Sales of Ayn Rand's magnum opus have gone through the roof since the start of this global recession. Her controversial objectivist vision and the fictional times she wrote about echo (mildly) the over-spending by western governments as we slip into deeper financial troubles today.
I recommend a brilliant and powerful work of fiction, even if you're a card-carrying socialist there is much to learn from Rand's very personal brand of libertarianism
Atlas Shrugged
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Re: Atlas Shrugged
I thought this was a Philosophy Forum, not the whinging of a novelist
Re: Atlas Shrugged
Whether or not you agree with her political, philosophical and economic ideas, Atlas Shrugged is a rattling good read. Ayn Rand is an excellent storyteller, except:
(a) Her characters in this book are rather transparently just tools to illustrate her ideas. The ones who agree with her ideas are all strong, handsome, admirable, sympathetic characters. The ones who disagree with her ideas are all stunted degenerates, cynical manipulators or deluded weaklings. For literature, you need a bit more nuance than this.
(b) From time to time, the book's well-paced action skids to an abrupt halt whenever Rand lets one of her characters deliver a ten-page speech on objectivist economic theory. I normally managed to get through only the first three or four pages of such speeches before skipping to the end.
(a) Her characters in this book are rather transparently just tools to illustrate her ideas. The ones who agree with her ideas are all strong, handsome, admirable, sympathetic characters. The ones who disagree with her ideas are all stunted degenerates, cynical manipulators or deluded weaklings. For literature, you need a bit more nuance than this.
(b) From time to time, the book's well-paced action skids to an abrupt halt whenever Rand lets one of her characters deliver a ten-page speech on objectivist economic theory. I normally managed to get through only the first three or four pages of such speeches before skipping to the end.
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Re: Atlas Shrugged
Once I'd read it, I thought it not fiction but a powerful philosophical polemic in a fictional format. At the time, a bit like a really early version of L. Ron's work
Not that I agreed but I could understand the power of her words, and agreed with part of the tone, as at the time I think I was reading something about the 'failure' of the British Industrialists by assimilating into the Aristocracy rather than surplanting them.
Not that I agreed but I could understand the power of her words, and agreed with part of the tone, as at the time I think I was reading something about the 'failure' of the British Industrialists by assimilating into the Aristocracy rather than surplanting them.
Re: Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand's assessment of things has always been too simple. That is what is appealing about what she says. It doesn't require a lot or thinking or preparation because it responds to the basics, something like fast food, which is superficially good but mostly ruinous.
Rick is right, for literature, and life, you need more nuancing than she offers. But that is what makes her work attractive to many, that it doesn't complicate things with nuance or requites much thinking.
Ayn Rand's work offers a counterbalance to a complicated world and to authority, which in the overall scheme of things is good. That's what makes her the pied piper she is.
She could be one of the philosophers who is responsible for global warming due to her philosophy of laissez faire and libertarianism.
Rick is right, for literature, and life, you need more nuancing than she offers. But that is what makes her work attractive to many, that it doesn't complicate things with nuance or requites much thinking.
Ayn Rand's work offers a counterbalance to a complicated world and to authority, which in the overall scheme of things is good. That's what makes her the pied piper she is.
She could be one of the philosophers who is responsible for global warming due to her philosophy of laissez faire and libertarianism.