiliations galore including Conrad’s tying her to the bed so that she can’t eat and will therefore lose weight. She is heavy, but healthy.  Her husband constantly humiliates her in front of the group about her size. But she is in love, she tells Dorcas, her twin, who urges her to leave him.

But a funny thing happens. Conrad begins to show attention to Dorcas the hook being needing her input on his work, she being a librarian. Dorcas, who has had absolutely no attention from men, takes the bait and spends an evening getting smashed with Conrad –drunk to the point of tying his shoe laces together under the table. She’s never been silly before.

Dorcas moves in with the couple at Abby’s insistence (to make Conrad happy and less abusive) and things go well for a while. Months pass.  Literary discussions occur nightly,  salon style. But Conrad slips into his old ways and is as nasty as ever even persuading the whole enclave minus Dorcas to have an “intervention” to help “save” his wife. It is cruel, but Abby gains strength through it, throws things, a kind of release happens.

Things settle down again. On Dorcas’s last night with the H.C. (Happy Couple) Conrad slips to the side of her bed, kisses her, holds her and . . .  alas, she rises and returns the embrace – with gusto. Three seconds later Conrad whispers, “Perfect” and leaves the room. She, of course, to her chagrin, knows exactly what has happened. This abusive man has done all this to prove a point. Not to Dorcas, but to himself: I am Conrad Lowe –destroyer of women. Another one bites the dust.

Conrad, though he has had plenty of women, actually despises them. His mother had been an actress and the young Conrad had been privy to her own many sexual indiscretions (indiscretions being mild.) He loved his father and hated his mother. Result? Women are evil. Mother must be punished.  The best way to punish women is with simpatico. “I understand. I feel your pain.”

After a separation then a reunion then more abuse, Abby calls Dorcas one day to report that there’s been an accident. She has backed the car over Conrad. Eight times! They laugh. The poet’s wife writes the book about Abby and Conrad and wins the National Book Award.

Through it all, both of the twins grow emotionally — Dorcas realizes that she, the old maid, is a woman and is suseptible to a man’s unique “gifts.” Abby realizes that she is an adult and need not suffer at the hands of a man, no matter how gifted.  After having starved to please him over their short, fatal marriage, she gains her weight back . After she murders him. In prison she’s happy.

The novel’s structure has some collage, flashback, and detours about New Englanders and “really bad weather” which are entertaining as backdrop for this grim, but humorous story.

The Bodies Exhibit: Why we read Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, usually credited as the first true work of science fiction, stresses the fairly common themes of man’s overweening pride, his error in overstepping boundaries, and the often horrific events that follow such actions.

In Shelley’s day, early 19th century, many in the field of “natural philosophy,” or science, were trying to discover the “life impulse,” or the origin of the life. This was the time that Dr. Galvin (see Galvinism) was attempting to resurrect dead bodies. It was commonly believed that electricity, also newly discovered, was the spark of life and experiments were conducted making a dead frog’s legs jump, for instance. Percy Shelley’s first wife, the pregnant Harriet, drowned herself in the middle of London in a pond upon learning that her husband was having an affair with Mary. Doctors tried new methods of resusitation on her to no avail.

Many, like Shelley and her atheist husband, Percy the poet and her philosopher parents the Godwins, had abandoned a belief in God, so substitiute answers to fundamental questions were sought. Elaborate salon discussions were held at the Godwin home where Percy and Mary met.

However, the Shelleys held Romantic worldviews. While denying the Judeo-Christian God, they also distrusted pure science and favored a more transcendental view and certainly believed, like all Romantics, in the sanctitiy of Nature — capital N. Tamperings with nature, its fundamental laws, would surely open a Pandora’s box.

Hence, when the married Percy, Mary, Lord Byron and Mary’s half-sister and another friend were vacationing at the Vila Diodati, a contest was proposed. It was raining and philosophy is only fun for so long. Everyone go away and write your best ghost story.

The boys got bored with the project and left it in favor of throwing the football, but the 18-year-old Mary invented the monster we are all so familiar with today: Frankenstein’s monster. (Frankenstein is actually Victor Frankenstein, the dubious creator. The monster is unnamed.)

The novel was and still is a hit and has been produced and parodied in many genres, including Gene Wilder as “Young Frankenstein” in Mel Brooks’s comedy. But Mary was dead serious. Her point: Don’t mess with Mother Nature. Victor’s fascination with the “unhallowed arts” digging around in cemeteries searching for body parts was even to the atheist a despicable act. Further, Victor’s experiment playing God (Shelley’s Nature) results in the death of his little brother, a family friend, and his own bride on their honeymoon, all victims of the monster and Victor’s pride.

Last weekend I visited a museum where the Bodies exhibit is on display. This exhibit has stirred global controversy, one side lauding its educational value, its magnification of the glories of the human body, the other side declaring it an exploitation of human dignity. In the museum I visited, the exhibit was adjacent to the children’s museum. A uniformed employee steered children away, loudly warning parents to keep to the right.

No wonder. Twenty-one real human bodies and 260 body parts are displayed in “dynamic” positions that mimic everyday activities. Some hold that the Church kept the world in the scientific dark ages through its squeamish approach to the human body. Others, like me, believe that there is a sanctity to life and death and the body itself. To display real people, though dead, without names, without identity, and reportedly without their permission (possibly Chinese prisoners,) is an invasion of privacy (current battle cry du jour) in the most extreme manner.

In an article by Paulette Miniter for SmartMoney.com, the following financial statistics shed more than a little light.

“Provocative ideas are often lucrative ones, and though Premier [Geller runs Premier Exhibitions (PRXI: 4.68, -0.34, -6.77%), a $463 million company that operates "Bodies" shows around the globe.] has been public since 1993, it’s just starting to get respect on Wall Street. Shares have gained 158% year to date to $15.65 as of Wednesday’s close. “We believe the company’s stock price has only recently begun to reflect its potential for significant sales and earnings growth,” Chris Krueger, an analyst at Northland Securities in Minneapolis, said in a research report in late July. Shares hit a 52-week high of $18.62 on July 18.

“In Premier’s fiscal first quarter, ended May 31, revenue nearly doubled to $11.4 million and earnings about tripled to $3.3 million. Cash and cash equivalents are up to $19.7 million, a substantial increase from $2.5 million a year earlier.”

The National Enquirer pulls in big bucks, too. This display appeals to man’s base, morbid curiosity. It’s a freak show. Anyone who wants to study the human body for educational purposes will find no shortage of material. Exhibit viewers see more than medical students do.

Who are these “bodies?” Victor used the random recently dead and buried. “Bodies” uses anonymous cadavers, too. From China. According to an AP article by Mitch Stacey published by the Washingtonpost.com August, 2005,

“The company says it legally obtains specimens from the Dalian Medical University Plastination Laboratories in China, but there’s been media speculation that some of the bodies are those of executed prisoners or other victims of an underground anatomy market. Premier maintains the bodies used in its shows are unclaimed cadavers.”

Anything for a profit. Imagine your father’s body, privates and all, on display for millions of gawking viewers. Without his permission. He has no name any more. He has no grave with a tombstone marking the resting place of his mortal body. He has been plasticized by a firm in China and is viewed at $2o.oo a peep in a carnival side show. Hardly dignified. It’s dehumanizing and recalls everything we hated about Nazi experimentation, doesn’t it?

Where is the Church on this? It holds the corner on these issues and should make the traditional Judeo-Christian view on this subject known. (I saw some Catholic anti-exhibit press.)

I appreciate the navy burial service and offer it here. Note the careful, reverent protocol. But what were we thinking. Look at the “Bodies” stock figures. The Department of Defense could make billions! The exhibit: War . . . What is it good for? 

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq85-1.htm

Big hat. No cattle.

My current night (actually in the bed) reading is STILL Atlas Shrugged, which will, I estimate, take me seven months to complete. It deserves to be savored. Pre-bed reading involves toggling between The Millionaire Next Door and Millionaire ‘Women Next Door. Even though English won out (barely) over sociology as my major, both involve observing and understanding people, and there’s nothing like a nonfiction, well-researched text about topics like money.

Big hat, no cattle is an expression that symbolizes one thing that Thomas Stanley’s research made evident: real wealth doesn’t show.  Rich isn’t wealthy. The book shows that 80% of current millionaires are first genreation: they didn’t inherit. Most are businessmen who live in their hometown with their first wives in a home surrounded by neighbors that make far less than they do. Most don’t drive foreign cars. Two thirds are self-employed. The wife’s job (50% don’t work) is teacher.

The figures? Total taxable is $131,000 (50th percentile) with average income at $247,000. Eight percent (low) have incomes in the $500,000 to $999,999 category. Most live on less than 7% of their wealth. The current home is valued at $320,000, the same home they’ve lived in for 20 years, thus its value has appreciated greatly.

The point is that many people have sacrificed wealth for high-status material possessions. No wonder. In a commercial, advertisement-driven world, we are told that we must buy because we deserve it. 

Both books are in your local library or get them cheap at BN. Both go beyond facts and figures to render informed advice and, most interestingly, biographical snips and examples.  Great reading.    (allow that the pub. date is 1996)

They Should Have Read Jane Eyre

I deleted my last blog on Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre.  Thinking that no one would be interested in the mid-Victorian rags-to-riches, happy-ever-after story, I forsook it.

Wrong. Several people tried to comment, but the original essay gone missing, I couldn’t approve the comments.

I basically said that in a world of desperate housewives, a woman like Jane is a model of determination and perseverance as well as character. She begins as a girl, an orphan without hope, and after the usual Victorian obstacles, meets the man of her dreams.

But not so fast. At the altar disaster strikes, and Jane runs away, facing near death and total dejection. Why? Because having come so far on her own, her dearly achieved independance will not be cheaply held and forfeited for a moment’s pleasure. Or a lifetime’s for that matter. Great man, estate in the south of France, TRUE LOVE.

Things work out. Victorians required a happy ending.  But what a story of self-denial and sacrifice. And in a world that waits for nothing, Jane Eyre is a valuable read.

Criticism? Joyce Carol Oates’s essay on the novel is the best I”ve read. It is often included as the introduction to the text. Several film versions exist, the BBC Timothy Dalton version (4 hours!) is the best. A musical debuted last year, I believe.

A book you might have missed

Having taken more than my share of English classes means that I’ve read a lot of books I could have done without. Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice is an example. I should like it, but I don’t and don’t mind saying so. Add Moll Flanders, To Kill a Mockingbird, and nearly anything by Mark Twain.  (I actually like Moby Dick.)

 In a contemporary American literature class, I was introduced to the so-called Jewish School: Bellow, Roth, Malamud. Here were some writers I could read into the night. They have suffered; they know. Malamud is my least favorite in general, but his novel A New Life is probably my favorite non-classic book.

Ad copy gets it right when it declares the novel’s theme to be “once a loser, always a loser.”

Seymour Levin is a reformed drunk who becomes an English professor and takes a job across the country and figurative universe from New York — a midwestern, ultra-conservative liberal arts college. The farm kids don’t get him and neither does the faculty. But he is dedicated, painfully sincere, and doomed to failure.

When Levin arrives at the airport, the department head looks askance at Levin’s full beard and it’s downhill from there. The biggest crime is that Levin doesn’t want to use the good professor’s Fundamentals of English Grammar — a tome destined to kill any college course. And worse, the prof’s wife gets a crush on the young “radical.” Funny stuff.

 Office politics, disappointed love, and the end of a new career leave the quizzical Levin scratching his head as he drives away from the once-promising, lush, thoroughly American environs still the failure he was when he arrived. He’s not sure what happened, and neither are we. No enlightenment has occured. No epiphany. Only deja vu.  

Except the reader, for about 3oo pages,  has held in his heart sympathy and warmth for a far less-than-perfect, well-meaning, but doomed fellow human being who probably deserves what he got.