After Virtue
- Posted by Andrew Bailey on Monday, November 20, 2006 at 1:50 PM
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7 Comments |
I saw Stranger Than Fiction the other night. When Harold Crick (played by Will Farrell) visited the office of a local English literature professor, a copy of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue can be seen on one of the shelves (to the left of the professor's TV).
7 Comments:
at 4:19 PM said... Hollywood reads "After Virtue?" Now there's a disquieting suggestion.
Noumena at 5:12 PM said... I'd say more spectacularly ironic than disquieting.
Though the urban legend is that MacIntyre has a condo in Chicago so he can see bad movies without being recognized.
Alternatively: You're assuming someone actually read the book, and didn't just wander through Borders looking for props with impressive-sounding things on them.
at 6:51 PM said... You're right, I did wrongly assume that someone read it. I think a better guess might be that it came from "Books by the yard" (see here: http://www.bookdecor.com/books-by-the-yard.html
When I first heard of this idea, I seriously contemplated suicide. Here's a sample, "Here, we ask that you disregard the quality of the text in favor of our books' outer beauty." I think it's safe to say that "Books by the yard" single-handedly embodies everthing that I stand against.
Speaking of MacIntyre rumors, is there any truth in the rumor that he once ran a gun smuggling operation for the IRA?
Noumena at 7:27 AM said... He's Scottish, so that one seems unlikely. On the other hand, he was a Trotskyite for quite a while in his youth, so maybe that makes it more likely?
at 1:06 PM said... As you may know, the IRA went through a Marxist period in the 1930's where they maintained that the troubles were economically, not religiously, motivated, so there is a strand of Marxism in the IRA.
MacIntyre is indeed Scottish, but I am pretty sure he also either lived or has some strong connection to Donegal, Ireland, which borders Northern Ireland. Of course, he also lived in London when he was an undergraduate, where the story would have been a bit closer to home. Either way, I didn't mean to imply that he was in fact Irish, if that's what your suggesting. He does certainly have Irish connections. For instance, he's a member of the Royal Irish Academy, and has written about the Ulster situation.
This is really only a rumor, though I would love to hear the story from someone who actually asked him this question--both the content of MacIntyre's response, and how he responded.
Noumena at 6:42 PM said... If I can come up with a good excuse for meeting with him, I'll try to casually ask about gun smuggling.
I'll happily take suggestions for good excuses for meeting with him, by the way.
at 7:10 PM said... I would suggest either:
a)Telling him that you're thinking about joining the Dominican order, and that you heard that he's an expert, or
b)Telling him that you are looking for someone to guide you through the original Nicomachean Ethics.
After glancing at your blog, I take it that you probably aren't thinking about joining the Dominicans... so, unfortunately, you might have to learn Greek first.
