Hello. First let me say that I'm new here (and I'm fairly new at posting messages in general). Please, be kind.
Anyway, I'm thinking about reading a work by Ayn Rand and, from what I've seen, it seems I'd enjoy 'Atlas Shrugged' the most. Would that be a good book to start with, or would anybody recommend starting with something else?
Nevermind.
Hi! It seems no one who has read Ayn Rand found your post. I've only read about half of The Fountainhead and stopped...it didn't really interest me, to say the least. That's all I've read by Ayn Rand. If you're still considering which book to read, I guess Atlas Shrugged would be as good a place as any to start.
Arnold Bros. (est. 1905) has spoken!
Why on earth would anyone want to read Ayn Rand? Ahck! Capitalism interlaced with crude Masculinism . . . makes me want to freakin' kill myself.Originally Posted by nome1486
I've tried reading The New Left but it just bores the hell outta me. And I'll usually struggle through anything.
I've heard alot of good thing about Atlas Shrugged though, so maybe it's worth the effort.
i've heard some good things about ayn rand, but more troubling are the criticisms i hear repeated over and over by her readers. flat, unrealistic characters slogging through bloated and pretentious prose are frequently heard criticisms of rand. i'm not sure if this is something you want to subject youself to willingly.
you should try kurt vonnegaut's short story "Harrison Bergeron".
http://penguinppc.org/~hollis/personal/bergeron.shtml
The only one of her books that I've read is We The Living, I enjoyed it, but I didn't immediately want to rush out and read more (unlike some other people I know). I didn't find it too much of an effort, but then I picked it up when I was completely mentally exhausted which might have made it easier. I think it's worth reading at least one of hers, but I can't really compare them to say which one . . .
I have read nearly all her novels. while foutainhead is perhaps the most popular..... i enjoyed reading most "Anthem". it is her least popular novel but, i believe, its her best
Ayn Rand is interesting, check out her philo called objectivism. Her books are well written, but get a little slow. She's great for quotes.
http://www.reason.com/0503/fe.cy.ayn.shtml
Perhaps Rand’s biggest error was the totalism of
her philosophy. Having rightly concluded that the
values of the free market were moral, she went on
to make the sweeping assertion that those values
were the only moral ones, and that all human
relations must be based on the principles of
“trade.” Yet there is nothing unreasonable and
nothing anti-market or anti-individualist to the
belief that individualistic and market-based values
need something to complement them.
The Victorians emphasized the importance of charity
and viewed family and community as “havens in a
heartless world.” This value system had its serious
drawbacks—from preachy sentimentalism to fairly
rigid gender roles, with women virtually excluded
from economic and intellectual endeavors and
relegated to the complementary sphere of love, care
giving, and charity. But at least the Victorians
recognized the need for a balance and variety of
virtues.
Politically, too, Rand’s insistence on
de-emphasizing, or even denigrating, family,
community, and private charity is not a
particularly clever tactic for capitalism’s
defenders. These are the very institutions that can
be expected, in the absence of a massive welfare
state, to meet those human needs that people prove
unable to satisfy through the market. Rand did
claim to be in favor of “benevolence,” in contrast
to altruism; but it would be fruitless to look for
providers of private charitable aid among her “good
guys,” except for those who lend a helping hand to
a friend. When charity is mentioned in Rand’s
fiction, it is nearly always in a negative context.
In The Fountainhead, the chorus of “second-handers”
eager to condemn her heroic, individualist
architect protagonist, Howard Roark, include “the
society woman dressing for a charity bazaar” who
uses charity as an excuse to flaunt her virtue; in
Atlas Shrugged, a club providing shelter to needy
young women is mocked for offering help to unworthy
sufferers such as drinkers, dope users, and unwed
mothers-to-be.
Family fares even worse in Rand’s universe. The
virtual absence of children in her work has been
noted by many critics, starting with Whittaker
Chambers in his infamous roasting of Atlas Shrugged
in National Review. Actually, John Galt’s private
utopia in Atlas features a nameless young woman who
makes it her career to raise rational children; but
this brief passage comes across as little more than
a pro forma nod to motherhood. In her 1964 Playboy
interview Rand flatly declared that it was
“immoral” to place family ties and friendship above
productive work; in her fiction, family life is
depicted as a stifling, soul-killing, mainly
feminine swamp.
It’s noteworthy that in The Fountainhead, the
heroes—Roark, newspaper magnate Gail Wynand, and
Roark’s troubled lover, Dominique Francon—have all
grown up motherless, while the arch-villain, critic
Ellsworth Toohey, spent his childhood as his
mother’s pet and the worthless Peter Keating, who
relies on Roark to do his architecture work, has a
grotesque caricature of a “selfless,” smothering,
tyrannical mother. The only Randian heroic couple
to actually reproduce is the hero of Anthem and his
girlfriend, who is pregnant at the end of the
dystopian science fiction novelette; but they have
the excuse of needing to breed a new race of free
men, since the world around them has regressed to
post-apocalyptic primitivism and slavery.
In its pure form, Rand’s philosophy would work very
well indeed if human beings were never helpless and
dependent through no fault of their own. Thus, it’s
hardly surprising that so many people become
infatuated with Objectivism as teenagers and “grow
out of it” later, when concerns of family,
children, and old age—their own and their
families’—make that fantasy seem more and more
impossible.
Rand's philosophy would work very well, if and only if society was composed of people who were capable of rigidly adhering to it - and not "rotters", as she would term them.
I agree 100% with the concept of intelligent self-interest being the only possible way to live. However, I disagree that this concept leads naturally to the system of laissez-faire capitalism that Rand espouses. The capitalist microcosm she described in Atlas Shrugged ("Galt's Gulch") is a pipe dream for many reasons, not the least of which is that it would only take one "rotter" to bring the system down. Rand blindly ignores the fact that a communal system would work just as well as a capitalist one if it were populated by folk who were as idealistic and high-moralled as those in Galt's Gulch.
"A good night's sleep is no substitute for caffeine."
Despite the posturing, psuedo bible thumping/'born-again' stature, and claimed deferrence to the moral right, I believe we are now encountering the opportunity to observe whether Rand's philosophical value of 'Pure' capitalism is valid by observing a country (which will go unnamed) currently attempting to promote this same approach to world affairs. Howard Roark, Gail Wynand, and Dominique Francon, Rand's capitalisticly 'moral' menagerie, would probably fit in to this experimental world (not so experimental for those of us living the dream) but as Rand has obviously never encountered a real human being, or has had little experience with the true nature of her own humanity, I have little doubt these three would fare well in today's capitalist expansion, but they would remain isolated, pocketed with a few of their own kind, and living less than the true human experience. Rand wants humans to be robots. They are not, nor can they ever be.
Didn't she die alone and bitter?
Do, or do not. There is no try. - Yoda
What's she like?
Been thinking about picking up a couple of her books since they got some newer large paperbacks (I think that's what they are called) for Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
As if my collection isn't growing larger and unread by the day, what do you guys think of her writing/style?
No man should die without first reading the world's greatest literature.
I, personally, have never read any work by Ayn Rand, but I have heard both good and not-so-good comments. You may, however, find this past thread helpful:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ead.php?t=3911
Happy reading!
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