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AVENGING_RAND

                                 January 11, 2005


Quotations from Ayn Rand's
"Bootleg Romanticism",             Collected in
dated January 1965.                "The Romantic
                                   Manifesto"
                                   (1971).

   "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 principles of
   man's nature -- and its basic literary
   commandment is to portray man 'as he might be
   and ought to be.'"

   "Thrillers are a simplified, elementary version of
   Romantic literature.  They are 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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