January 12, 2009
From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years
Sadly, this will make a new generation read this intellectual tripe:
Many of us who know Rand’s work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that “Atlas Shrugged” parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.
Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated “Atlas” as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.
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Hey, Deron, wasn’t Ayn Rand your litmus test for a date (if she read Ayn Rand, no thanks)?
yep. I was just going to remind everybody.
I think it is one of the few things Deron and I unequivocally agree on.
I would think we have a lot in common actually, in terms of core principles, the difference being perhaps the frameworks that allow us to translate those core principles into interaction with the world. I’m just riffing here. But fuck Ayn Rand.
Truth be told, I suspect you’re right on the most fundamentally level.
Oh, and I think I’ll leave the Ayn Rand fucking to Nathan Blumenthal, if that is okay with you.
touche.
From my perspective, the key point about Ayn Rand is that not only is it intellectually, historically and philosophically unsound, it’s also so poorly fucking written.
In an Anglo-Australian context, she has no currency whatsoever. So it never ceases to amaze me that she retains some influence anywhere at all.
So I guess I should take Atlas off my “to read” list? Is it that intellectually shallow?
I just was having that conversation with my father, Patrick. And I pretty much convinced him. My advice: go to a library or a book store and read the first thirty pages to see if what we say is true.
The writing alone will probably be enough to deter you. Although, I have read books which were far worse all the way through, so who knows?
Ditto all the negatives. Rand appeals to many young people right at that point in their lives when they most want to validate their own selfishness. They don’t like admitting that mom and dad have a lot to do with the comfort and opportunity they enjoy, and so, like Rand did, they quickly disavow the fact that they ever received or needed any help from anybody, being self -made and self-sufficient in every way–asking nothing of anybody but that they simply take responsibility for themselves. (And oh yeah, could you slip a little extra cash in with the laundry you wash and send back to me?). Everybody who admires Ayn Rand should read her biography. And if you aren’t laughing half-way through at the absurd distance between what she preached and how she lived–by all means, read all of her crap fiction.
[...] response to the Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Rand, Joseph Lawler offers us a better predictive narrative: Don’t hope [...]
Thank you. I came across the mentioned piece earlier this week and it made me very angry.
Without knowing it, Ayn Rand wrote for 12 year old boys.