Liberty: Ayn Rand vs. Truman Capote - Episode 15

Two runaways, two worlds, and the pursuit of freedom.  This week's episode covers Anthem and Breakfast at Tiffany's, two American classics with surprising similarities.

Sources / Further Reading:
Biography of Ayn Rand (Gale)
Biography of Ayn Rand (Encyclopedia Britannica)
Biography of Truman Capote (Encyclopedia Britannica)
"The Legendary Friendship of Harper Lee and Truman Capote"
About Truman Capote (PBS)

Comments

Stephen said…
An interesting pair to place together, to be sure. "Anthem" was the first book I read by Rand, and I liked the general theme of it even if the writing was a little weird. I mentioned in my review that there's a scene where the main character is talking to his love interest, and she expresses her love, and he goes off on a tangent about the importance of the concept "I". It took me a few years, but I read The Fountainhead last year, and Atlas Shrugged just recently. Both have the same odd expression of characters, and both are more about the ideas than the characters, but Atlas has two characters who change gradually over the course of the 1000+ book.

Something I was batting around while listening to your show was the difference between liberty and license....Holly Golightly could model license well enough! (The movie does clean her and the writer up a bit...there's this great vulnerability to Audrey's version that I didn't notice when reading Capote's original. It helps that viewers get to hear her sing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uirBWk-qd9A)
February 26, 2018 at 6:35 PM
Marian H said…
Ok, maybe I *should* really watch the movie. :) I love Moon River...I used to plunk it out on the piano as kid. It was in one of those old "top hits" piano books, so I had no context for it, just that I liked it.

Liberty and license - it's a fine line, for sure. I was kind of deliberating whether I took the comparison between the books too far... It would have been so interesting if Rand wrote a sequel to Anthem; then we could see how Equality develops as an independent person. It feels like the story ends when the action really picks up.

I'm anticipating your review of Atlas Shrugged; maybe it will shed some light on the loose ends of Anthem.
February 26, 2018 at 11:25 PM
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