Personally I love reading novels of worlds that have no basis in reality. I also love authors that repeat themselves over and over because I have memory issues and can’t remember the last sentence I’ve read.
Oh, and I also love reading novels of worlds that have no basis in reality.
I struggle to see how anyone could have written the Turner Diaries and not have either been trolling or gotten some serious “Are we the baddies?” Energy in the process…
Yeah, honestly, I don’t mind reading novels that argue points I disagree with, but the repetitiveness is unbelievable. One of the reasons John Galt’s 60 page speech is so tedious is that all of the points he makes in it had already been made two or three times before by other characters.
I don’t know. She sucks you in with the atrocious writing and two dimensional characters who are all just stand-ins for an opinionated author, but she really seals the deal with the fetishization of rape culture and how it inexorably ties in with hyper-capitalist American culture. It’s really the whole package.
I can’t defend any of that, and I’m ashamed to say, that crap worked on me for a bit as a man barely a boy, in the 90s. What helped me was looking at other movements like scientology and Charles Manson.
Just trying to say, don’t throw someone in the trash just because they read trash.
Fountainhead worked on me a bit. I still think integrity and innovation are important, but I bet I would have gotten that way even if I hadn’t read it.
I don’t make weapons, I don’t work for Twatter or Faceboot, I do make an effort to keep refining and upgrading designs instead of endlessly recycling the old, I do pull out dead useless code. I don’t win every battle and I don’t even fight every battle. And very generally speaking I do think if you do work you are proud of you will be happier.
At the same time you should not assume you are the smartest person and if everyone is doing X you need to at least consider that they are on to something.
See? You don’t need a 400 page novel. A paragraph works.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
The amount of people with both the patience to read it and the inability to tell that it is describing a fantasy land with magic and wizards is worrying.
I have to be in the minority of sane people who enjoyed this book.
To be fair, I had no context and read the first 10 pages assuming it was satire. The rest of the experience was bizarre. In the first chapter the main character ignores the advice of the train employees and orders the train to run despite the signal being red. It’s touted as taking responsibility when none else would. Utterly insane to me that someone who had been out of the area for decades, making management level decisions, would decide they know better than the worker on the ground who does the job daily. The contempt and arrogance leading to destruction - a great critique of management structure and survivor bias. How is it not satire?
Through the looking glass with a self important free capitalist narcissist, with almost no experience of the world and commerce outside their bubble, self hating tirade against perceived inability. Fascinating stuff
I read ‘The Fountainhead.’ It was enjoyable the same way a book about talking bears who fly magical ponies would be fun, a fantasy not connected to actual human life.
There’s at least a grain of truth in that book. Try starting a business or producing something.
Look at domestic attempts to mine lithium or building semiconductor plants. Try building anything here.
“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you. . . you may know that your society is doomed.”
I’ve read all of Rand and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But not for the right reasons.
Coming from a background myself of community art > touring performance artist > clown/circus school > comedy and improv… I found things like “I’ma write a book where a character delivers a speech on capitalism longer than the communist manifesto” to be quite funny.
The way people spoke to each other, the ridiculous melodrama from the perspective of a soy bean stuck on a train, a community made from pure gold inside a hologram inside a volcano, how people can only have sex if they bite each other, the amazing lazzi (sketch) of the rich man accidentally giving a homeless man $100 bill instead of $1 and the homeless man not caring because it was an accident, the guy putting out a steel furnace in meltdown while naked with his bare hands…
I thought it was very funny. I chortled all the way through. a perfect 7/10.
The premise that some people are just better than everyone else is not intelligent. Valuing a person’s worth as a human by measuring their productivity is genocidal.
Some people are just better in terms of being productive. I don’t see how that’s debatable. The question is just if you let those people keep they’re outsized earnings or you forcibly redistribute them.
Productivity is difficult to measure or define. Intelligence is similar. Regardless, neither of these things define value in a human life. Some people love to cook, some are great at reading comic books. One might be really good at watching TV. In the end, your preference for what is seen as valuable comes to your preference. There’s nothing objective about it. More concretely, in many engineering jobs great engineers are promoted into management positions for which they are ill suited. They make more money, are they not definitionally more productive? Yet the company and team is worse off.
As for your question, Rand is not subtle about her thoughts.
Valuing a person’s worth as a human by measuring their productivity is genocidal.
Of course you don’t value people based on their productivity! That’s downright anti-American “from each according to his ability” commie talk! You value people based on their net worth! One Dollar, One Vote, that’s what I always say.
What parts of her philosophy do you find to be lunacy?
“A man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions… He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer–because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.”
Almost forgot:
“In this world, either you’re virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.”
The same can be said about basically anything, that’s why you have a brain to evaluate what parts are grounded in the truth and what is a conclusion drawn from truth that serves the specific needs of whoever is spinning the narrative.
Eniment domain doesn’t appear to be the problem here lmao
It’s more like
Try making a railroad when the industry has been captured by regulations written by the big players whose purpose is to erect barriers to entry for any new railroad companies that might want to start up, and reduce costs by reducing safety. Also, you need angel investors to give you billions and anyone with the means to do that is already in bed with the big boys so they’re not going to give you shit.
It is abundantly clear that we’re not talking about the details of the book anymore. We are talking about that one passage and how it relates to our current society.
The protagonist being in a privileged position due to government seisuze of private property is certainly an excellent point. I just feel the state exercising power in the other direction, against productive ventures instead of property owners, may be a little too in vogue these days.
Yes the world would be a better place if people looking to profit in the world didn’t have to ensure that their products were safe, regulated, and taxed appropriately. Business owners should just be able to make their own rules.
Nah man I’d say that shit it stupid too. It’s difficult to build a lithium mine in the United States for pretty good reasons, especially surrounding regulation and safety.
Like most things it’s balance … No one wants the ecological damage of the 60s again. I’d say the vast majority of the things people are buying are imported from less regulated markets… Lead in the kids toys am I right? If things are produced here at least you can take those companies to court when they do harm.
Good reasons being ? I’ve seen projects cancelled due to a few arrow heads and tool parts being found … Massive overruns due to turtle eggs. Private companies just don’t build here if they can avoid it. Building and producing things is never perfectly safe and will always cause some ecological damage. The things we consume are actually built overseas in the most destructive and unregulated way possible mostly … Are they not?
It’s cheaper to mine lithium in other countries because the labor is cheaper, the labor is cheaper because we live in a country with a more advanced economy, that same economy became more advanced under more stringent regulations. Who gives a shit if they don’t mine lithium here when we designed the machines that mine lithium all over the world. There’s a reason people are beating down the doors to come here.
It seems to me this passage speaks against the bankers, intellectual property owners, monopolists, land owners and the like. All gate keepers of resources.
Perhaps Atlas is actually someone else than Rand thought.
It speaks against a system where political favour dictates your success as a producer over your ability to compete. If you feel land owners and intellectual property owners are gate keepers in a society where your can have your own ideas and buy your own property I don’t know what to say.
The permits, policies, regulation and political apparatuses which Rand so despises are legal fictions which allow a small group of people control, who gets to use what resources and how.
Currencies, fractional reserve banking, patents and land ownership are similar legal fiction, which allow a small group to control who gets to use what resources and how.
If I want to sell razor blades to a Gillette razor, I will get sued for patent infringement. Is their gatekeepping somehow more morally valid than the politician’s who gives a tax break to Gillette’s competitor since their production line is in his city?
I was trying to humorously point out, that the quoted part of Rand’s text could be read almost as a socialist opinion, where the value created arises from the worker and not the owners.
I guess the difference being the people in control of permits and policies produce nothing of value. If a capitalist fails to produce he no longer holds the property or patents. Someone else gets them to try to compete.
The reason capitalism is moral is that the people who get the scarce resources need to be effective in providing for everyone else by creating or they lose them. Under a central planning system this is not the case. Scarce resources are held by connected people … The state bails them out if they really fuck up.
Nothing is stopping you from creating an improved Gillette razor and competing without blatenly copying their patent… Property is expensive but available (problem created by government with interest rate manipulation and making land one of the only viable hard assets) you can hire people for your factory. They’ll cost 10x what they do overseas though… So you’d probably just go there.
Man you won’t find me defending fractional reserve banking or fiat currency. Those are also things created by politicians and bankers. They’re just means of stealing value. You also can’t have socialism without fiat currency. The myth that you can rob the 1% to pay for the needs of everyone… Well do the math … Liquidate the 10 richest people and it funds the state for maybe a month or something.
Ah I didn’t get the joke I guess lol. I’m not really much of a fan of socialism. If companies can’t build without permits and tax breaks then you dont really have a level playing field anymore and you no longer have functional creative destruction. Old inefficient well connected incombants strangle the new razor corp in the crib and you’re stuck paying 35 dollars for blades :)
It’s a dump truck full of truthful sand. Cities can’t build municipal fiber internet because Spectrum owns the fucking pole. The assertion that this is an “environmental protection” is so insulting that my comment would be deleted if I told you what I really think about you.
Some environmental impact is unavoidable. I think people are maybe a bit more aware and if I knew a company was being unnecessarily wreckless I’d personally not give them a dime. Also this is what lawsuits are for. These companies should be sued into nonexistence.
Why are domestic companies forced to compete on an uneven playing field like that? Why are companies able to just go abroad and import at very favourable rates. That’s profoundly unfair … But have you thought about what would happen to the cost of goods if there was an equal playing field? All the worst things are still done they just happen elsewhere.
I work in municipal development. You want to open a new business, build a house, or develop land in my city, you need my signature to do it.
I’m one of those officious pricks. I’m “the man” holding people down.
Because if I don’t then all these rich fucks pave over everything, flood their neighbor’s land, block traffic, poison their customers, and sell houses that’ll collapse 10 minutes after The warranty expires.
So yeah, people have to get our permission to do things that affect the community.
Where I live approval on average takes a year or more. Permits alone can cost like 50k for a house. All of those things you’ve mentioned would result in court cases and awards …
Honestly even residential houses that are to code are sort of trash aren’t they? Like laminated wood chips and saw dust more and more every year.
How many other approvals are required above you to build? How long and at what cost ? Mostly curious. Here its pretty bad IMO. Here being Canada.
All of those things you’ve mentioned would result in court cases and awards …
For one, not necessarily, and two, small comfort if it happens after the fact when it could be avoided with some reasonable oversight. For example, screwing up erosion is something likely to be overlooked by parties involved and is at high risk of not being noticed naturally until after damage is difficult or impossible to undo. Besides, I think folks like it when matters like that are settled before they might incur liability.
Another example, I had some HVAC work done. The county inspectors highlighted a fire hazard after they were done, that I never would have realized unless the house caught fire.
Now where I live, permits aren’t overly expensive and are fairly expedient as are inspections. I can understand frustrations if there’s no effort at reasonable efficiencies, but then again some projects require community fair chance to become aware and provide feedback, and those sorts of projects can really drag out the time since it’s mostly waiting to give a chance for it to be noticed.
Like you say avoiding liability is in everyone’s interest. In a utopian libertarian society maybe an inspector someone you’d want to pay electively like an engineer.
Someone who could coordinate consultations with surrounding properties and engage others who are experts with say surface water etc.
The other option might be your insurance company would require inspection for you to receive coverage… In the event of say an HVAC electrical fire. Then the cost is certifying the build is covered by a private company instead of being a state operated service which is free from the pressures of competition. Also then delays in permitting could also incur liability :)
In reality if permitting is quick, affordable and isn’t weilded like a political weapon Im mostly fine with it. The federal government is using it to pretty much shut down oil and gas development in Canada. Municipal permitting is partly why we have a massive housing crisis.
Houses are largely built by shell companies that exist to build the neighborhood then dissolve. When the house fails in 5 years there’s nobody to sue for damages.
So instead we require developers to permit and build shit right before we allow the houses to be occupied. The streets have to be built right, the increased impervious cover has to be accounted for to prevent flooding of the next property over, and inspections have to be performed.
Then, we make them pay a maintenance bond and the City takes over maintenance of the road, using the bond to pay for repairs in the first 10 years. If they build them right, the bonds don’t get used, and we give the money back.
But to get the money back they have to keep the company alive, so there’s someone to sue.
And the permit to build a house is about $3,500 here. I ran the numbers for our budget cycle, and we actually lose money on single family houses. We make it up some with commercial buildings, but overall our department loses money, and people building houses are being subsidized by the existing tax payers while bitching about the fees.
Because if I don’t then all these rich fucks pave over everything, flood their neighbor’s land, block traffic, poison their customers, and sell houses that’ll collapse 10 minutes after The warranty expires.
That already happened and continues to happen. Because corporations bribe the government to allow it. They call it lobbying. And you know this. The feigned ignorance is comical. Why do ISPs own the rights to public telephone poles and prevent municipal internet? Because people like you gave the ISPs those rights.
There’s a huge difference between a politician and a municipal employee. Our planners and engineers don’t take lobbying money, and our engineering criteria and building codes are based on physical reality, not policy.
In our city and many others, Council cannot force us to allow a particular development. They can sign all the agreements they want to waive use restrictions and fees, but the engineer and building official are still the final authority on whether or not something can be built, and their reviews do not consider politics.
I am an engineer. I love making things. I work in a heavily regulated industry (Med device), and it is a huge pain in the ass. I have to fill out obscene amounts of paperwork for everything I do. I live in the woods with a well and a septic system. I am hoping to disconnect from the electric grid in a few years.
I bought into rugged individualism when I was younger, but I have come to realize it is a farce. I am really glad there is the structure and oversight for these things that can harm people. Complex systems require diverse areas of expertise and multiple layers of oversight and protection.
The sentiment that it is some great burden to “obtain permission from men who do nothing” is a blatant strawman for what the processes actually are.
I’m the person who basically never throws a book away (I did once, but I bought a replacement after the old version literally broke apart in several places). But I would light a chimney with “Atlas shrugged”, if only to prevent it from falling in gullible hands.
Our high school literature teacher gave the class each a copy of Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead as a graduation gift. This was before I knew anything about these books, but once I figured it out it explained a lot about her. Nice for the most part, overdramatic and cheap at times, mostly just went to work or the casino, and smoked like a chimney.
Never read those books though I might still have them somewhere, I’m bad at throwing out gifts.
100% 👍👍👍 the BBC did a great docu-series on Raynd. If you’re wondering what it is that you can’t quite put your finger on about her work, it’s that she’s utterly miserable. A person whose geat intellect can’t even make them joyful is a person whose intellect has turned against them.
In addition to her just being a miserable person, her actual composition is just awful. The following quote is a sentence:
“Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live–that productive work is the process by which man’s consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one’s purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one’s values–that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others–that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human–that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind’s full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay–that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live–that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road–that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up–that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only traveller you choose to share your journey and must be traveller going on their own power in the same direction.”
Started reading Atlas a couple of months ago and put it aside after a third or so. I am used to reading “conventionally boring” stuff but this was such a slog. Super sterile, the characters are stereotypical, the message Rand wants to bring across seems awfully clear very early on. It may be the historical context that makes it more interesting, I didn’t see it, though. Just couldn’t do it.
Reading your comments on this thread is a relief, maybe there is nothing wrong with me after all.
Just wait till you get to the last third, where the ideas that weren’t subtly telegraphed in the first two thirds will be even less subtly shouted in a hundred page long speach.
I’m the guy from above who said I liked the “quantity over quality” she had because it let me get lost. Even I skipped “the speech” lmfao. It just repeats the shitty, not subtle, ideas that have been repeated 100x by that point, and even within itself it repeats the same damn thing over and over and over.
I can see it being a nifty writing technique to basically have an academic paper micro-version of the whole work diogenically within your philosophy tilted book, but the problem is if that was the intent, it’s a paper that no one would publish because it sucks.
I was lucky enough to read it young before I knew it was “a thing”.
I loved the stream punky Sci fi stuff (yes I loved bioschock when it came out).
I enjoyed the rugged individualism stuff, but like, in the same way I enjoy James Bond committing extra judicial killings, Indiana Jones, cheesy ghost movies , or Hell in a Cell.
I was really confused when I found out it’s got a cult. I just enjoyed my nifty train story.
The writing is dry, voluminous but not really good. I personally enjoyed getting lost in that much volume, but that’s not going to be everyone. The philosophy stuff isn’t bad or wrong within it’s own universe, it’s just not really applicable to real life. Basing a world view on it is like reading/watching the silo series and thinking that’s how you should live in present day, rules about going outside and all. The conclusion isn’t totally wrong, but the premise its valid under is so narrow it’s useless, and that’s how it got it’s cult.
Yeah I don’t know, I remember something about extra super steel in the beginning, where it was kind of like “assertive entrepreneur makes eggheads do the impossible”. That is just not how anything in engineering works at all. Was kind of a turn-off for me also.
But I am glad that this stuff made it into a cool train story for you. I like your sentiment.
Haha thanks. There were parts I enjoyed and I don’t get a chance to talk about them much without people thinking I’m crazy, or worse, in the cult.
Re: The super engineer. I also was lucky there that I read it before my technical education, now it would probably bug me. Still, the escapism of being the superman “I CAN do it all!” can be fun, but it is just that: escapist fantasy. Problems arise when people forget that.
Read it when young as well, though I was luckily enough to read a quick bio of her. Escaped Communism, worked in Hollywood.
Felt that this was more a rant about trying to be passionate when stuck in a system, be it the horrible Communist system, or an uncaring bureaucratic one.
Right, like that’s definitely a read of it. That’s kind of what I was getting it in that the philosophy makes sense in the world she created, it just doesn’t have all that much in common with the real world.
That take makes sense, but it’s definitely not what the author intended. She very much wanted it to be applied to modern times. Whether or not you can separate the authors intent from the book itself involves some “death of the author” type conversations that, despite knowing some $5 lit terms, I’m not super versed in. Even then, I think the energy is better spent on more interesting examples, like how “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” kind of changed significance over time.
I’m close with a family that lived through the collapse of the USSR. Based on what I’ve heard alone, Rand’s reaction is really understandable in my opinion. It doesn’t make it correct, but I do get the reaction.
No no…at least get to the rapey bit…then you can solidify your hatred of that wretched wind bag in granite…its just before the speech that takes like 100 pages.
Eh, it wasn’t bad as a revenge fantasy. You might like it if you enjoy thinking about how all the people who don’t appreciate you would be screwed if you just left. The political philosophy being proposed won’t be too offensive if you already lean libertarian.
My main objection to the book (other than the infamous speech, which I admit I couldn’t read all the way through) is that it’s a sort of morality play with with exaggerated good and bad and no shades of gray, but it keeps denying this and insisting that the real world really is that black and white. The reader ought to take it with more than a little pinch of salt.
Oh, and that Ayn Rand’s self-insert has a BDSM fetish I really would have preferred not to know about. (Why do authors keep inserting their kinks into books? I’m looking at you, Robert Jordan. And especially at you, Piers Anthony.)
You might like it if you enjoy thinking about how all the people who don’t appreciate you would be screwed if you just left.
I see you have read my dream journal.
You really can’t win. If you people are dependent on you it means more work if/when you take time off. If people don’t need you, they don’t need you and this world is just that colder.
My main objection i similar to our but broader in scope. None of the main characters feel like real people. They are Platonic Ideals of Ayn Rand’s fantasy lifestyle, full stop
That always annoys the shit out of me when not one well. It can be done well, but it takes a significantly better author.
I think author-kinks are a bit misrepresented (especially with Jordan, who I read more as commentary on power dynamics) but the point is not invalid at all.
None of the main characters feel like real people.
Apparently she did that on purpose. From Wikipedia:
She wanted her fiction to present the world “as it could be and should be”, rather than as it was. This approach led her to create highly stylized situations and characters.
I consider that to be a wishful revisionism on her part. The truth is shes just a bad writer.
The charactors in her first book “Anthem” are exactly as wooden and fake as the charactors in “Atlas shrugged.” She never developed any finesse or depth because real people aren’t as shallow as the imaginary people she dreamt about.
Ugh, Piers Anthony. I remember absolutely LOVING Piers Anthony’s books as a kid; I went back a while back to reread them as an adult (and read the ones I hadn’t read before) and good god, but I could not do it. Even beyond the terrible puns (not as fun when you’re not like ten years old) and the really regressive ideas of gender roles, after the third book with a young teen girl seducing a virtuous middle-aged man because he was the only one who truly loved her, I was just staring at my old books in horror.
(A few years back someone linked me to his Hi Piers newsletter, which moved to the Internet a while back. I got as far as seeing him talking about the sexual attractiveness of girls at menarche - their first period, which can be as young as 9 - and I had to stop because of the full-body shudders.)
What the heck, really? I just remember him always mentioning it in his author’s notes at the end of his books (and for a while there I think there was also a 1-800-HI-PIERS phone number or something?). I remember as a kid wanting to subscribe to the newsletter, but I’m glad in retrospect I didn’t, yikes.
Really. It was bizarre to me as a non-fan that an author would go to that length. And yes, the 800-number was featured. I tried to find it on YouTube, but it appears to have gone down the memory hole. I think he only advertised on cable, but it still couldn’t have been cheap. Did that really translate into money for him?
EDIT: Also, it was just him sitting in a chair, talking. No fantasy scenes or even artwork.
Since everyone else is talking about Ayn, let me tell you about Dorothy Parker.
You know that movie, “A Star Is Born?” She wrote the original version. She was a famous writer, known for her devastating insults. She was also an early Anti-Fascist and supporter of Martin Luther King, JR.
Totally underappreciated and far more deserving of fame than Ms. Rand.
Also famously an early lgbt ally. Before the term gay existed in the 20s and 30s the polite way of asking if a man was homosexual was if they were a friend of Dorothy.
I still cannot believe a novel this terrible inspired a successful movement that was thoroughly endorsed by presidents.
If I had a time machine I would go back in time and publish it, but make sure that it only had a limited release. Never got super big just big enough so that some people had heard of it, and then I would sue Ayn Rand when she published her version. Win easily and announce that I wrote it as a parody, mocking people who think that being overly self reliant and rejecting community is a good way to live, for they are like house cats… overly dependent on others yet thoroughly convinced of their own independence. “As Ms. Rand demonstrated by stealing my book and claiming it as her own.”
Then I’d put a time capsule with the fucking source code to Bioshock 1, 2, and Infinite somewhere to preserve those games in the timeline.
Win easily and announce that I wrote it as a parody, mocking people
Then watch it backfire horribly. Conservatives (including those who call themselves libertarian) are blind to satire. You might remember that the_donald was satirical at the start. So was the game Monopoly.
In 1955 the society told everyone don’t do shit to change anything. It was a time of restraint and repression.
In 2005 society was in a revolutionary mode and told everyone to question and disrupt everything.
So to tell people to challenge what was allowed in 1955 actulally was a good and vital thing to change society. In 2005 challenging what was allowed was mostly done for personal gain, exploiting the system.
If you’re talking about the Bible. Religious texts typically require historians and theologians to figure out the meaning of… lots of hard to understand passages requiring a context not easily understood in the modern age.
It’s not like Ayn Rand which was an incomprehensible mess from its inception.
Really elaborate plan that will probably end up failing because the book, and its author, only got big because it gave greedy bastards an excuse to be so unashamedly greedy. If not this trash then another work of trash.
Not only that, but satanism, and I don’t mean edgy atheists pretending to worship the devil in order to troll right leaning judges, but actual honest-to-Dog satanists, actually cite Ayn Rand is a major source of inspiration, and someone to look up to in terms of how to be a good person.
No I know that the satanists who Worship in the way that I’m speaking, Anton LaVey and his alike do not literally worship satan. But they are still very evil people who do terrible things.
I mean their book literally says that it is foolish for one to give up the world, only to gain their own soul. Lot of very strong, “Are we the baddies?” Energy
Back when I was in junior high in the early 1980s, I found a copy of Atlas Shrugged on my father's bookshelf, and started reading it. I can't remember how far I got into it, but I do remember thinking it was just awful in just about every way: story, writing, pacing, everything.
I asked Dad about it, "Oh, that. It's terrible, isn't it?" A friend had given it to him. Neither one of us finished reading it and after that it ended up at a book reseller.
On the plus side, he'd gone through his books and gave me James Clavell's Shogun to read, which was an awesome novel.
The only other book I struggled with was Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The travel-log sections were entertaining, and the relationship with his son was interesting, but the discussions on the nature of quality were completely lost on me.
I did get through Zen on the second attempt because I thought it was worth it. I saw no value in Atlas Shrugged at all.
I like to fall asleep listening to audiobooks, except they have to be kinda dull otherwise I get actually invested. You may have just picked my next one!
I hate to break it to you, but the characters in Atlas Shrugged are famously one-dimensional. They’re terrible caricatures who are 100% good or bad. They never develop or learn anything new about themselves.
It’s obvious who’s good and bad from page 1, which makes the massive length even more ridiculous. It could have been a pamphlet that said “money good, helping people bad”.
The best possible book review is just a recycled quote from Billy Madison:
“what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
That’s how I ingested it. I did it on work related cross country drives at 1.3x speed. It was… underwhelming and made me ask “What the hell is this?” and “She can’t seriously see the world like this, right?” many, many times.
Was your father an English teacher? That’s how I ended up reading those books around that age. Add some Hesse and the Gulag Archipelago and we may be related.
Dad had an interesting career. Started as an office clerk for a railway with only high school education. Then he got into using an IBM 650 (IIRC) for doing freight rate calculations. How he managed that transition, I have no idea. He didn't care for being cooped up all day flipping switches, dealing with punch cards and tapes.
He switched to marketing and got on there very well and retired after 37 years as a regional director.
He always has a book on the go, even now at 83. He has an eclectic pile of them that he kept, from Zane Grey to an early history of the Civil War written around 1870.
Shogun is a good one. My favourite book for a long time, and it currently sits on my bedside table for a second read. I’m just amazed that you mentioned it.
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