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Ayn Rand vs Flannery O'Connor. Episode in the series Saints vs Scoundrels. Eternal Word Television Network, 2016. DVD, available at www.ewtnrc.com. [$15.00]
This home video is an episode in a series produced by a Catholic cable channel based in the South-in Irondale, Alabama. The concept for the series is that in each episode, actors portray an historical person of faith confronting a scoundrel (generally a nonbeliever), with Benjamin Wiker as the host. Among the episodes are Sir Thomas More vs King Henry VIII, St. Augustine vs Rousseau, St. Francis of Assisi vs Machiavelli, Edith Stein vs Neitzsche. And in one amazing episode, the saintly Flannery O'Connor meets Ayn Rand, scoundrel.
I can guarantee that nobody will be bored watching this program. It will shock even the children, though it begins safely. In the first half hour, O'Connor appears without Ayn Rand, so the actress playing O'Connor has ample opportunity to explain to Wiker, who is clearly a fan of O'Connor's fiction and essays, what she is up to in terms of writing religious fiction-to get through to the modern world. As they chat, both of them quote liberally and accurately from her works. Her similarity to her Misfit of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and to Mary Grace of "Revelation" is made clear. O'Connor hesitates not at all in expressing her intense distaste for Rand's...