re: #103 Dianna

Me, neither. But Swaggart fascinates me. I’m always intrigued by people who are both sincere and wildly hypocritical. How one would write that so it makes some kind of psychological sense? I’m not that good.

Ayn Rand was faced with a similar problem:

The 35th anniversary edition of the book [Atlas Shrugged] includes an introduction of sorts by Dr. Leonard Peikoff. He includes a number of enlightening passages from Ayn Rand’s notes on the book, one of which mentions a character she ultimately cut from the final version of the story: “Father Amadeus.”

Father Amadeus, Peikoff comments, “was [Jim] Taggart’s priest, to whom he confessed his sins. The priest was supposed to be a positive character, honestly devoted to the good but practicing consistently the morality of altruism. Miss Rand dropped him… when she found that it was impossible to make such a character convincing.”