Karen Michalson - Selected Short Pieces

Selected Short Pieces

The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2004)

"Objectivism: On Stage and Self Destructive"
A review of Sky Gilbert's play, The Emotionalists. Gilbert's play is read as an exploration of the tragic effects of Objectivism on individuals who wholeheartedly embrace Rand's philosophy before finding that they cannot live up to all of its demands.

"Rand as What?"
A rejoinder to Gilbert's response to this review.

Order on line through Amazon.com or the Pennsylvania State University Press.

Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand

A critical anthology of interdisciplinary contemporary feminist readings of Ayn Rand's writings. Edited by Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Mathew Sciabarra, with contributions from Barbara Branden, Nathaniel Branden, Diana Mertz Brickell, Susan Love Brown, Susan Brownmiller, Mimi Reisel Gladstein, Thomas Gramstad, Melissa Jane Hardie, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Valérie Loiret-Prunet, Wendy McElroy, Karen Michalson, Camille Paglia, Sharon Presley, Robert Sheaffer, Joan Kennedy Taylor, Barry Vacker, and Judith Wilt. Winner of the Freedom Book of the Month Award. 480 pp. Hardcover.

"Who is Dagny Taggart? The Epic Hero/ine in Disguise"

Reviews

" . . . the most intriguing piece here is written by Karen Michalson. In "Who is Dagny Taggart?: The Epic Hero/ine in Disguise," Michalson highlights what she sees as a common misconception among feminists regarding the term "heroine." She points to the fact that collectivist-feminist heroines are usually the down trodden, oppressed, oftentimes nameless, who are denied a voice by the oppressing society. Michalson claims that it is such a (mis)understanding of heroine that prevents feminists from seeing Dagny Taggart as a hero in the true sense: self-standing, self-actualizing, independent. Indeed, as Michalson declares, Taggart is the first female epic hero. The reason traditional feminists have a problem recognizing her is because she is not all that different from her male counterparts; she is in control. In the end, Michalson challenges the feminist paradigm of what it means to be a heroine, while at the same time questioning the validity of what is often referred to as "gender-feminism."
--Lisa M. Dolling, "Ayn Rand: A Feminist Despite Herself?" in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 1, no. 2 (Spring 2000).

"Enthusiastic congratulations for WHO IS DAGNY TAGGART? Yours is my favorite essay in the collection--brilliant, insightful, provocative, profound--I was on the most marvelous high by the time I finished reading it."
--Nathaniel Branden, February 9, 1999

"Of No Importance"

First published in the January 1996 issue of Liberty.
Back issues of Liberty are available here.

Arula Records has released a recording of Karen reading this story. It is available through CD Baby.

The story of a brilliant dancer who is persecuted and destroyed by the forces of mediocrity. Trenchant commentary on the envy and persecution of genius. Literary fantasy.

Opening lines:

And so Oscar Wilde is sitting on one side of me and the eyeless Happy Prince with his broken heart is sitting on the other. Our little table is fierce with roses -- the kind of roses the nightingale pierced her heart and sang for as she died into dawn and her life's blood colored them red. We are drinking arsenic and lead and discussing the nature of want. There is a dead swallow on the Happy Prince's plate with a sapphire in its bony beak pointed towards Oscar. It is that kind of day.

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