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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 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.
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."
I just think it's fascinating that racists can write. Like, good for them.
"This book is a testament to how even the most stupid among us can write a fully fledged book with words, chapters, and everything." ~@tea
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.
Does he actually have a speech, that lasts 60 God damn pages?
Yes. And I really hope whoever shelled out cash to see the Atlas Shrugged 3 movie had to sit through every agonizing second of it on screen.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Parker
And one of the greatest wits of American history. She deserves to be up there with Twain.
If nothing else, she should be remembered for all time for coming up with the phrase "what fresh hell is this?"
Dorothy Parker was once asked to use the word horticulture in a sentence. “You can lead a horticulture,” she replied, “but you can't make her think.”
"Tell him I was too fucking busy-- or vice versa."
If nothing else, she should be remembered for all time for coming up with the phrase “what fresh hell is this?”
Well there you go, I know nothing else about her and she’s already my new favourite person.
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.
TIL. I always thought that only referred to the 'Wizard Of Oz.'
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.
Reading Atlas Shrugged is more like a hazing ritual conservatives inflict on each other.
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.
The damage that book has done to this world...
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.
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.
Ayn Rand did more than write a book, she actually started a movement and even had a fling with L. Ron Hubbard to learn how to properly cult...
She never believed in scientology and thought L. Ron was a great man for running such a successful con.
She also hated religion in general, for she saw it as a form of collective bargaining and hated it for encouraging people to not be selflish.
Rand was a monster
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.
I remember reading The Foundtainhead and, when I finished I realized what a lousy, shitty philosopher Ayn Rand was.
And that all my architect friends had terrible egos.
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.”
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
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 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.
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 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.
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.
That's how you trick the gullible, start with a bit of truth they can understand and then jump off the deep end into lunacy.
That's not a grain of truth...it's an environmental protection.
That's almost the most ironic Ayn Rand post you could make.
I mean, why SHOULDN'T I be able to expose people and the environment to harmful conditions in order to maximize profit?
I'm allowed to do that in other countries, and I can also pay those slaves in beans so that I can make even more money.
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.
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.)
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.
So what's up with this novel? Can't find anything obvious about it - only that it's mighty popular among conservatives (which is usually a red flag)
There are plenty of articles going into great detail- here is one- but essentially it is a showcase for Rand's moronic and hateful Objectivist philosophy and it has such ludicrous ideas in it as suggesting railroads would do great if it wasn't for the pesky government getting in their way and after society collapses, the brilliant industrialists will all live in paradise just as soon as we find a way to create electricity by violating the laws of physics.
For those who are already familiar, this cartoon summarizes the problem with Atlas Shrugged quite succinctly.
I wanted to read this book so I could see what the fuss was all about. I’ve never made it 80% of the way through any other book and then intentionally stopped reading it. Everything about the way it is written is so bad. The characters are all made of cardboard. The situations that arise make no sense. Pretty much everything about the book makes no sense and is just to drive the story towards whatever idiotic conclusion Rand wanted.
When John Galt finally appeared and I realized he was just three incoherent speeches in a trench coat and not an actual attempt at writing a character, I basically abandoned finishing the book in disgust.
It's just one of those novels that many bookish 17-19 years have read. I think it is worth reading in the sense that I think reading the Bible is worth reading. It is popular enough that you sorta have to have some familiarity with it. Popular because it is popular at this point.
Basic setting is (I am going to steel man it) the world is falling apart from communism and the US is pretty much the last functional country. However instead of slowly drifting down like everyone expects suddenly the US is declining much faster. The reason is all the Jeff Bezoses are going on strike secretly.
The plot follows an heiress to a train company as she tries to hold things together and has an affair with one of her clients.
Eventually everything falls apart and the Jeff Bezoses launch a plan to rebuild but with a new rule that they are running everything.
The end.
