An article in the New York Times about Rand and Atlas Shrugged that is notable for the absence of the expected condescending sneering.
Rand didn't much influence my political philosophy, which was about the same before I read her stuff as it is now, but I do give her credit for two things. First, she indirectly persuaded me that caring about the success of strangers on sports teams that happen to carry the name of my city or school is a waste of time. This freed up thousands of hours for other endeavors more directly related to my own life. (I'm not an evangelist about this; if you enjoy rooting for sports teams, and think the opportunity costs are worth the enjoyment you get out of it, more power to you.)
Also, discussions of Rand typically focus on her political and moral philosophy, but, as the Times article suggests, she inspired a lot of people, of all political, religious, and social views, to raise their aspirations and expectations of themselves. In my own case, I had always done well in school, but never studied hard or paid much attention to my classes. It was after reading Rand, and being at least as inspired by her example as her characters (an adult immigrant who didn't know English becoming one of the most influential English-language novelists of all time, in part due to her sheer force of will) that I started to apply myself--I think I'm somewhat unusual in that I still work much harder as a tenured law professor than I did in school. (Whether Rand did me a favor, or whether I'd be better off in some sense as a slacker with lots of free time like I was in college, is admittedly an interesting question.)
Gulag) read Atlas, he told me the book was about
Russia, not about America. Now I am not so sure.
The section of Atlas Shrugged describing the collectivization of the Twentieth Century Motor Co.
is one of the most frightening things I ever read.
Despite being badly written by novelistic standards,
the book stands out because it is one of the very
few works of fiction that actually celebrates technology,
and even more daringly the American middle class
lifestyle of consumption as being noble.
Someone suggested some science fiction to me (Old Man's War, and Serenity) but jeez, no comparison. Those were like "A day in the life of..." compared to Ware and Peace. A few battles, a few deaths and at the end we get nowhere. I'm looking for great battles between good (individualism, liberty) and evil (collectivism, socialism).
How about individualist children's books? I guess The Three Pigs and Little Red Hen were early classics, but any recent stuff?
I also have to agree about Rand's biggest fans... wasn't it Nathaniel Branden who changed his last name to Branden as an anagram of "ben Rand" ???
Here are some suggestions:
1. Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny. On a distant planet in a distant future, humans have taken on the aspects and attributes of the Hindu gods, and lord it over their own (mortal) descendants. One man opposes them. It's a retelling of the conflict between Hinduism and Buddhism.
2. The Pliocene Exile series, by Julian May. The discovery of a one-way time portal to Earth 6 million years ago attracts romantics, scoundrels, heroes, criminals, and other eccentrics hoping to find an Edenic exile. What they find when they get there is that an alien race has colonized Earth in order to continue its own battle-religion. The alien race bears a startling resemblence to the Celtic gods. The books should be read in order: The Many-Colored Land, the Golden Torc, the Non-Born King, and The Adversary.
3. The Dragon Waiting, by John Ford. An "alternate history," in which Rome never fell, Christianity was never made the official religion of Rome, and sorcery is real. A Welsh sorcerer, a German vampire, a woman physician formerly from the Medici Court, and a Greek mercenary who could have been Emperor get involved in the War of the Roses - where Rome is backing the enemies of Richard III.
4. "Years of Rice and Salt," by Kim Stanley Robinson. Another "alt.history" novel. This one posits that the Black Plague did kill off all of Europe. Over the centuries, the Islamic, Asian, Hindu, and Native American empires battle for supremacy.
These are terrific, mind-spinning epic novels that will stay with you. I recommend them highly.
For me Rand's novels are most noteworthy for their sex. Reading them, even with all the objectivism and philosophy thrown in, at bottom they're basically stories of young, thin, beautiful sexually submissive women who end up having mind blowing sex with these ubermenschen figures like Howard Roark, John Galt, Francisco D'Anconia and Hank Rearden. We The Living also features a young woman that has great sex with two hot guys.
Given that Rand herself was the definition of Frumpy I wonder how much of the books were about philosophy and how much were about living out fantasies with the objectivism thrown in.
On another Rand note, am I the only one who has read Atlas Shrugged who is worried about the prospect of there actually being a Mr. Thompson elected to the Presidency?
If he has an advisor named Mouch on the payroll, I might just have to head for Colorado and Galt's Gulch.
Although if Fred does win I wonder how long before someone hacks in to the feed of one of his oval office addresses with "Mr. Thompson will not speak with you tonight..."
Thanks for blogging the NYT article. You're right: it's suprisingly free of snide and condescending remarks. Disappointingly, though, some readers of this blog have made up the difference.
Ayn Rand and Objectivism are enjoying something of a renassiance right now. Atlas Shrugged is now being taught at several major universities around the country and several serious books about her philosophy have been published recently.
Liberals and socialists clearly hate Ayn Rand. The interesting phenomenon, though, is why some conservative academics hate her so much. It's not the religion issue so much as the fact that conservatives hate to think in principles. The fact of the matter is that Ayn Rand is the only philosopher to have developed a moral defense of capitalism. I guess that's why conserveratives (neocons in particular) despise her. What they mostly know and fear is that they'd lose all their students.
Banning Ayn Rand from America's college classrooms is the one thing that liberal and conservative academics seem to agree upon. (See the John Lewis case at Ashland University.)
I enjoyed reading Fountainhead (never made it through Atlas Shrugged), but I remember recognizing that I shouldn't take her too seriously. Her heroes were selfish and self-absorbed to an extreme, and I didn't see the virtue in that.
(What would Rand have thought about someone like Mother Teresa, for example? Probably disdain and contempt. Yet I think hers was a noble life. If I recall, Mother Teresa once said something to a Western critic along the lines of, "I agree that it's better for people to become independent and self-reliant, and fulfill their potential. But a leper whose flesh is rotting away off his body doesn't have that option, and someone needs to take care of him.")
Anyway, to what degree (if any) was Rand an influence on Greenspan's actual policy decisions?
Here's a wonderful passage from Atlas Shrugged (Part III, chpt. 2) about the family:
The recaptured sense of her [Dagny's] own childhood kept coming back to her whenever she met the two sons of the young woman who owned the bakery shop. . . . They did not have the look she had seen in the children of the outer world--a look of fear, half- secretive, half-sneering, the look of a child's defense against an adult, the look of a being in the process of discovering that he is hearing lies and of learning to feel hatred. The two boys had the open, joyous, friendly confidence of kittens who do not expect to get hurt, they had an innocently natural, non-boastful sense of their own value and as innocent a trust in any stranger's ability to recognize it, they had the eager curiosity that would venture anywhere with the certainty that life held nothing unworthy of or closed to discovery, and they looked as if, should they encounter malevolence, they would reject it contemptuously, not as dangerous, but as stupid, they would not accept it in bruised resignation as the law of existence.
Continuing:
"They represent my particular career, Miss Taggart," said the young mother in answer to her comment. . . . "They're the profession I've chosen to practice, which, in spite of all the guff about motherhood, one can't practice successfully in the outer world. . . . I came here, not merely for the sake of my husband's profession, but for the sake of my own. I came here in order to bring up my sons as human beings."
There's more, but that should get you started.
I would have to second that. When I was just 22, a college friend, after hearing my ranting and raving against the Nanny State, suggested I read The Fountainhead, which I did. It truly helped me organize my inchoate thoughts over a wide range of philosophical issues. It was a Road to Damascus experience for me, that is hugely responsible for leading me to where I've arrived decades later.
Her books are no literary treasures and she was a strange bird, but, as the Fundamentalists in Bible Class used to say, "If God can use Balaam's ass" to speak the truth to you, he can use anybody.
But a blog isn't a New York Times news page
Both films adapt the themes just enough to make them palatable to modern audiences, but the basic principles are still there in force.
Thanks for posting those passages. I had forgotten exactly how dreadful a writer she is. The last sentence in that first passage vividly brought it back.
Does that make me a closet neo-con? I fancy myself reasonable enough to take a very long term view of most political opinions-unlike the current administration, I'm not going to start abandoning principles (small gov.) just because it might score me a few short term points. I just see a huge separation between political/economic philosophy and morality.
Capitalism works. It doesn't need to be justified as "good". We just need to recognize that its effective.
I hate to say it though but the more unabashedly Randian his writing gets, the worse his books have gotten. The first few had the flavor but as he's gotten about as subtle as a sledgehammer, the stories have suffered immensely.
This shows how many peple don't understand what Rand was saying.
You don't ralize how selfish Mother Theresa was? If she wasn't selfish she would have pleased her parents by giving them grandchildren. She would have been a doting wife and caring mother. But she was selfish and did exactly what she wanted with her life. She became world famous for it and loved every minute of it and knew she'd be a saint in record time. Rand would have admired her.
In Rand's book the Virtues of Selfishness she explains how being selfish can actually help the world because you have to give something to the world in order to receive all you want.
In her other books she shows how some people get what they want by leeching off other people, like union leaders and politicians. They don't add anything to the world. They just skim off a percent while taking money from one group and giving it to another.
What would you consider a passage of fine writing -- from any author? I'd be interested to contrast your taste to Rand's.
Rand's writing, much like Roark's architecture, is much in the vein of "form follows function" or "style follows substance." Much that is stylistically more pleasing is substantially less meaningful, as well. She loathed that kind of writing as much as she loathed Greek facades on Manhattan bank buildings. There is A LOT of insightful and challenging thought in that passage you thought was bad writing. So, are you a style man, or does the writing you prefer to Rand's have as much substance as hers does, or more?
That is the moral crux of Rand's philosophy. Do for yourself and only for yourself, and expect the same from your neighbor, without asking anything from him or anyone else. I was disappointed with the NYT article in not explaining this crucial idea, because, like I said, this is the major moral formula of Objectivism. You will notice that the article cites two types of people: literary and philosophical critics, and capitalists and businessmen. All critics call it evil to some degree or another, and all cited capitalists laud it for the their inspired successes. I don't think the NYT article was viod of condecintion.
Also, as far is Greenspan is concerned, I read somewhere the disappointment of a number of Objectivists in Greenspan's actions as Fed Chair. Some even objected to him merely taking such as job, as the role of Fed Chair is in fact government playing a drastic role in the going-ons of our capitalistic economy.
Rand wrote the last three-volume novel, each standing thematically on its own. Kipling refers to this as a "triple-decker" and was lamenting its passing in the 1890's. For other reading let me suggest the great American novel, Sometimes A Great Notion (certainly not the lamentable movie adaptation). Also worthy of proto-Objectivist note, if you can wade through the German irony, is Heinrich von Kleist's "Michael Kohlhaas," (rarely) available in a rip-snorting film version from a lifetime ago starring Anita Pallenberg with a cameo by Keith Richards.
What is demonstrated fictionally (perhaps comparable to today's "special effects") is the ordering of obligations, not the dominance of any one set, nor simply setting prioities among them, but individual recognition, acknowledgement and acceptance of them.
The "right" so emphasised was a focus on the obligation all to allow each individual to set their own order, and points to the consequences when that is not done.
R. Richard Schweitzer
s24rrs@aol.com
And, unlike some here, I think it is a literary masterpiece.
If you enjoy watching sports, you might as well root for the home team, because that makes it more fun. But I am bemused when people tell me I'm "supposed" to care if the Nationals, or the GMU Patriots, win because they "represent" me. I'll choose who I want to be my representatives, if any, thank you.
Although I enjoy her writings, I've always thought this point was overstated. Frederic Bastiat's work emphasized the moral dimensions of capitalism nearly as much as the efficiency aspect.
But I am afraid to. The nightmares engendered by the "news" papers, television, and daily life (poisoned pet food, poisoned people food, poisoned toys, cars that cost more than our first house and don't last as long as the pain from one-size-fits-all shoes are bad enough just running on the memories of those books.
I was an established adult when I read Atlas Shrugged and had a world view similar but more relaxed than it might have given me as a result of reading Heinlein as a teenager. It happened that I was purchasing steel for a fabricating shop at the time, which made Rand's story that much more fictional for me.
"The most subversive political implication of 'Atlas Shrugged', is that individual freedom is possible only to those who are strong enough, psychologically and morally, to withdraw their sanction from any system that coercively thrives off their productive energies."
(Chris Matthew Sciabarra, "Ayn Rand -- The Russian Radical", 1995, pp. 301-302)
In fact, anyone who is a fanatacist about anthing thing, idea, person or sports team is pretty bizarre. And that goes for Rand's fans as well.
Randists, however, counter that either that a) she is being selfish, because she gets the inner satisfaction of doing what she wants to do, or b) she's an idiot and should go for the money.
Also, what a trust fund kid who just sits around the pool drinking beer and makes nothing of his life? A Randist would say that he is being entirely selfish, which is good. Other Randists say he's not living to his full potential, which is bad.
Aren't those two opposite? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
"This shows how many peple don't understand what Rand was saying.
You don't ralize how selfish Mother Teresa really was?"
First, use a spell-check. Second, I understand Rand fine, thank you. I'm not ignorant. Third, no, I don't understand Mother Teresa as selfish, or (as comatus called her) a Randian tragic heroine.
This is nonsense: "If she (Teresa) wasn't selfish she would have pleased her parents by giving them grandchildren. She would have been a doting wife and caring mother. But she was selfish and did exactly what she wanted with her life. She became world famous for it and loved every minute of it and knew she'd be a saint in record time."
She did not love every minute of it, and she did not care about becoming a "saint." You don't know what you are talking about.
And this - "Rand would have admired her." - is complete and utter BS. Maybe you're one of the "peple" who don't understand Rand.
Comatus, Mother Teresa did not live by force of will, but by her faith. Yet most of her life was the proverbial "dark night of the soul." That is not tragic, but profoundly significant and beautiful.
Is that why she wrote polemics under a facade of literature?
Rand occupies the same nearly unreadable literary space as Richard Bach (Jonathan Livingston Seagull) and L. Ron Hubbard (Battlefield Earth); and their respective fans are also commonly fatuous.
And, unlike some here, I think it is a literary masterpiece."
Emphatically agreed. I read it once about every five to seven years on average. Along the way, during the late-80's and early-90's, I was hitting Solzhenitsyn pretty hard. I began observing very remarkable similarities between the two writers in terms of tempo and passion. With further comparison to people like Dostoevsky or Pasternak, it occurred to me that Rand was very much a Russian writer in elements of style quite distinct from her explicit philosophical project, which accounted for a good deal of style on its own.
From then on, I've always laughed at bloody dolts who sneered at her work. My conviction is that we're talking about people whose literary grasp is paper-thin and whose capacity for independent thought is on a par with a fresh-weaned puppy.
You are absolutely right.
And: her epistemology -- specifically: her theory of concepts -- is the premier achievement in all of 20th century philosophy. You will not find one person in a thousand who can begin to discuss it competently.
Anyway, I thought her books were so-so, but as far as epic literature goes, I'll take Pynchon any day.
{laff, laff, laff}
Try Francisco d'Anconia.
Watch out for the mirrors and don't get lost.
This is a supremely silly statement, lumping lightweight mystics with one of the most profoundly anti-mystical minds of the last century as though that little aspect of content were meaningless.
I'm not sure why fatuous and condescending comments like this are provoked by the subject of Ayn Rand, but they are, seemingly invariably. Something about Rand's rationality causes the insecurities of some irrational souls to come hollering out with the most brash and contentless denunciations of Rand the writer, Rand the thinker, everyone who read and appreciated Rand, and the horses they rode in on.
Mother Theresa was an international celebrity since the 1970s. She was on the cover of TIME magazine, won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Albert Schweitzer International Prize, and many, many others, She met with world leaders such as Reagan, Thatcher, and all of the Popes. She ran an organization of over 600 missions in over 100 countries.
Yet, she never again visited her mother or sister since she left home at the age of 18.
Let's make a bet. Let's get 500 top-flight college students. We'll have them read Atlas Shrugged and your favorite Thomas Pynchon novel. If just 40% of the students prefer Pynchon over Rand, I'll pay for all 1000 copies of Rand and Pynchon. If more than 60% choose Atlas Shrugged, you pay.
Deal??
The passing of the book seemed like a secret ritual in this 1960 Madison Avenue setting.
I read some of Rand many years ago, but I would have to go back and re-read to give a more informed opinion on her work.
This is an interesting question. There is a certain soul-type that really seems to come unhinged psychologically when Ayn Rand is being discussed. I wonder if there are any psychological studies of the phenomenon. I really am rather curious.
That is simply horseshit, on its face, and before we even get into Teresa's recently published letters which expose the fraud that she herself conducted in the face of world approbation for decades. You don't know what you're talking about.
This is an interesting response. There is a certain soul-type that really seems to come unhinged psychologically while becoming attached to Ayn Rand. I wonder if there are any psychological studies of the phenomenon. I really am rather curious.
Might many of the "unhinged" be women who were treated poorly by an ex who, like Bernstein, walked around proclaiming that Ayn Rand changed his life?
As for your bet, you would undoubtedly win if your randomly selected group included more than 40% non-humanities majors. If you limit it to humanities majors, I'd be surprised if you could get even 25% to pick Rand over Pynchon.
"Selfishness" of Rand's sort is definitely not about money or trampling the rights of others. That's quite evident in the hero of The Fountainhead. He could have made money but chose not to conform. It was the supposedly selfless voice of the masses, a shady journalist, who used power to try to pull down achievers. Perhaps people would be less likely to misrepresent or misunderstand her views if they were described (more accurately I suspect) as about nonconformity and conviction rather than selfishness.
Since you asked, here are two passages that I think hold up pretty well:
"And the incorruptible Professor walked, too, averting his eyes fro the odious multitude of mankind. He had no future. He disdained it. He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable -- and terrible in the simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men."
And:
"You are more than entitled not to know what the word "performative" means. It is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it does not mean anything very much. But at any rate there is one thing in its favour, it is not a profound word. I remember once when I had been talking on this subject that somebody aferwards said: "you know, I haven't the least idea what he means, unless it could be that he simply means what he says." Well that is what I should like to mean"
I'm dying to know: Do I side with style or with substance? I've often had trouble telling the one from the other.
unhyphenatedconservative:
I agree. As Goodkind lets the Randian philosophy do more of the steering, his books become harder to take. And Richard's character becomes insufferably self-righteous. Still, I like the series more than I don't, even with the rather large lapses.
Rand was a woman, you know... I've had a few shrewish vegetarian socialist mystic girlfriends in my day, but it didn't put me off to tofu. Well, it did probably put me off to socialism and mysticism, though. And humanities majors.
. . . as to Rand as "inspiration" , and the mind-set of many of her avowed "followers", the single most informative work on the issue, and from a libertarian, no less, for me remains Jerome Tucille's "It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand"
Atlas is much better than Fountainhead. The characters in the latter are neurotic in the extreme; the Atlas ones are sane, rational creatures.
Of course I'm sure you all remember the Library of Congress survey from the early 90s that ranked Atlas Shrugged only behind the Bible as the book that had most influenced people's lives.
That is quite a fascinating contrast. These are as substantial as the Rand passages, and are written in much the same soul-searching way. What is different about them is not so much the style as the content or the conclusion. The soul described in both passages you quote is arguably the opposite of Rand's. A rejection of meaning, self-worth, even aspiration as necessarily fraudulent could be said to be the worldview being expressed in them. Since Rand writes in opposition to that (predominant) 20th century trend in thinking, it is not surprising that you loathe her writing, I would suggest. She is aiming to blow the legs out from under that very worldview.
But these are powerfully written passages that quite ably express the opposite of what Rand was expressing, and thanks for supplying them. For me, I could only enjoy the style of the writer -- the worldview, or substance of what is being said, I disagree with and would not be enjoyable to me. Both writers unpack the substance of what they're saying in ways that resonate with the worldview of their readers. Rand's style, I submit, is merely appropriate to her worldview. It would be inappropriate to express a sense of hopelessness or meaninglessness or self-loathing with ruthlessly clear, perfectly reasoned and reverential language, just as it would be inappropriate to express a worldview of rational efficaciousness, knowable reality and self-reverence with ambiguous syntax, distorted thought processes, and self-loathing language. Substance demands the right style, and I think both authors meet that requirement exceptionally well.
I thought there was a very interesting comment earlier about Rand's fiction being perfect for those who don't enjoy fiction. In a way, I'm one of them, in that I only enjoy reading fiction that somehow informs my understanding of reality -- I love Twain, but he didn't write a single sentence that didn't have an arched eyebrow of mischief, and a bank of wisdom behind that. So I don't have to read about riverrafting for the pure fictional escape of it when reading Huck Finn. I like fiction that isn't escapist, in that way, but is important to my life and my understanding of it. I know some who plow through every single "Wheel of Time" book like hamsters who want it to keep on rolling with no end in sight. I shudder at that kind of waste of time. Just the way I am. But I loved LOTR and wept when Sam said, "Well, I'm back."
Anyway, the disagreement may well be one of substance and not style, although if one hates the substance and the author has followed through with it in the style chosen to express it, one might well hate the style, as well.
i majored in philosophy as an undergrad. i never once (that i remember) even heard rand's name MENTIONED, let alone sneered at. all talk of liberal university aside, Rand was simply off the radar for my philosophy professors. some would argue that it's worse to be ignored than criticized/sneered at etc. (i think ann coulter would be in that camp, or michael moore)
it is only in retrospect, after my post-college education in the important conservative thinkers (rand, hayek, burke, etc.) that i really realize how much the academy just glosses over these people. when FORCED to deal with them, they will, but people like rand will just generally be ignored among the philosophical world's hoi polloi.
foucault, derrida, etc. otoh will be emphasized way beyond their abilities or real influence.
based on the above quote, rand is supposedly immensely influential. but you would never have known that studying philosophy at my college
As she is for most literature professors. It is no coincidence that the NYT article appeared in the business section and that it referred to Atlas Shrugged as "[o]ne of the most influential business books ever written." Whatever high regard and utility her works may still hold in other realms, Rand's influence and utility in literature and philosophy is, at best and deservedly, de minimis.
Basically, Rand novels are fine for those who like that sort of thing.
Then Mother Theresa is a perfect Randian hero, right? She could have made money, or become a wife, or a queit nun, but chose not to conform to others' view.
But we have a situation here where two devotees of Rand sharply disagree about Mother Theresa. One says she's the perfect Randian hero, the other says the exact opposite.
What good is a philosophy where everyone meets the standard, and no one -- simultaneously?
Please, someone, give me a real life example of the perfect Randian hero, and the perfect anti-hero. Then we can compare notes.
As with self-contradictory religious texts or juxtaposed, incongruous images in a Grateful Dead montage, they are all wonderfully, flexibly open to interpretation and unfalsifiable.
Rand regarded mysticism and altruism, even when claimed as a selfish pursuit, as a kind of treason to the nature of man, since man must use reason above all and is, in fact, not a collective but an individual with requirements for survival and happiness.
Rational self-interest does not mean hedonism, either, or sacrificing others to oneself.
These are all common strawmen objections which she was very specific and not ambiguous about refuting.
A new book published by Cambridge University Press, "Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist" clarifies all of these issues. Probably a better place to start than "It Usually Starts With Ayn Rand." It's nice to see, as a bonus, academia finally acknowledging what Rand herself actually said about these topics rather than resorting to the usual ad hominem attacks.
And it's nice to the NY Times back off a little bit with the sarcasm. Still, I wonder if a retrospective of "The Sun Also Rises" would talk about how badly old Hem treated his wives. That honor still seems to be reserved for the likes of Rand retrospectives, even though it has far less merit in her case.
You'll notice that RL mentioned that most of the people he knows who love Ayn Rand are men. Ergo, he imparted sex into his next comment... but I cannot parse the rest any further.
His series set against the backdrop of the decades leading up to the American Revolution is an excellent interweaving of history with larger than life fictional heroes.
That being said, her thesis about the importance of individuals and individual rights, respect for talent, honoring property rights, respecting others in their own quests, are all very worthwhile, and much-needed antidotes to the leftie pieties. Which isn't to say that some of her stuff isn't off the wall (for one thing, I don't think the most attractive look on a woman is the look of being chained - a line in Atlas Shrugged that really horrified me).
Rand is not alone in having devotees who disagree on her views, or perfect hero. Is it necessary for ones perspective to be so easily reducible? That difficulty hardly means there aren't valid points. Rand might admire Bill Gates, but also see some flaws to the extent that he's seen to have taken from others. Rand might detest Kim Jung Il for various reasons. You overstate with "the complete opposite" and suggest that other philosophies don't allow room for internal debate. Maybe very simple philosophies, or caricatures of philosophies. The kind of descriptions I've heard of Rand or Marx by people who've never bothered to give them any serious consideration.
Off the top of my head, the line was "...the most feminine of all aspects, the look of being chained."
That pedantry aside, Rand's characterisations of female looks were rather strange. Dominique is described, once, as being frail; Dagny is merely slender. Kyra is occaisonally too thin. They all have extraordinarily capable minds, but none of them has a capable, strong body.
I think we could all go on for quite some time on how utterly strange Miss Rand's sex scenes are.
Billy Beck just about covers anything I'd care to add; I'll just add two links for VC readers' convenience in support of his heretofore unechoed point about Mother Teresa's recently published letters.
Mother Theresa's Crisis of Faith
Mother Teresa's Letters Reveal Doubts
“He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation.
The visible signs of postsatisfaction?
A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a solicitous aversion: a proximate erection.”
The Modern Library then conducted an electronic Internet poll, asking ordinary everyday Americans to vote for the best 100 novels of the twentieth century. Here is a representative selection from the people’s number one novel:
“She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.”
The greatest novel of the twentieth century chosen by the intellectual class was James Joyce’s Ulysses. The greatest novel of the twentieth century chosen by the people was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. (Hat tip to HB for the quotations.)
Go figure.
Now I know why MacGuffin wants only English majors who have been taught to believe that Joyce is great literature and that Ayn Rand is trash to be a part of the bet.
If you don't like Joyce, you might also not like Steinbeck: "Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries and laboratories and flophouses."
To me it's obvious that Joyce (as well as Steinbeck) is literature, and Rand reads more like a self-published novel.
...which naturally accounts for Rand's sales figures.
{cackle}
That's right. Meanwhile, Rand demanded a fifty thousand dollar advance, a straight fifteen percent of the royalties, with a first edition print run of seventy-five thousand copies. That was completely outlandish in 1957, and Bennett Cerf wrapped that whole deal in literally five minutes.
That's because he knew he had the real thing on his hands.
I've read self-published novels -- they're very cheap at used bookstores.
Sales figures are objective. Open internet polls are not. I believe my suspicions were pardonable:
Reader selections
Best 20th century novel
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Anthem by Ayn Rand
We the Living by Ayn Rand
Mission Earth by L. Ron Hubbard
Fear by L. Ron Hubbard
No, it's clear that people voted for Rand, Lee, Orwell and Tolkien because they were fans, and people voted for Hubbard because they are members of his church and are indoctrinated en masse by an official church organization to view Hubbard as a their prophet.
And here is a quote of the New York Times' own book review of The Fountainhead: "Ayn Rand is a writer of great power. She has a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly." I doubt you're going to find a quote like that about any book by L. Ron Hubbard.
The two just aren't comparable except in a very superficial way. Hubbard started a religion, not a philosophy, and was regarded as a hack pulp sci-fi writer. Cambridge University, the New York Times, and a public not belonging to any church all agree that her philosophy, her artistic merit, and her novels are worthy of serious attention, praise and popularity. And no one had to be frightened into submission by the threat of thetans and Xenu.
They're much longer than they need to be.
That said, they have sold well, been influential, are still being discussed, etc...
Her novels are also products of their time. To read them now isn't to understand their impact or what they meant in the context of 1943 and 1957 and the collectivist mentality that was ascendant and the Cold War etc...
For such long books they read rather fast and I found them enjoyable.
To add an anecdote about her influence, and in relation to the legal focus of this blog, it's been reported in various places that Justice Thomas requires his clerks to read The Fountainhead over the summber before the start of the new term
As someone said above, not bad for a girl born in St. Petersburg in 1905 who came to the US with nothing.
I call myself a libertarian, and I hate Ayn Rand. After reading the comments, I realized why: I like libertarianism for purely pragmatic reasons. Free-market capitalism and libertarian politics just happen to be the best solution. I don't see any moral imperative behind them. As far as morality goes, I try to be religious and I like Kant.
One can support capitalism for purely utilitarian reasons, but if you look closer you can certainly see moral support as well. Markets are inherently vountary and non-violent - buyer and seller peacefully and voluntarily exchanging goods and both benefitting from it. And the vast majority of the time this exchange is friendly, or at least cordial, which is another part of the beauty of it. And then even when one expands to a larger view society as a whole benefits from the exchange and the profits made. (Of course this depends on a society and markets as free from coercion and fraud as possible, but this is why that is a core libertarian value.)
What would Rand have thought about someone like Mother Teresa, for example? Probably disdain and contempt. Yet I think hers was a noble life.
Ah yes - libertarians and Randians, as believers in laissez faire capitalism, all yearn to have a sweatshop in their basement. And they don't even like music, they prefer to listen to recordings of the cries of anguished workers being exploited by capitalist slave masters....
I haven't read Rand yet, but from what I know about Mother Teresa she does not conflict with libertarianism. Libertarians have no problem with charity and volunteerism, and in most cases appreciate, respect, and applaud it, as long as those engaging in it are doing it with their own time and money or time and money freely given to them. When you take other people's time or money through fraud or coercion it is not charity, it is theft. I don't know of Mother Teresa taking money from people unwillingly or knowingly accepting stolen property as a "donation", so she likely would not conflict with libertarianism, or from what I know of Randism.
It is generally accepted that most individual human conduct (including that classified as social and economic) is "motivated" by internal and external stimuli (or "causes) in active and reactive responses.
R. Richard Schweitzer
s24rrs@aol.com
I don't know about that, but Randians certainly seem to prefer inartful sententiousness to literature.
Look at Zimbabwe today. What is Mugabe thinking of? He never intended for the economy to collapse. There is an easy analysis in terms of policy errors that explains the collapse of the economy, but it is unsatisfying precisely because it is so easy. Surely leaders ruin their countries by making subtle errors, not stupid ones.
So one looks to psychology. What darker self-deceptions and denials let a man become what Rand calls a "looter" without ever quite seeing the fate that lies in front of his face? Rand attempts to describe the psychology of the looters based on her real life experience.
She also fashions a philosophy in opposition to looting. but there is no John Galt at work in Zimbabwe. If her novel is more than entertainment we should be asking if her villains are true to life. Perhaps her philosophy serves as an innoculation against or antidote to the psychology of the looters. Perhaps it doesn't. If she has succeeded in nailing the psychology of the looters that is enough to make her reputation.
No, as Stuart M. correctly observes, Rand flagrantly violates the "show, don't tell" principle. She tells us the "correct" way to define her characters and she tells us the framing to "correctly" make sense of their actions instead of showing us the subtleties and interactions of characters, settings, actions, reactions, etc. that allow us form our own always incomplete but far more interesting understanding of the people being written about. That is why Rand's work is horribly failed literature, even if it may retain some utility as personal goad or political cudgel.
From James Joyce's Ulysses:
“He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation.
The visible signs of postsatisfaction?
A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a solicitous aversion: a proximate erection.”
From Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged:
“She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.”
The good news is that the future of American culture will be settled less by the people here and more by the hundreds of thousands of people who buy Atlas Shrugged on a yearly basis, which is why I'm willing to trust the first 100 names in the phonebook for political wisdom than I'm willing to trust the literature faculty at Yale.
As for the first 100 phonebook names and political wisdom, that doesn't address the question of literary merit. There are numerous examples of influential political writings that are also examples of horrible literature. Thankfully, most of their authors did not adopt the pretense that they were writing novels.
Given the fact that you seem to be coming unhinged, I'd say I've hit the bulls eye. I think I could do this all day.
I did not feel that way about The Fountainhead, and in fact struggled to get through it. I haven't read Anthem yet, and We the Living has been sitting half-read on my bedside table for over six months now.
Not only was it well-written, but its message was incredibly powerful. I can't say it changed things for me, as I was an Objectivist before I knew what the term meant, but it certainly articulated many of my as-yet-unarticulated feelings. This passage in particular immediately stopped my EVER procrastinating on a work project again:
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?"
Has anyone visited Ouray, Colorado, which was said to have inspired Galt's Gulch? I want to spend a few days there within the next year or so, for curiosity's sake.
Perhaps you don't care what the New York Times book reviewer's appraisal of The Fountainhead was -- because you prize your own literary knowledge and judgement higher than a mere New York Times book reviewer. OK. But understand that people will probably pay more attention to the words of a New York Times book reviewer than to your opinion, no matter how many non-New York Times book reviewers hoist a sneer at the literary merit of Ayn Rand's writing to chorus your opinion. Ain't the argument from authority a bitch?
As for the rest, piff.
Whenever someone repeats the well-refuted "Big Lie" that there exists a "body of criticism" on Rand's philosophy, I always insist on specifics. The late Robert Nozick, Harvard professor of philosophy, was just one of those "experts" who was ripped to shreds (in academic journals) for simply getting what Rand said wrong. These "critics" are usually also in the dark about the growing and impressive secondary literature (in some of the best scholarly journals) rigorously explicating Rand's ideas, and that this literature has yet to receive a response which is both serious and accurate.
In short, there has yet to be a critic of Rand's philosophy who can claim to have also accurately described it.
The same is invariably true for the claim that Rand wasn't a good writer. These critics are never able to give an accurate analysis of the plot, let alone anything else in the book. As high school book reports, these "critiques" would earn straight "F's." Such critics invariably seem to have blinded themselves to the subtle and powerful technique, something else that. at last, is starting to receive some of the attention - and understanding - it deserves.
So, the attack always degenerates into the sort that we see here - an ad hominem vacuum of substance. Rand's fans, it seems, don't even like music. Of course, wasn't one of Rand's fictional heroes a composer? (See what careful readers they are?)
Wrong. Both Wright's opinion of Rand and Rand's opinion of Wright changed greatly after their falling out.
The evidence from her letters and journals is clear, Rand never changed her opinion of Wright one little bit.
Wright's exalted opinion of Rand and her work is well-known, and it is something that has gone unchallenged by his biographers.
First things first, though: what evidence of a "falling out" do you possess? That Rand could not afford the home he designed for her was not the occasion of any reported rancor to my knowledge.
Unless, of course, you have some new evidence?
Heh. Why is it obvious? I guess I'm just not smart or something, cause Joyce seems like the opposite of literature to me. While Rand's writing style is not my favorite (it reads to me like bad writing) her ideas are powerful and she has transformed many minds. To me that is good literature.
In a sense this is true, in that Hayek (and Mises) really got the core of the economics of the problem in a scientific methodical way, while Rand did not-- but that is because she wasn't not an economist, she wrote as a writer and a moral philosopher. But, she also did get to some of the core economic problems in a way everyone can understand, which is invaluable. And clearly she did drop a bomb because she has been a major influence-- often THE major influence in a lot of people's thinking.
Anti-Hero: any number of prominent businesspeople who do use politicians as weapons against their rivals; many or even most politicians; all the socialist leaders remaining and up-and-coming like in South America; etc etc.
* Wal-Mart today does do some lobbying and politiking, such as for a minimum wage, to hurt their competition, however that is after Sam Walton I think. I am under the (perhaps false) impression that he didn't use those tactics. I could be wrong.
But, in any case, I think its pretty easy to know what characteristics make up her hero and which her anti-hero. The fact that its so damn easy to find anti-heroes and so hard to find pure heroes is pretty sad. But there are at least contenders in America.
Rand disagreed with Wright on some things -- such as the cult-like atmosphere of the school, tellingly -- but I've never heard of any falling out between them that resulted in an end to their friendship, and certainly not to any reappraisal of The Fountainhead by Wright. He referred to her thesis in that book as "The Great One" and remarked that she would probably be burned as a witch for writing it. And, of course, he wanted to do the architectural designs for the film.
If that works for you, great. Some of my best friends are religious, too.
I have to disagree with that. I maintain that Roy Childs was right about the disconnect between her ethics and politics, despite the fact that he recanted that position shortly before he died.
"So, the attack always degenerates into the sort that we see here - an ad hominem vacuum of substance. Rand's fans, it seems, don't even like music. Of course, wasn't one of Rand's fictional heroes a composer?"
Yes. That's Richard Halley.
At page 643 of her "Letters", you can find a nice note of appreciation that she wrote to Duane Eddy in 1967.
Despite the length of some of her work, Rand is also the tightest fiction writer you will ever read.
He's a good example of what I mean: he never grasped Rand's critique of anarchism, or her conception of an ethical government, in the first place.
its almost not worth responding, because I have to think that you know that what you said is full-of-crap and you just resent her or something, but I will take it at face value and respond.
If those things she's "repackaged" (isn't almost everything just repackaging?) are so obvious, then why is she so controversial? And why do so many people say that she influenced them so much? According to Publisher's weekly "Atlas Shrugged is the "second most influential book for Americans today" after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club"
O.K. you win, its all horny high school kids, like Alan Greenspan, Frank Lloyd Wright, etc.
Wrong again.
Most people don't expect each word to be that important, don't look for it, are more used to words just sort of washing over them as in Joyce or less extreme examples, and so are totally mystified by why some people think Rand's work is so amazing. It's not about this excerpt or that excerpt. The arcs are much bigger, the interactions precise, and the word-use exact and tied in to the entire context of what is being said over a vast and complete worldview. If you want to appreciate Rand's fiction, you have to know and look for that, (and not resent having to).
So it's clearly not for everyone, but I've found, invariably, that people who don't like her books and call her an inferior writer have no clue what she is doing literarily, no idea how she is doing it or even that she is doing it. It's like hearing somebody say they hate chocolate ice cream because it's hard to wash out of their hair.
I'm still waiting for a critic of hers who actually understands what her style accomplishes and how precisely it does so AND still rejects it as "self-published" "bad writing." The same goes for her philosophy, as Carol notes above. The more people learn about it, the less they disagree with it, the more they like it. ;)