Slow Life Blog from the Lake District
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me

Who is John Galt?

2/4/2010

0 Comments

 
Picture
I was with a bunch of media people and someone mentioned that Michael Caine had chosen Ayn Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead as his book on Desert Island Discs .Good choice Michael.   Not surprisingly very few of those present had heard of Ayn Rand. This included a girl who has a first class degree in English and a Master’s in English and Philosophy. How can anyone who has taken a Master’s in Philosophy not know of Ayn Rand?
I love The Fountainhead- it’s one of my favourite books, but Ayn Rand is better known for Atlas Shrugged, which is something of a phenomenon in America. A survey in 1991 by the Library of Congress and The Book of the Month Club put Atlas Shrugged as second only to the Bible as the book that made the most difference to readers’ lives. A poll by Modern Library in 1998 of the 100 best novels of the 20th Century has Atlas rated first, with 217,520 votes cast. This is remarkable for a book which is as long as War and Peace, which has never been filmed or televised and which contains no sex or violence (which probably explains why it isn’t well known here). Even last year, 52 years after its first publication Atlas sold half a million copies and was number 13 in the best seller’s list, above Barack Obama’s “Dreams of My Father”, in the week of Obama’s inauguration.
John Galt is rumoured to have been the inspiration for Don Draper in Mad Men. There have been frequent references to Ayn Rand in the series, which must have been baffling to most British viewers, even to graduates with first class degrees in English.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.


    ​About Slow Life

    The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food, which are “good, clean and fair”, and extend them to life in general.

    Here in the Lake District, the air is clean, the pace is slow and the atmosphere is calm. If we don’t grow food ourselves, we can buy it in friendly small shops, where you know the quality is going to be the best.

    This blog is a celebration of the Slow Life, with forays into the world of design, music, the arts, gardens, and my particular weakness, Japan.

    Archives

    June 2017
    December 2016
    August 2015
    May 2015
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009

    RSS Feed

Home   |   About Me   |   Contact Me

Jonathan Denby's Slow Life blog from the Lake District

© Copyright Slow Life 2020. All rights reserved   |   cookie policy    |   Site by Treble3
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me