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Getting
It Right by William F. Buckley, Jr. Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended) |
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Origins In his new novel, Getting
It Right, William F. Buckley, Jr., uses the genre of historical fiction
to convey so much of what he knows about the origins of the modern right in
the John Birch Society and the followers Ayn Rand. Among the Randians was
Alan Greenspan, and if there’s just one reason you need to read Getting It
Right, reading Buckley’s portrayl of Greenspan might be just reason
enough. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 23 (pp. 152-4): There
had been an inkling of it a month earlier. Ayn Rand had not left her Park
Avenue apartment in weeks. Nathaniel and Barbara Branden worked night and day,
it seemed, on the concerns of the Nathaniel Branden Institute. Ayn said at a
gathering of the Collective on Saturday that she thought there was a little
pallor in the handsome face of Nathaniel. Her eyes searched the room and
touched down on the faces of the seven Collective members in attendance. Only
Leonard Peikoffwas absent—he was in California and had served notice he would
not be there. The deliberated passage of Miss Rand's questioning eyes gave
the impression that this was a forum, and that the views of everyone there
were being consulted in a probe for consensus. But of course it wasn't that way with Ayn Rand. If
she detected a pallor, there was a pallor; and if others did not espy
it, the explanation was as simple as that they were blind. Even so, her eyes
looked about inquisitively as if seeking confirmation of what needed no
confirmation. Alan
Greenspan attempted to contribute to the question being explored. He said,
"Yes. Nathaniel, perhaps you and Barbara should get away for a day or
two? As an economist, I know something about the allocation of effort. It is
economically profligate to deploy high skills that are not required for the
undertaking at hand. You may say that there is an inelastic demand for work
of a clerical nature being done to promote the fortunes of the Nathaniel
Branden Institute, and I would acknowledge that—but without acknowledging that the
allocation of your special skills to such work is the reasonable way to
proceed." Ayn liked the direction in which the talk was
proceeding. She elucidated with manifest pleasure. "As Alan says, there are demands which, because
they are inelastic, by definition need to be met, and it is in the nature of
social accommodation that these are often—note, I am not saying necessarily—undertaken
by persons whose time, measured by their resources, is not reasonably used in
such activity. "Consider me—" She pointed to Barbara,
seated to her left, next to Frank, and traced one of her habitual finger arcs
over the heads of all the members of the Collective, reaching finally
Nathaniel, seated at her right hand. "I spent thirteen years composing Atlas
Shrugged. With my fingers depressing exactly the right keys on
that typewriter"—she pointed to the hallowed object on the desk in the
corner. "I was fully allocating my mind to the work in hand. As most of
you know because of the frequent readings I did here with the Collective, the
words—the language, the images, the ideas—were the product of intense thought
and—" "A brilliant imagination," her husband
interposed. Ayn Rand nodded her head slightly and produced a
faint smile. She resumed: "And the end product could not
have been effected except by the allocation of my entire attention. Now. .
.." She paused dramatically, leaning over to light a cigarette. There
was silence. "Sometimes, working alone at, say, two in the morning, I would
need or desire sustenance. And then? Are you following me, Joan?" Joan Mitchell, who had been married briefly to Alan
Greenspan, nodded her head and volunteered, "You made your own
tea." "Exactly," Miss Rand said. "You
have here the actualization of the economic conundrum. Aristotle and I both
boiled water, which is work that does not tax the resources even of an
illiterate slave boy. The
point, as applicable to Nathaniel and Barbara, is that they should give more thought
to the distribution of the work of the Instiute so that they do not need to
spend so much time, so to speak, boiling water." Mary
Ann Rukavina asked, "Ayn, might it be contended that the use of ones
mind in such activity as is unrelated to that which requires the full application
of the mind could be understood as nature's means of exacting rest? I mean,
when you were writing at two in the morning, there has to come a point when you had
to stop in order to rest. And, clearly, when sleeping, one is, in a sense,
just going one step beyond the boiling of water—" Ayn stopped her. "We are hardly discussing the
natural biological requirements of the human body, which engages in
activities – the use of the mouth to eat,
of the alimentary canal to process, the anus to excrete—necessary to the
cyclical demands of organic life. If you are saying that a pause in order to
boil water is a means resting the mind, giving it surcease from the level of
exertion required for hard rational application, the answer is: No. Alan is
correct. It is a misallocation of economic energy.” After
most of the Collective dispersed, at about one in the morning, Ayn tilted her
head back and blew smoke up toward the ceiling. "We have established, Nathaniel, that the
pallor I spoke of is there. You and Barbara must go on a few days' vacation.” As readers come to expect, Buckley is playful,
irreverent, and opinionated on the pages of Getting
It Right. If that’s what you’re after, and have any interest in the
Randians or the John Birch Society, this is the book for you. Steve Hopkins, May 27, 2003 |
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ă 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the June 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Getting
It Right.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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