Haven't read or taken Rand seriously since high school: there's something about her absolutist, black-or-white thinking that appeals to adolescents--it's a selfish age. Well, so many of you here have thrown the baby out with the bathwater; there were a few nuggets in there worth keeping. Calling a spade a spade in a loud clear voice, is one of them. And what I'd like to ask our current politicians and corporate boards regarding (especially) climate change: "What are you counting on?"
5
What is one to make that this review is not credited to anyone. Obviously, this is not Ayn Rand's best work, but the criticism of everything Randian is without merit. Most of it stems from leftist view of Capitalism in the mistaken belief that the excesses of big business, its misrepresentations, its frauds in any way resembles the capitalism of Adam Smith and much less Ayn Rand. Rand's heroes are business people, traders who exchange value for value. Her villains are those that use their influence with government to pass laws and enact regulations that hinder competition and even worse, fail to enforce the common laws against fraud, usury, and deceitful business practices.
1
I expect that Ayn Rand would appreciate the vitriol; after all being noticed sells books. You can, you must, view her persona as a vast self-promotion that led to an astounding success for books that, as writing, literature or philosophy, are frankly bad. Atlas Shrugged, the most popular, has sold over 10-million copies. It's hard to argue with that sort of success though all the commentators do. However, I don't see that any one of them has had any authorial success on Rand's scale.
2
Channeling my inner Ayn Rand:
For once and for all time put aside this nihilistic reprobate. Philosophically she leads me to wonder if her writing isn't indeed a farce, meant to entice dullards into believing that it is those that they view as dullards holding them back. For as philosophy it is lazy and incomplete.
As literature, it is rubbish. Clumsy and in eloquent it would be considered drivel if not for the supposed weight of the subject.
If she chose not to publish, that implies that it served no motive for her and reinforces my previously illustrated thoughts. God I could use a smoke.
For once and for all time put aside this nihilistic reprobate. Philosophically she leads me to wonder if her writing isn't indeed a farce, meant to entice dullards into believing that it is those that they view as dullards holding them back. For as philosophy it is lazy and incomplete.
As literature, it is rubbish. Clumsy and in eloquent it would be considered drivel if not for the supposed weight of the subject.
If she chose not to publish, that implies that it served no motive for her and reinforces my previously illustrated thoughts. God I could use a smoke.
8
Rand is insufferable. And please, she understands Nietzsche the same way college freshmen looking for a way to outrage the bourgeoisie do.
I would find reading even a scathing review like this depressing, because the fact is, she has a huge audience -- for some, this kind of hack megalomania is the peak of philosophic truth-telling. Arrg.
My advice? Just read all of her protagonists using Divine's voice. It's like a natural cure. You realize Rand's novels are just John Waters' screenplays that ended up in the trashcan because they possessed zero sense of humor or self-parody.
I would find reading even a scathing review like this depressing, because the fact is, she has a huge audience -- for some, this kind of hack megalomania is the peak of philosophic truth-telling. Arrg.
My advice? Just read all of her protagonists using Divine's voice. It's like a natural cure. You realize Rand's novels are just John Waters' screenplays that ended up in the trashcan because they possessed zero sense of humor or self-parody.
18
I love you.
5
Ayn Rand's protagonists were all Republicans, for sure! Vote for Bernie!!!!
9
Thank you, Ms. Kakutani, for putting a large bell on the stinking cat carcass that is Ayn Rand and the latest example of her "work".
18
what she [famously] wrote: 'I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.'
what she actually did: took government assistance for health care, using her husband's surname to escape unmasking [obviously that didn't work]
this woman was a profound hypocrite. read the very thoughtful biography by jennifer burns, 'Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right' [2009]
what she actually did: took government assistance for health care, using her husband's surname to escape unmasking [obviously that didn't work]
this woman was a profound hypocrite. read the very thoughtful biography by jennifer burns, 'Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right' [2009]
11
There is a very good reason for the extremely negative reaction that Ayn Rand's fiction inspires, but it's not the reason that most of her fans suspect. It ultimately has less to do with her political philosophy and more to do with her aesthetic philosophy. Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin has argued that the novel is inherently dialogic in nature - in other words, novels contain a multiplicity of voices that reject official speech and even, more subtly, authorial intent. However, this simply doesn't apply to Rand's works... they are monologic at their core, full of the most absurdly straw men that crumble under the weight of portentous and overlong philosophical speeches.
13
Capitalist Realism...
2
"Like most Rand characters, Gonda is less a person than a speechifying symbol, and her story never rises even a smidgen above the preposterous.
This will serve as a review of anything ever written by Rand and much of that written about her.
This will serve as a review of anything ever written by Rand and much of that written about her.
22
“I suppose Ayn Rand is a threat to so many in the same way Howard Roark is (or Boo Radley is); they frighten people because all they really want to do is be left alone.”
If Alisa Rosenbaum wanted to be left alone, she should have just shut up about it. Instead she devoted her considerable energy to self-promotion of her ‘ideas’ and ‘philosophy’ through her ‘novels.’
I’ve been reading novels for sixty years, and have an advanced degree in English and American literature. In my considered opinion, her stuff is tripe, both as fiction and as literature of ideas. I am among the vast majority of readers and thinkers who find her work laughable. The fact that powerful right wing politicians think otherwise is, I believe in our favor in this case.
Anyone who follows the lead of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Greenspan, Wolfowicz, Bolden et al in matters of the mind or of artistic merit, of any human concerns, is self-identified as a fool. They are idiot savants of power and personal advancement, untouched by any of the sensibility which art fosters. The fact that she is the chosen mouthpiece for the most mean spirited, small minded and incompetent American politicians in our history says all that needs be about the merit of her work
If Alisa Rosenbaum wanted to be left alone, she should have just shut up about it. Instead she devoted her considerable energy to self-promotion of her ‘ideas’ and ‘philosophy’ through her ‘novels.’
I’ve been reading novels for sixty years, and have an advanced degree in English and American literature. In my considered opinion, her stuff is tripe, both as fiction and as literature of ideas. I am among the vast majority of readers and thinkers who find her work laughable. The fact that powerful right wing politicians think otherwise is, I believe in our favor in this case.
Anyone who follows the lead of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Greenspan, Wolfowicz, Bolden et al in matters of the mind or of artistic merit, of any human concerns, is self-identified as a fool. They are idiot savants of power and personal advancement, untouched by any of the sensibility which art fosters. The fact that she is the chosen mouthpiece for the most mean spirited, small minded and incompetent American politicians in our history says all that needs be about the merit of her work
23
Amusing how contemptuous Rand must have actually been of most who read her novels, and were just consumers of a made-up world. Today she would have a reality TV show where she regularly abused the people she met.
11
Ayn Rand was an over-reaction to the excesses of Communism (or "statism," to use her more general term) -- which itself was an over-reaction to the excesses of free-market Capitalism.
The great irony, and tragedy for America, is that we now have a Republican Party entranced by Ayn Rand -- one that essentially worships the same, original ruthless, exploitative, soul-crushing "free-market" Vulture Capitalism that Communism tried to fix.
And Capitalism still very much needs fixing so it works for the bottom 90%...
The great irony, and tragedy for America, is that we now have a Republican Party entranced by Ayn Rand -- one that essentially worships the same, original ruthless, exploitative, soul-crushing "free-market" Vulture Capitalism that Communism tried to fix.
And Capitalism still very much needs fixing so it works for the bottom 90%...
27
This is one of the most thoughtful things I've read all day. You've actually helped me understand a lot about something I've always struggled to understand about that chain of events.
3
Rand (in small doses) can be hilarious; I could see a great high-camp movie being made of this story (like "The Fountainhead.") But "responsible" adults who take her and her ideas seriously aren't funny at all; they aspire to inhumanity.
16
"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." John Rogers
38
" a pessimist alienated from a world she regards with disdain. " Sounds like the social media obsessed kids of today. And, they didn't live under Soviet Communism to get there.
3
Ooops. Typo. Of course I meant "one of the ubermenschen".
I have not read this and am unlikely to do so. "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" were part of rites of passage in my mid-teens along with "The Prophet" (which I understand is now a movie) and "Catcher in the Rye". Talk about strange bedfellows. No one took Rand seriously except one or two male classmates who became the ones who were conservatives in university, having lived privileged lives, and imagining that they were on of these ubermenschen.
I do remember skipping the political rants which went on page after page in reading Rand's books. Even at fifteen or sixteen, I knew it was nonsense.
I do remember skipping the political rants which went on page after page in reading Rand's books. Even at fifteen or sixteen, I knew it was nonsense.
11
It's been a long time since I read Rand's novels, and they tend to mush together in my mind, but I do recall being surprised at one of her heroine's submissive fawning over the uebermensch male protagonist. Truly, a Republican's Republican!
13
Howard Roark laughed ... at everyone who compared him to Donald Trump.
This histrionic and vituperative attacks on Rand's fictional books are puzzling, but perhaps not in the era of cyberbullying and internet #hathahate. #Randhate is all the rage right now--and for the past few years.
Most people who dislike a book forget about it. Others are apparently compelled to spew anger and smear those who enjoyed it as "acolytes" or "adolescents." Aren't people capable of reading books like Mein Kampf or Anarchist's Cookbook without being brainwashed by it? Can't one appreciate the brilliant writing in Nabokov's Lolita without being a pederast? Can't one like an uncompromising hero like Howard Roark without being a narcissist or a sociopath? I certainly hope so. If I believed the comments here, I would have to check myself into treatment.
I suppose Ayn Rand is a threat to so many in the same way Howard Roark is (or Boo Radley is); they frighten people because all they really want to do is be left alone.
This histrionic and vituperative attacks on Rand's fictional books are puzzling, but perhaps not in the era of cyberbullying and internet #hathahate. #Randhate is all the rage right now--and for the past few years.
Most people who dislike a book forget about it. Others are apparently compelled to spew anger and smear those who enjoyed it as "acolytes" or "adolescents." Aren't people capable of reading books like Mein Kampf or Anarchist's Cookbook without being brainwashed by it? Can't one appreciate the brilliant writing in Nabokov's Lolita without being a pederast? Can't one like an uncompromising hero like Howard Roark without being a narcissist or a sociopath? I certainly hope so. If I believed the comments here, I would have to check myself into treatment.
I suppose Ayn Rand is a threat to so many in the same way Howard Roark is (or Boo Radley is); they frighten people because all they really want to do is be left alone.
5
Rand isn't actually a great writer, though. And it's not histrionic to think that.
14
"I suppose Ayn Rand is a threat to so many" -- only if you consider having your time wasted by utter solipsist hash presented as pretentiously overwritten soap opera full of characters who would be evicted from a Looney Tunes cartoon for being too unbelievable to be a threat.
13
Maybe you should check out the meaning of "pederast" before using it in reference to "Lolita."
9
Some more Kakutani Reviews:
"Moby Dick" - psychotic man wastes life fishing
"Romeo & Juliet"- dumb kids make out and start gang war
"The Great Gatsby"- filthy rich man throws elitist Hamptons parties
"Forrest Gump" - Idiot travels around screwing stuff up
"The Bourne Identity"- American soldier won't stop beating people up
"Frankenstein" - insane scientist creates ugly violent person
A little objectivity when critiquing Objectivist writing goes a long way.
"Moby Dick" - psychotic man wastes life fishing
"Romeo & Juliet"- dumb kids make out and start gang war
"The Great Gatsby"- filthy rich man throws elitist Hamptons parties
"Forrest Gump" - Idiot travels around screwing stuff up
"The Bourne Identity"- American soldier won't stop beating people up
"Frankenstein" - insane scientist creates ugly violent person
A little objectivity when critiquing Objectivist writing goes a long way.
6
I read "The Fountainhead" - every ever-lovin' word of it - in the mid-eighties just to be able to say I had earned my opinion on Rand the hard way.
And you know what? I have never in my life read a worse author, and I have never in my life read a worse book. Thirty more years of reading hasn't changed that.
If Rand rocks your world, it must not be much of a world. And to assert as many Randites do that only the True Believers *understand* her message, because to understand it is to love it, and if you reject it you didn't actually get what her message was, so self-evident is its superiority ... well, the word for that is messianism.
And you know what? I have never in my life read a worse author, and I have never in my life read a worse book. Thirty more years of reading hasn't changed that.
If Rand rocks your world, it must not be much of a world. And to assert as many Randites do that only the True Believers *understand* her message, because to understand it is to love it, and if you reject it you didn't actually get what her message was, so self-evident is its superiority ... well, the word for that is messianism.
12
Thanks for your opinion on The Fountainhead and my world David. Curious, who's your messiah?
You clearly don't read Kakutani's reviews.
8
Ayn Rand could never get over her father losing his business to the government.
Her writings just seem like her fantasy of how things should be. Resorting to Social Security checks and medicare before her death doesn't make her look very successful either- the Republicans choose not to notice that.
Her writings just seem like her fantasy of how things should be. Resorting to Social Security checks and medicare before her death doesn't make her look very successful either- the Republicans choose not to notice that.
13
...they (the republicans) also overlook the fact that she was an atheist.
3
Everyone should read Rand and learn about her childhood. Much of her writing is a direct response to what she endured.
If interested in a woman--completely the opposite of Rand--please go to:
www.defaulttogoodness.com.
If interested in a woman--completely the opposite of Rand--please go to:
www.defaulttogoodness.com.
2
I don't like Ayn Rand's work, but your comment is insightful. Ayn Rand's work is a direct response to the rise of Soviet Communism. It's interesting and revealing to compare her work, and how her experiences shaped - warped, you may say - her thoughts, with that of another Russian expatriate forced out and disinherited by Lenin: Vladimir Nabokov.
Note the differences between them, aside from Nabokov being a genius and Rand, well, not.
Nabokov was the son of a genuine White Russian aristocrat, a liberal, who was assassinated. When asked once what he'd learned from writing fiction, he said 'pity', and indeed pity, and deep understanding of the human condition suffuses all his work. He explored; he didn't explain, and certainly didn't preach.
Rand, whose family was petit-bourgeois, fashioned a fantasy world of superheroes. Ironically, her work is in the Soviet Realism-Nazi Fascism polemical style. (Fascism and Soviet Communism are both collectivist ideologies, submerging the individual in the group, thus proving that if you go far enough to the right you wind up on the left and vice versa.) If you can stand it - it's an awful movie - watch The Fountainhead and note how much its cinematography resembles Triumph of the Will, and how much its stilted declamatory dialogue and polemical plot resemble a Soviet propaganda film.
Note the differences between them, aside from Nabokov being a genius and Rand, well, not.
Nabokov was the son of a genuine White Russian aristocrat, a liberal, who was assassinated. When asked once what he'd learned from writing fiction, he said 'pity', and indeed pity, and deep understanding of the human condition suffuses all his work. He explored; he didn't explain, and certainly didn't preach.
Rand, whose family was petit-bourgeois, fashioned a fantasy world of superheroes. Ironically, her work is in the Soviet Realism-Nazi Fascism polemical style. (Fascism and Soviet Communism are both collectivist ideologies, submerging the individual in the group, thus proving that if you go far enough to the right you wind up on the left and vice versa.) If you can stand it - it's an awful movie - watch The Fountainhead and note how much its cinematography resembles Triumph of the Will, and how much its stilted declamatory dialogue and polemical plot resemble a Soviet propaganda film.
17
Excellent contrast with Nabokov, who remained - under horrific circumstances - a fundamentally kind human being, not because he hadn't been deeply hurt by the Soviets, but because he had (in Humbert Humbert's words) the secret of durable pigments, the refuge of art.
Rand, on the other hand, mistook her typewriter for a jackhammer, and reading her feels like getting a neck rub with a cast-iron skillet.
Rand, on the other hand, mistook her typewriter for a jackhammer, and reading her feels like getting a neck rub with a cast-iron skillet.
9
Probably won't get this latest Rand Rant.
Too Republican-principled (as usual) for my liking....
Too Republican-principled (as usual) for my liking....
5
I'm an avid reader of fiction, poetry, history and biography. I appreciate the classics as well as contemporary writing. On more than one occasion I started "The Fountainhead." The prose was turgid, clumsy and lifeless. I soldiered on through the first hundred pages.
Ayn Rand may have been an "idea person." Without regard to philosophy or political point of view it must be said that she was not a writer.
Ayn Rand may have been an "idea person." Without regard to philosophy or political point of view it must be said that she was not a writer.
17
The time to read Ayn Rand is when you are also reading Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Then get over it, grow up and move on.
23
I have no wish to defend Ayn Rand, but I will say that some of the speeches her characters give in "Atlas Shrugged" resonate strongly if you have lived, e.g., in the license-permit raj of India of the 1970s-80s (before the market-oriented reforms of the early 1990s). Because this is what I witnessed: "When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion- 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 richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed." One tends to overlook the gold standard nuttiness.
It was a massive balance of payments problem that finally forced a change in India. India wasn't doomed, but there certainly was a grave crisis.
It was a massive balance of payments problem that finally forced a change in India. India wasn't doomed, but there certainly was a grave crisis.
6
'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 richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed.'
Pretty good description of Wall Street.
Pretty good description of Wall Street.
8
Socialist India, and Communist Russia and China, were indeed very much like the world described in Atlas Shrugged. The similarity between that world and the USA, however, was very tenuous, and only someone with Rands ability to see only what she believed could have thought otherwise.
Rand did get a few things right, and these days those insights are accepted by essentially everyone, including the Clintons and Obama. But anyone who thinks there are other things to be learned from Rand in this day and age is seriously delusional. When she is wrong, she is very wrong, and dangerously so.
Here's my attempt to separate the mountains of chaff from the grains of wheat in Rand's writings.
https://www.academia.edu/752850/Altruism_Pity_and_Compassion_Significant...
Rand did get a few things right, and these days those insights are accepted by essentially everyone, including the Clintons and Obama. But anyone who thinks there are other things to be learned from Rand in this day and age is seriously delusional. When she is wrong, she is very wrong, and dangerously so.
Here's my attempt to separate the mountains of chaff from the grains of wheat in Rand's writings.
https://www.academia.edu/752850/Altruism_Pity_and_Compassion_Significant...
1
"It underscores the reasons that her work — with its celebration of defiance and narcissism, its promotion of selfishness as a philosophical stance — so often appeals to adolescents and radical free marketers."
Radical free--meaning not forced or coerced by violent means--marketers are not motivated by selfishness, defiance nor narcissism. Rather they believe freedom is the highest aim and the most rewarding achievement human beings can realize. It is despised by socialists, statists and other control freaks as a threat to their power and their enFORCED tax revenues.
I don't particularly care for Ayn Rand, but I sure as hell would prefer her to Obama, Clinton, Trump, Sanders or any of the candidates for president as my neighbor. I presume Ms. Rand would never seek to tax, regulate, banish or execute me, and she would not accept a job as president, judge or legislator if somehow she was elected. We don't need laws, taxes, regulations, border walls, wars, prisons to cage and torture, nor any of the other fine attributes of government. What we need most and are rapidly losing to the gullet of Leviathan is our precious freedom.
For the edification of this reviewer, defiance of the illicit authority of human laws and men ruling and dominating others by force is a noble calling. However, in the interest of peace, simply ignoring the control freaks and all of their works is a more fruitful occupation.
Radical free--meaning not forced or coerced by violent means--marketers are not motivated by selfishness, defiance nor narcissism. Rather they believe freedom is the highest aim and the most rewarding achievement human beings can realize. It is despised by socialists, statists and other control freaks as a threat to their power and their enFORCED tax revenues.
I don't particularly care for Ayn Rand, but I sure as hell would prefer her to Obama, Clinton, Trump, Sanders or any of the candidates for president as my neighbor. I presume Ms. Rand would never seek to tax, regulate, banish or execute me, and she would not accept a job as president, judge or legislator if somehow she was elected. We don't need laws, taxes, regulations, border walls, wars, prisons to cage and torture, nor any of the other fine attributes of government. What we need most and are rapidly losing to the gullet of Leviathan is our precious freedom.
For the edification of this reviewer, defiance of the illicit authority of human laws and men ruling and dominating others by force is a noble calling. However, in the interest of peace, simply ignoring the control freaks and all of their works is a more fruitful occupation.
2
Life is not drawn in such black-and-white contrasts. Government, when it is wisely managed, can be useful and socially productive, without jeopardizing individual freedom, which too many interpret as anarchy. Few people understand that the freedom to swing your fist is limited by the proximity of my chin, as Justice Learned Hand pointed out. Your "defiance of authority" stance is little more than the temper tantrum of an adolescent demanding to get his way all the time. If there was government, you could have been a Thalidomide baby and you'd be writing your comments with a pen in your mouth.
7
Ned Netterville, you might want to read up a little on Rand's life and how she tended to treat her acolytes. She taxed them in her own way, regulated their behavior in her own way, banished them at will, and at least metaphorically executed them. She didn't need to get elected to a political position. She was her own Leviathan, and her gullet was the chief instrument of her voracious appetite to serve up the dishes of her own freedom at the expense of others. In her day-to-day life, she really wasn't that different from Stalin in his. The behavior of both held much in common in type, just not in scale.
9
And you, dear sir, could have been murdered by your government as were the 21 million, including 6 million Jews who were incinerated, plus Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, Frenchmen, Balts, Czechs, and others murdered by their government, or by the governments of Stalin, Lenin and their successors who murdered 62 million Soviet citizens and foreigners during their tenures, or among the 48 million murdered by the governments of Mao Tse-Tung and his contemporary Chaing Kai-shek. (see R. J. Rummel's DEATH BY GOVERNMENT book and website.)
bowlerboy-jmb, Your obsequious embrace of, and subservience to such "authority" is a clear indication of a weak backbone. Oh, and as far as "good" government wisely managed goes, you could have been instantaneously vaporized by the good government of the United States of America, as were the 150,000 residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by that good government's bombs. Or you could have been one of the other 50-100,000 who subsequently died from the government's bombs' ratdiation.
bowlerboy-jmb, Your obsequious embrace of, and subservience to such "authority" is a clear indication of a weak backbone. Oh, and as far as "good" government wisely managed goes, you could have been instantaneously vaporized by the good government of the United States of America, as were the 150,000 residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by that good government's bombs. Or you could have been one of the other 50-100,000 who subsequently died from the government's bombs' ratdiation.
2
Notwithstanding selfishness and narcissism, it would make for a better world if more people actually had solid principles and stood up for those principles. If you work for a big corporation, the odds are that you do not speak up, that you have sold your soul to the man. If you are politically correct, not only are you lying to some degree or another, you are a coward. Self-proclaming that you are being kind is hiding behind a lie.
Those of us who know better need to do more to make the world a better place. The "me generation" has graduated to boasting about their grandchildren but not asking about yours. It's me, me, me, me.
Those of us who know better need to do more to make the world a better place. The "me generation" has graduated to boasting about their grandchildren but not asking about yours. It's me, me, me, me.
2
Isn't it interesting that the adolescents and radical capitalists who adore Rand always see themselves in the preposterous heroes? The "self-made" men (i.e., those with every advantage in life) who power their way through the detritus of society?
You have to wonder if anyone ever reads Rand's sociopathological tirades and, reflecting on her depictions of ordinary people (the "losers", the "rats"), says, "Hey--wait a minute! That's me!" There might be fewer Trumps and Ryans in the world if they did.
You have to wonder if anyone ever reads Rand's sociopathological tirades and, reflecting on her depictions of ordinary people (the "losers", the "rats"), says, "Hey--wait a minute! That's me!" There might be fewer Trumps and Ryans in the world if they did.
39
If only Ayn Rand had been a comic book artist. Her anti-hero heroines are perfect for that realm!
9
Steve Ditko, a noted comic book artist, co-creator of Spider-Man, produced a number of Rand inspired comic books - The Question and Mr. A being the most famous.
2
She'd have been perfect for Reddit.
1
Thank you for referring to Rand's "embrace of selfishness and elitism." Conservatives often accuse liberals of being "elitists," when actually elitism knows no political bounds. How is Donald Trump or any libertarian CEO less elite than some college professor?
14
At 73, I'm a little past the point of adolescence but Ayn Rand's ideas saved my life a long time ago and I am not willing to sacrifice my life for anyone or anything. I love it too much.
4
Nor should you. However, since Rand's real-life inspiration and hero was a murderer who decapitated a young woman he had kidnapped, clearly she would disagree with you.
8
Rand was probably a psychopath. Her philosophy is psychopathy dogmatized. Read psychologists Reid Meloy and Robert Hare.
Psychopaths have two key traits: first, a lack the capacity for the complex emotions essential to civilized life - like empathy and remorse. Rand's terror and loathing for her twisted caricatures of "altruism" and "collectivism" are a giveaway.
Second, psychopaths are overwhelmingly driven to dominate others - and they dominate destructively - deceiving, dehumanizing and destroying.
They have an unlimited sense of entitlement. They see themselves as great leaders but they are ultimately incompetent and parasitic.
Some non- psychopaths are drawn to psychopathic attitudes because it feels good to inflate one's ego by dehumanizing others, imagining oneself as vastly superior to them. But nature apparently has a sense of humor. When you do that, it feels good but it makes you stupid, shutting down the brain's higher reasoning. People are conscious of the euphoria and mistake it for intelligence. They are apparently not aware of how stupid it makes them until their newfound beliefs lead them into disaster.
Psychopaths have two key traits: first, a lack the capacity for the complex emotions essential to civilized life - like empathy and remorse. Rand's terror and loathing for her twisted caricatures of "altruism" and "collectivism" are a giveaway.
Second, psychopaths are overwhelmingly driven to dominate others - and they dominate destructively - deceiving, dehumanizing and destroying.
They have an unlimited sense of entitlement. They see themselves as great leaders but they are ultimately incompetent and parasitic.
Some non- psychopaths are drawn to psychopathic attitudes because it feels good to inflate one's ego by dehumanizing others, imagining oneself as vastly superior to them. But nature apparently has a sense of humor. When you do that, it feels good but it makes you stupid, shutting down the brain's higher reasoning. People are conscious of the euphoria and mistake it for intelligence. They are apparently not aware of how stupid it makes them until their newfound beliefs lead them into disaster.
29
That date 1934 is interesting. They were thinking similar thoughts in Germany at that time, not just Russia.
10
Donald Trump seems to be the living manifestation of Ayn's ideas: a vulgar narcissistic personality without any self-awareness or compassion for others.
16
And yet one of her most apt comments came from the dying lips of the Frank Llloyd Wright-type character in "The Fountainhead," who denounced "the triumph of overbearing vulgarity"--a perfect description of The Donald.
3
And isn't it interesting that all of Rand's female protagonists are independently wealthy, such as the railroad heiress? She created characters who were empowered to negotiate daily life without actually having to make a living or get along with people to put food on the table, but insisted on their own excruciatingly pure motives, nobility, and superiority. The parallel to Trump is perfect.
4
Ayn Rand was a political fantasy novelist who really had one successful book, Atlas Shrugged. I enjoyed it in my mid-teens and actually took it seriously for a couple of years until I realized that it was no more practical than anything written by Karl Marx. Leave it to some people to treat that book as though it was it a word for word practical guide to living in the real world. But really it shouldn't be surprising given how human beings take the writings of the bibles and Koran as literal guides to live by.
16
I agree with you that no one's life is a work of fiction and shouldn't be lived as such. Philosophy has to be analyzed and interpreted to be useful. Too bad you missed out.
The Fountainhead was equally successful financially, and a much better book, in my opinion. She wrote the Fountainhead when she was poor, and was very aware at the time of the problems of self expression if you did not do what pleased the Marketplace. Once she became famous, she believed that everyone who was successful deserved it, and everyone who was poor deserved it, which made her even more arrogant and narrow-minded than she already was.
1
Like the reviewer, I don't care for Rand as a novelist, but I think some of the passages he cites as bad are pretty good.
Well put, Mary. Rand could be leading the polls among republicans. narcissism as ideology.
9
Once again: publishing work that a writer did not choose to publish in his or her lifetime (or when he or she is able to choose) is a rights violation. Unless there is certain provision left by the estate, It is theft. It is theft whether the writer is Harper Lee, or Elizabeth Bishop, or Ayn Rand. It is one thing for papers to be given (or sold) to a library, where they can be made available to interested parties. But publication is another matter entirely.
8
Harper Lee is still alive. And I suspect she's got all her marbles and knows exactly what she was about.
I strongly suspect the story behind Watchman is that the original novel, comprising both Watchman and Mockingbird material, was meant not only to consider racial issues in the South but to be a study in memory. Mnemosyne is a cheat and liar, soft-focusing and selectively editing. (A friend who'd managed never to read Mockingbird is reading it now and mentioned she didn't see Atticus as a racial-justice crusader, just a lawyer doing his job to zealously represent his client, black or white, innocent or guilty.) When the book and then the movie vaulted to 'beloved bestseller' status, Lee could live off the royalties the rest of her life. Now, with her life drawing to a close, she no longer has to compromise her integrity. She can afford to kill the mockingbird that laid the golden eggs, and let her literary legacy be honest rather than built on a work of meretricious sentimentality.
I strongly suspect the story behind Watchman is that the original novel, comprising both Watchman and Mockingbird material, was meant not only to consider racial issues in the South but to be a study in memory. Mnemosyne is a cheat and liar, soft-focusing and selectively editing. (A friend who'd managed never to read Mockingbird is reading it now and mentioned she didn't see Atticus as a racial-justice crusader, just a lawyer doing his job to zealously represent his client, black or white, innocent or guilty.) When the book and then the movie vaulted to 'beloved bestseller' status, Lee could live off the royalties the rest of her life. Now, with her life drawing to a close, she no longer has to compromise her integrity. She can afford to kill the mockingbird that laid the golden eggs, and let her literary legacy be honest rather than built on a work of meretricious sentimentality.
As of this writing, my comment hasn't appeared. But I do note one thing in skimming over these comments:
I seem to be the only one, besides Kakutani, who's actually read the book!
I seem to be the only one, besides Kakutani, who's actually read the book!
4
It just came out, so I commend you for finding it and reading it so quickly.
And I agree -- it is absolutely silly to dog pile on a book and condemn it -- without having read it!!!
I however, did not claim to have read it. I was merely posting to dispute the idea that Rand "changed her name to defraud Social Security" -- it is not factually true -- or that her earlier, famous books need to be "politically correct" in order for readers to enjoy or buy them (clearly their status after 70 years proves otherwise).
I will read "Ideal" when my library gets it -- I don't buy books anymore, except at estate sales -- and I will judge it on its own merits. Not because I agree or disagree with Ms. Rand's lifestyle nor her philosophy.
And I agree -- it is absolutely silly to dog pile on a book and condemn it -- without having read it!!!
I however, did not claim to have read it. I was merely posting to dispute the idea that Rand "changed her name to defraud Social Security" -- it is not factually true -- or that her earlier, famous books need to be "politically correct" in order for readers to enjoy or buy them (clearly their status after 70 years proves otherwise).
I will read "Ideal" when my library gets it -- I don't buy books anymore, except at estate sales -- and I will judge it on its own merits. Not because I agree or disagree with Ms. Rand's lifestyle nor her philosophy.
1
Ayn Rand personifies the America version of social and economic fascism that so many of the white wealthy continue to believe and practice today. We are currently in the throes of a rise in social and economic fascism exemplified by the over concentration f wealth in the hands of a few who feel entitled to extraordinary wealth while the remaining 99% are left to struggle never seeming to realize (although I believe they do) that their wealth is made on the backs of the rest of us. Without a reversal of this social and economic fascism American is headed for disaster as democracy has been hijacked by those who control the message while the American voter has become no more than sheep being led to economic slaughter by bigger and more powerful sheep (everyone should read George Orwell’s book Animal Farm).
31
With all of its problems, the United States remains the land of opportunity for individuals who will take the responsibility to move ahead. It is not the "upper one percent" that holds anyone back nor does the "upper one percent" succeed at the expense of others. That is a myth that has been repeatedly endlessly by politicians and the media continually increasing the sense of victimhood in this country. He or she who believes that they are a victim of the "one percent", "economic fascism" or other supposed maladies of the middle class (and others) will be blind to the opportunity available.
1
Donald Trump is Ayn Rand reincarnated.
12
You're too kind to both of them.
13
Not quite, but at least he speaks his mind and is forcing the other candidates to address the issues.
2
I am looking forward to the debate between Bernie Sanders (Brooklyn) and Donald Trump (Queens). Sanders will not be able to speak in hyperbole because Sanders will force him to be specific. On the other hand, Sanders will have to show he is a fair play candidate who is against the plutocracy and the rigged economy, not a socialist as people have tried to label him. In my opinion as an entrepreneur, Bernie Sanders is in favor of a real free enterprise
system, not one controlled by regional monopolies, oligopolies, special interests, and large banks.
system, not one controlled by regional monopolies, oligopolies, special interests, and large banks.
1
We have a word for this sort of character: sociopath.
25
Excellent review, Comrade.
6
There are two kinds of Ayn Rand readers: those who realize by about age 18 or so that it's all nonsense, drivel, and the immature ravings of a miserable person, and those who do not. Be very wary of any purported adult, whether or not a politician, who speaks in glowing terms of Rand and her philosophy.
29
Be more wary of people who hate people for their ideas but who don't argue against the ideas.
1
And this is Paul Ryan's hero ....... Beware, folks. This guy is the republican's "financial guru" .
22
Fortunately, most people outgrow Ayn Rand's "philosophy" just as they outgrow many other juvenile and adolescent endeavors.
20
You outgrow it when you realize there are no children in the novels....
4
I fact, though nominally adult, you could make a case for all Rand leads to be overgrown, selfish brats.
I think we also saw something like that in the Republican "debate" - althuogh overshadowed by The Donald, the other nine also were flavors of bratty egomaniacs. WHY do any of them want to be president?
I think we also saw something like that in the Republican "debate" - althuogh overshadowed by The Donald, the other nine also were flavors of bratty egomaniacs. WHY do any of them want to be president?
Narcissism as a basis for a philosophy of life is self-serving and self-contradictory naivety. In any event it’s tricky to show that it's anything more (productive) than a psychiatric diagnose.
Bertrand Russell cited in one of his many books (with a smile) a lady who said to him:
“I’m a solipsist, and I’m surprised that not everyone is”.
Karl Marx killed narcissism in one sentence:
“The human being is a zoon politicon (political animal), only in society can she isolate herself.”
Ayn Rand is a “philosopher” for plutocrats (and perhaps for a few esoteric minds before they mature). It’s hard to believe that her woolly minded texts otherwise had been published.
Bertrand Russell cited in one of his many books (with a smile) a lady who said to him:
“I’m a solipsist, and I’m surprised that not everyone is”.
Karl Marx killed narcissism in one sentence:
“The human being is a zoon politicon (political animal), only in society can she isolate herself.”
Ayn Rand is a “philosopher” for plutocrats (and perhaps for a few esoteric minds before they mature). It’s hard to believe that her woolly minded texts otherwise had been published.
7
Rand did not publish this book (which is quite bad) in her lifetime, although she could have (and it would have without question, been a great commercial success due to her popularity as a writer of fiction - "Atlas Shrugged" is one of the 2 or 3 best selling books of all time). that it is now being released after her death by Leonard Peikoff, the executor of her estate, is an intellectual betrayal of Rand. Whether one liked or did not like Rand either as a writer or a philosopher (the description of her philosophy is very much distorted and misrepresented in this review), she was, and continues to be, badly represented both during and after her death by the coterie of second-handers (as Rand would call them) that comprise the Rand Cult. Rand has always been ill-served by these people who by lavishing unquestioning devotion to her without providing any intellectual feedback (not surprising since they had and have no original ideas of their own) bought out the extremely bad side of Rand. They have done more damage to her fundamental view (that an individual's life is his/her own to lead as he/she seems fit with no need to justify it to anyone) then has academia (which has quite deliberately ignored her). Rand was essentially goaded into non-fiction 'philosophical' writing, a task for which she was ill-suited. Very unfortunate for her and for those who found in her fiction, a representation of a reality in which they found great comfort and support.
6
Actually, "Shrugged" isn't even in the top hundred of best-sellers, and the recent and devastatingly bad movie trilogy was an infamous flop -- the trilogy's conclusion failing to break even one million at the box office.
I thought Ayn Rand would fade from memory as our Woodstock generation (or the anti-Woodstockers) fade away. But apparently she remains, because her impressive if second-rate books continue to sell. Hers is a romantic vision to some youth and a few entrepreneurs: of know-it-all heroism, contempt for the rest, and capitalist ideals unsullied and ignorant of the slime we now know pervades much of the business class. As a youth I was enchanted by "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead", but with age I learned that we all live in a community and not as Nietzschean supermen (or women). One hopes that Rand's teenage fans will learn the same lesson sooner than later.
12
Marc: The "Woodstock generation" is long gone, but the "anti-Woodstockers" grow in number & defensiveness every year . . .
1
The reason why Rand is still the darling of the right for all that she was an atheist, pro-abortion and an adulterer, is because right-wingers write terrible novels and ugly philosophies. The simple fact is, no one has ever come along to replace her message via novels. Right-wingers stick to economics or religion. Even Shaun Hannity was a bust at fiction and, too, Liz Cheney. Novels are very complex creations, requiring a complex brain. Being straight-line simplistic is the requirement off the right. That's why they are terrible novelists.
1
I can't judge all her work by one book but I could not finish Atlas Shrugged and I had thought I would love it, if reluctant to try it because of its length. I always tell myself I should try again some day. There were some interesting aspects to it but pretty quick you get it - capitalists good/socialists bad. Fair enough, but it quickly became cartoonish, exalting the former and smearing the latter so much as if they are all cut of the same cloth. Not that I don't like some cartoonish novels but she claims far more for herself and has to be better than that. As for her personal life, if the accounts I've read are accurate, it is troubling too. I read a little bit of her philosophy too once and though I lean a little bit libertarian (she preferred other words) it seemed contrived, unrealistic and derivative to me. Reality, knowledge and values are objective? On what planet? Doesn't that just mean she just thinks her knowledge and values are the real ones? It seems more like a religion. To be fair to her, there are many novelists I can't read, some very famous, many famous people with big egos and her philosophy is no worse than many and better than some. I just think too much is claimed for her and I am not excited by a newly discovered novel.
8
For someone who has not finished a Rand book, you really get it! Even more so than this "book reviewer". Most try to make too much of her and are unable to take the "cartoonish" characters for what they are - ideas and symbols.
Rand (not her original name) was from Leningrad. Everything in the USSR, where she lived and had been born, and which restrained individual excellence, repelled her. She got her degree from Leningrad U and left back when that was still possible if somewhat difficult.
What she saw in the US confirmed her views on the merits of individual effort.
Her books pointed to a life view, but were not rigorous philosophical works. Like Marxism which she hated, her books' message was a loose ideology--something that existed in her head and in heads like hers.
Her wacked-out views supplied the ideology that Alan Greenspan thought was so vital.
What she saw in the US confirmed her views on the merits of individual effort.
Her books pointed to a life view, but were not rigorous philosophical works. Like Marxism which she hated, her books' message was a loose ideology--something that existed in her head and in heads like hers.
Her wacked-out views supplied the ideology that Alan Greenspan thought was so vital.
15
What I have never understood is that anyone ever took her seriously on any level. She is not Nietzchean. He could get a little nutty, but he had ideas that went far beyond selfishness and disdain for those less fortunate than himself. And he could write. Ayn Rand's worst crime is against language. She makes Danielle Steele seem like Tolstoy. She wrote overheated, chick-lit romance novels posing as philosophy.
25
"...over-heated, chick-lit romance novels...."
Which makes her the favorite author of uber-Republican MEN?
Which makes her the favorite author of uber-Republican MEN?
2
rosa: One reason Ayn Rand is a favourite of men is that her heroines, whom Rand tells us are strong, accomplished, intelligent, and beautiful, nonetheless long to be overmastered, subdued, and in fact literally raped by superior men, whom they recognise as the only ones worthy of them and with whom they fall in love. This doesn't turn up in Ideal, but such rapes are pivotal in both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
Now, although Rand's scenes are so poorly written as to be farcically unconvincing, I'm willing to concede the principle that a woman can come to, or continue to, love a man who abuses and humiliates her. It's a theme of literature from Chaucer's Patient Griselda through Richardson's Pamela to General Hospital's Luke and Laura. Harlequin Romances paperbacks would be a pretty sparse line without this theme. Rape fantasies (as opposed to actual rape) have always figured in women's erotica; 'good' girls aren't supposed to 'want' sex, so faux-rape relieves the fantasist of the responsibility of consent.
But I suggest a certain strain of conservative male likes Rand's rape scenes because, if you cast aside the intellectual trimming, they get to see an unattainable uppity female put in her place. Dagny Taggart or Dominique Francon is every cheerleader who spurned the reader and dated the quarterback, and the posts here that deride Rand's work as adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasy hit the nail on the head.
Now, although Rand's scenes are so poorly written as to be farcically unconvincing, I'm willing to concede the principle that a woman can come to, or continue to, love a man who abuses and humiliates her. It's a theme of literature from Chaucer's Patient Griselda through Richardson's Pamela to General Hospital's Luke and Laura. Harlequin Romances paperbacks would be a pretty sparse line without this theme. Rape fantasies (as opposed to actual rape) have always figured in women's erotica; 'good' girls aren't supposed to 'want' sex, so faux-rape relieves the fantasist of the responsibility of consent.
But I suggest a certain strain of conservative male likes Rand's rape scenes because, if you cast aside the intellectual trimming, they get to see an unattainable uppity female put in her place. Dagny Taggart or Dominique Francon is every cheerleader who spurned the reader and dated the quarterback, and the posts here that deride Rand's work as adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasy hit the nail on the head.
1
I'm no fan of hers, but I feel like you have no idea what Rand actually wrote.
It's not a problem if you want to read Ayn Rand, and feel that her ideas are important. It's only a problem when you do so and your age does not end with a "-teen" suffix.
10
Our library got it a month ago, so I read it. Thus, I'll actually talk about the book, not just launch into the standard anti-Ayn polemic.
The novel and play are atrocious, with all of Rand's usual faults. 'Ideal' has only two virtues, and one is brevity. However, note I said 'two virtues.'
The idea, in the hands of a competent writer interested in exploring ideas and character rather than just spouting dogma, could have gone somewhere. It's not uncommon for writers to have ideas that exceed their talent. And for all the reviewer's egalitarian fulminations, there is an idea here that deserves exploration, multifaceted expressions of envy: The smart, strong, beautiful, are invariably both worshipped and resented by the stupid, ugly, and weak, or just the mediocre. All men are officially 'equal' before the law; but political dogma clashes with the fact that nature does not bestow her gifts equally. (No room here to go into the various manifestations of the misapplication of 'equality' - 'everyone has won, and all must have prizes'. Let's just say our culture is rife with them.) 'Ideal' had the potential to be a character study of this resentment - in the hands of a real writer who was willing to do some actual thinking, follow the 'what if' wherever it led, and populate her story with actual people rather than ideological cardboard standees.
The novel and play are atrocious, with all of Rand's usual faults. 'Ideal' has only two virtues, and one is brevity. However, note I said 'two virtues.'
The idea, in the hands of a competent writer interested in exploring ideas and character rather than just spouting dogma, could have gone somewhere. It's not uncommon for writers to have ideas that exceed their talent. And for all the reviewer's egalitarian fulminations, there is an idea here that deserves exploration, multifaceted expressions of envy: The smart, strong, beautiful, are invariably both worshipped and resented by the stupid, ugly, and weak, or just the mediocre. All men are officially 'equal' before the law; but political dogma clashes with the fact that nature does not bestow her gifts equally. (No room here to go into the various manifestations of the misapplication of 'equality' - 'everyone has won, and all must have prizes'. Let's just say our culture is rife with them.) 'Ideal' had the potential to be a character study of this resentment - in the hands of a real writer who was willing to do some actual thinking, follow the 'what if' wherever it led, and populate her story with actual people rather than ideological cardboard standees.
17
The problem is that in real life, what actually makes people smart, strong and beautiful is how they relate to the larger human community to which they belong. There are a lot of pretty faces in the world, but actual beauty is distinguished by grace. Pretty faces who treat people the way Rand's character do are widely regarded as ugly people. Similarly, physical strength or athleticism on their own do not a hero make. It is only when they are coupled with a strength of character that acknowledges the responsibilities that come with unequal gifts and that defends the weak, that such strength commands respect. By the same token, the intelligence that enables an individual to acquire great wealth strikes most people as shallow when not coupled with the wisdom that appreciates how all of our fates are intertwined.
Do people often resent people more talented than themselves? Sure. But the proposition that such resentments constitute a great moral or social problem seems to only resonate with sociopaths, and not usually the successful ones. Rand distinguished herself chiefly by appointing herself the spokesperson of every sociopath who, despite their conscienceless disregard for others, is nonetheless somehow thwarted and in need of scapegoats. For every member of congress or corporate CEO still in thrall to her impoverished vision of human freedom, there are a thousand dateless fedora-wearing neck-bearded assistant managers of Staples or Applebee's who don't realize they are being played by the actual 1%.
Do people often resent people more talented than themselves? Sure. But the proposition that such resentments constitute a great moral or social problem seems to only resonate with sociopaths, and not usually the successful ones. Rand distinguished herself chiefly by appointing herself the spokesperson of every sociopath who, despite their conscienceless disregard for others, is nonetheless somehow thwarted and in need of scapegoats. For every member of congress or corporate CEO still in thrall to her impoverished vision of human freedom, there are a thousand dateless fedora-wearing neck-bearded assistant managers of Staples or Applebee's who don't realize they are being played by the actual 1%.
Rand was a rotter of the worst sort. She was only an individualist as the fat cats of GOP define individualism: disdain for others less fortunate than themselves; pitiless; full of bluster until confronted by an arrogant sociopath even more loathsome than themselves.
I am all for individualism, but for the genuine sort, not the faux individualisms of Murdoch, Aisles, O'Reilly and Kelly. The individual I admire is the one who can fix a broken engine in the middle of the night in the middle of a storm; who can translate a Latin or Greek poem; who can play a complicated musical piece after hearing it once; who can solve difficult mathematical puzzles; who, without cheating, can break a world record for an Olympic event.
We do need outstandingly courageous, dedicated individuals. We do need heroes and heroines. But they must be compassionate heroes and heroines: outraged by injustice; willing to die if necessary in sticking up for the underdog; disdainful of comfort, of conventional success, and indifferent to fame. They can be nothing like Ayn Rand and her ilk.
I am all for individualism, but for the genuine sort, not the faux individualisms of Murdoch, Aisles, O'Reilly and Kelly. The individual I admire is the one who can fix a broken engine in the middle of the night in the middle of a storm; who can translate a Latin or Greek poem; who can play a complicated musical piece after hearing it once; who can solve difficult mathematical puzzles; who, without cheating, can break a world record for an Olympic event.
We do need outstandingly courageous, dedicated individuals. We do need heroes and heroines. But they must be compassionate heroes and heroines: outraged by injustice; willing to die if necessary in sticking up for the underdog; disdainful of comfort, of conventional success, and indifferent to fame. They can be nothing like Ayn Rand and her ilk.
34
Ailes not Aisles.
2
Ann Ryand?
While planning ''Atlas Shrugged she wrote, ''I think I represent the proper integration of a complete human being…'One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one's way to get the best for oneself,”
Isn't she the woman who had a six-foot dollar sign at her funeral?
Isn't Ann Raynd the fiction writer who confused everyone with her selfish, me-first philosophy?
Some of the most repulsive ideas in the world do not need a counter-argument.
Especially when the person espousing them conduct themselves in an ultimately selfish way by breaking their commitment to their spouse and committing adultery with a protegé as Anny Raunchy did.
It’s telling that Ann Ryand created a fictional man with character and ethics in her novel “The Fountainhead” when she had none herself.
Someone should have told her, “When you reach for the heights you can't sleep with pigs.”
While planning ''Atlas Shrugged she wrote, ''I think I represent the proper integration of a complete human being…'One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one's way to get the best for oneself,”
Isn't she the woman who had a six-foot dollar sign at her funeral?
Isn't Ann Raynd the fiction writer who confused everyone with her selfish, me-first philosophy?
Some of the most repulsive ideas in the world do not need a counter-argument.
Especially when the person espousing them conduct themselves in an ultimately selfish way by breaking their commitment to their spouse and committing adultery with a protegé as Anny Raunchy did.
It’s telling that Ann Ryand created a fictional man with character and ethics in her novel “The Fountainhead” when she had none herself.
Someone should have told her, “When you reach for the heights you can't sleep with pigs.”
12
She's philosophy's answer to Donald Trump. Every profession has one.
27
As a teen fifty years ago, I read all of Rand's works (but only a couple pages of the tedious The Objectivist Epistemology) and was built up by what seemed to be messianic works of noble narcissism (as the article suggested -- perfect for alienated, ego-deflated adolescents). So I feel I can authoritatively say that Ayn Rand's "bad mood" was her good mood. In The Fountainhead, there is a moment when hero Roark feels "pity" for Peter Keating, who has by the death knell of Rand's pen irrevocably failed in his life (he had really wanted to be a painter, but second-handed his way as a mediocre architect). His reaction to this feeling: "This is pity, he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue."
5
When I was 5 or 6 I vowed to read every book in the library and since I lived right by the tiny Parish Library, it seemed doable. By the time I was 11 I had read everything from Aesop's Fables to Machiavelli. Then I discovered the banned book list, I had to have it, the whole list. I had already read several of them but not Catcher in The Rye or Fountain Head, so I checked them out and ran home.
First I read Catcher in the Rye and wonder what the big deal was, Holden Caulfield was the same potty mouthed brat that populated the middle school playground. Then I read Fountainhead and found that it was just as childish and poorly written as Catcher in the Rye so I gave up on the banned book list and went back to my normal rotation. The Prince was a much more interesting read.
First I read Catcher in the Rye and wonder what the big deal was, Holden Caulfield was the same potty mouthed brat that populated the middle school playground. Then I read Fountainhead and found that it was just as childish and poorly written as Catcher in the Rye so I gave up on the banned book list and went back to my normal rotation. The Prince was a much more interesting read.
14
I always loved the way all the hyper-capitalistic superheroes at the end of "Atlas Shrugged" end up on a commune.
21
you really need to look up what a commune is. Galt's Gulch was most definitely not a commune.
This may or may not be a good work; I have not read it. However, the reviewer allows disdain for Ms. Rand's ideas to permeate the review. Regardless of what you think of her, her works have inspired plenty of people. As a believer in both free markets and Christianity, I did find her other works lacking in compassion for her fellow man. But, she does a wonderful job of pricking the bubble of socialist and left-wing policies our nation is rapidly sliding towards.
8
If anything is sliding , it's the moral compass of the right! As for 'The good part of Illinois'... Where's that?
2
.... as did the authors of that other work of fiction: The Bible.
Rand didn't respect women any more than did Saint Paul or Moses.
You are aware that she was atheist, pro-abortion and an adulterer?
Rand didn't respect women any more than did Saint Paul or Moses.
You are aware that she was atheist, pro-abortion and an adulterer?
2
It is literally impossible to be an absolutely objective reviewer of anything. Our life experience will always seep through. But you're a guy who thinks we're more Socialist than we've ever been and that's absolutely untrue. We're sliding inexorably right, politically, Obama and Reagan are practically the same man, and yet the right wing points at him and accuses him of Socialism. No one else on the planet sees Obama as a Socialist and no one in America who knows what Socialism actually is thinks that either.
3
I can never forgive her for her damaging testimony before the House Unamerican Activites Committee in 1947. She damaged many lives and ruined the careers of each more, with her reckless "testimony". Some readers may praise her all they want, but I will never forget what she did in October 1947. Perhaps some of your readers need a refresher course of what kind of human Ayn Rand reality was.
http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/huac.html
http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/huac.html
57
When you're mad at the world you're liable to say and do anything. All our communication with Lady Rand is one-sided. We can't correct somebody in the grave. No amount of revision can change who or what she was, what she did. For me personally, I tend to look at the past empirically (which is an art in and of itself).
Oh, her fans know what kind of a person she was, that is why they are fans, they are just like her.
2
Okay, I read her testimony that you cited in your link. I didn't read anything that could have resulted in "many lives" being "damaged", or that could have "ruined the careers of [many] more". I read no "reckless "testimony"", but rather some very deliberate, well-reasoned, and principled statements of her opinions that were supported by her own experiences. If she gave some harmful testimony, it wasn't included in that transcript, which claimed to be complete.
2
Was she born prickly or was she the creature formed from the world in which she lived? Nature or nurture, that is the question.
lulu.com/michaelclayton
lulu.com/michaelclayton
5
Her talent destined her to have a high opinion of herself; Leninism (nurture, I suppose) destined her to be an enemy of the state.
1
You've got it inverted. Her high opinion of herself caused her to think she had talent.
Let it be remembered whenever one talks about Ms. Rand, that she spent her last decades very much alive only because she enrolled in Medicare and Social Security, drawing benefits as "Ann O'Connor" in a sorry attempt at secrecy and hypocrisy.
158
Of course, of course, bringing to mind the funny Onion headline -- "Libertarian Reluctantly Calls Fire Department." There's the ideal world -- that Rand and libertarians excel at -- and then there's the real one, where they stop holding their breath and breathe in compromise. I still think "pure" capitalism -- with its sidekick of voluntary not coerced humanitarianism -- is a fine idea . . . but I'll be jonesing for that Social Security check in the not-too-distant future.
Yoandel: Her actual legal last name was "O'Connor". She was once married to a man named O'Connor.
Ayn Rand was her pen name. Her maiden name was Alisa Rosenbaum.
Surely you realize that authors use pen names, and that this is not some "subterfuge" but simply business (actors do this too!).
Your SS and Medicare records are (and were!) private, so how on earth could this be an attempt at "secrecy"?
Ayn Rand was her pen name. Her maiden name was Alisa Rosenbaum.
Surely you realize that authors use pen names, and that this is not some "subterfuge" but simply business (actors do this too!).
Your SS and Medicare records are (and were!) private, so how on earth could this be an attempt at "secrecy"?
3
Agree or disagree with her but...her husband was Frank O'Connor and Ann O'Connor was the legal name for her benefits. And really, since her views boil down to looking out for one's self, there is no surprise she did that.
2
She's kinda tacky in her selfinflicted nihilism, the never ending grudge if a spoiled girl, but this review makes me want to read the book for a good lough!
8
The CEO of the retail company I am working for is a devotee of Ayn Rand. I make 8.75 an hour. Enough said.
94
So if he was not a fan of Ayn Rand, you'd be paid more than that (already $1.50 over minimum wage) for unskilled work?
Do you think that CEOs who do NOT read Ayn Rand (she's been dead for decades) would pay you any more? If so, why don't you seek them out?
Do you think that CEOs who do NOT read Ayn Rand (she's been dead for decades) would pay you any more? If so, why don't you seek them out?
17
The CEO of my company loves murder mysteries. I'm still alive.
3
And if he disavows Rand tomorrow -perhaps risk for reward no longer makes any sense to him and you will be unemployed tomorrow.
Why don't you learn all you can at your 8.75/hour job, and use that knowledge to move into a better, higher paying job. Perhaps you will be the CEO one day.
Why don't you learn all you can at your 8.75/hour job, and use that knowledge to move into a better, higher paying job. Perhaps you will be the CEO one day.
When a writer of some accomplishment (like their views or not) decides to put one of their works on the shelf unpublished we, the public, should give them the benefit of the doubt that it was done for good reason.
"Fountainhead" and "Atlas", however grotesque some may find them in the context of twenty first century morals as they may seem, were important works at the time they were written if for no other reason than as catalysts for debate. This review seems to imply that "Ideal" is merely a rant. Perhaps Rand was smarter than her publishers.
"Fountainhead" and "Atlas", however grotesque some may find them in the context of twenty first century morals as they may seem, were important works at the time they were written if for no other reason than as catalysts for debate. This review seems to imply that "Ideal" is merely a rant. Perhaps Rand was smarter than her publishers.
16
Rand considered this work unpublishable even by her standards. Harper Lee considered Watchman somewhat of an embarrassment. I trust their judgements.
Best comment I ever heard on Rand's writing: "It makes you really mean." (My college roommate, then a sophomore). Stuck with me ever since, even as anything Rand wrote vanished like smoke...
62
It was an expectedly sophomoric comment.
5
Michiko, I only wish you had started this review with the excerpt with which you ended:
"when told that she was complicit in a young man’s suicide, she coolly says it was “the kindest thing I have ever done.”"
Honestly, this says it all.
"when told that she was complicit in a young man’s suicide, she coolly says it was “the kindest thing I have ever done.”"
Honestly, this says it all.
25
"...is less a person than a speechifying symbol."
The subject of this sentence could be any character in any book Ayn Rand ever wrote.
The subject of this sentence could be any character in any book Ayn Rand ever wrote.
34
Ayn Rand is overrated. Except for the fact that she disproved the theory that an unlimited amount of anything with unlimited amounts of possibilities and word combinations can write a book simply by chance. What she did prove was that the same perceived unintelligence not only could write a book but contrary to belief they can write additional ones, lastly she proved that everybody needs a literary agent even if they can't write.
11
OMG. Now I have to go back to college to read another one.
4
I'm sure Atlas Shrugged initially received similar pans from smug, left-leaning pseudo intellectuals with no real inkling of the writings of Nietzsche.
And then of course Atlas Shrugged went on to become a timeless bestseller, respected as the great piece of literature it is (except, of course for smug, left-leaning pseudo intellectuals with no real inkling of the writings of Nietzsche).
I trust now that Mr. Kakutani's axe is sufficiently ground.
And then of course Atlas Shrugged went on to become a timeless bestseller, respected as the great piece of literature it is (except, of course for smug, left-leaning pseudo intellectuals with no real inkling of the writings of Nietzsche).
I trust now that Mr. Kakutani's axe is sufficiently ground.
9
Michiko Kakutani is a woman, not a man. If you're going to insult a NY Times book reviewer, try to at least get her gender right....
67
Bad writing is bad writing irrespective of the politics.
Just because something is a best seller does not mean it is great literature.
The Da Vinci Code and The Celestine Prophecy are bestsellers.
Just because something is a best seller does not mean it is great literature.
The Da Vinci Code and The Celestine Prophecy are bestsellers.
74
Do you mean "sex?"--gender refers to language, not persons.
3
Will 2015 go down as the year of newly discovered novels previously rejected by publishers?
59
Money talks, everything else walks. Selfishness is good. :-)
1
Gonda does sounds over-the-top enough to make a pretty good premise for a movie -- for a writer and director capable of respecting Rand's philosophy and vision while also sending it up for being ultimately completely impractical.
1
Yes, it almost sounds like a cautionary tale of the consequences of taking objectivism too seriously. Kill another person in a fit of narcissistic superiority and find yourself an outcast among people equipped with normal human empathy. Maybe Rand didn't publish it because it inadvertently argues a need for help from others.
1
Summer reading for Paul Ryan, Rand and Ron Paul, and the rest of the Libertarian crew to sharpen their intellects.
30
Well, it probably won't sharpen their intellects, but it may give them a new slogan or two to employ at choice moments.
2
It feels good, " to stand alone against the world outside".
It is insane to stand alone against the world. To stand in resistance to everything is one way to raise energy, but it cannot ever be anything but the wish for death. We are all of One Mind and there is no enemy excerpt the ego, which projects itself quite nicely in the writings of Ms. Rand. Ms. Rand spends her time running from guilt, hiding it behind self-proclaimed superiority while the truly enlightened woman knows who she is, is content with herself, loves easily and well, and has no fear of the world or her own silent company. There is a law of Love and it is that I can ONLY receive when I give. It is In the giving that receiving is known - for that is the law of Oneness. All that I give is given to myself. Rand seems to have remained ignorant of this in her life. Perhaps next time around she'll be more open.
Is not "enlightened", based upon the feelings?
"— with its celebration of defiance and narcissism, its promotion of selfishness as a philosophical stance — so often appeals to adolescents and radical free marketers. "
________________
Paul Ryan republicanism in other words.
________________
Paul Ryan republicanism in other words.
41
Let's see. Ayn Rand—major works steadily in print and selling well for over 70 years and preserved in libraries worldwide for her hundreds of thousands of admirers (facts which clearly gall the (self) righteous and entirely uncomprehending corps of Times loyalists. Michiko Kakutani, many dozens of completely ephemeral reviews, most of which will soon be pulped for recycling.
No contest.
No contest.
11
Hmm, "Das Kapital" is still in print too. Marx was awesome!
36
Love Marx or loathe him, neither his intelligence nor his importance is much at issue. I'm entirely unimpressed with the smug dismissals of Rand without the least concession that she might have had something important to say. Although the lockstep groupthink here is impressive, I'll grant; Rand would surely have been entertained.
10
Limbaugh has a loyal following and once had a large number of eager listeners and is close to being a billionaire from hatermongering. Does he have something important to say?
2
My favorite part:
"with its celebration of defiance and narcissism, its promotion of selfishness as a philosophical stance — so often appeals to adolescents and radical free markets..."
Oh, I so remember Rand from my own adolescence! Arguments I would get into with my liberal boyfriend who was in law school! And then how I felt I grew out of it when I was exposed to a larger world, with people of different colored skin, different religions, different sexual orientations, etc. How shallow I was!
"with its celebration of defiance and narcissism, its promotion of selfishness as a philosophical stance — so often appeals to adolescents and radical free markets..."
Oh, I so remember Rand from my own adolescence! Arguments I would get into with my liberal boyfriend who was in law school! And then how I felt I grew out of it when I was exposed to a larger world, with people of different colored skin, different religions, different sexual orientations, etc. How shallow I was!
82
I had the same cringe worthy experience.
14
I was fortunate enough to come to Rand in my early twenties. I pulled out the good stuff - if you want things to happen you have to make them happen, and you don't look to other people to fulfill you as a person - and discarded the rest.
20
Thanks. You got what counts. So did I back then. The rest, what Michiko Kakutani points out, is what our political and business machine has become, pushy, blinded by their egos, killers.
3
Is the reviewer discussing Ayn Rand or Rand Paul?
36
The reviewer has her political panties in a twist, because GOD FORBID an author -- dead for 33 years -- not agree with her lefty-liberal views.
1
Ron Paul named his son after her.
Rand's 'ideal' isn't ficiton, 'it' is Trump.
35
“Kay Gonda does not cook her own meals or knit her own underwear. She does not play golf, adopt babies, or endow hospitals for homeless horses. She is not kind to her dear old mother — she has no dear old mother. She is not just like you and me. She never was like you and me. She’s like nothing you rotters ever dreamt of.”
That's a pretty intriguing quote.
That's a pretty intriguing quote.
6
Who, indeed, does knit their own underwear?
1
It might be a good idea for the reviewer gain a better understanding of what Nietzsche actually wrote, and meant, before tossing around misleading adjectives like Nietzschean in connection with Rand.
27
Any Rand would vote for Donald Trump. No questions asked!
14
Actually I think she would see right through him.
3
It would be lots of fun to watch them trying to figure out how to use one another.
3
Of course she would see right through him. I'm guessing She would still vote for him
3
Oh geez, hope Paul Ryan,( Republican/WI.) chairman of Appropriations Committee and budget guru for Repub Party doesn't read this. He credits his budgeting intelligence on Ayn Rand, arrested development happened in college. Makers and Takers.
28
Here's what happened to me: picked up The Fountainhead during my au pair year in the 90s, and it read/sounded all so great! Completely oblivious to, one, her critical reception in her homeland of choice, where I was not from, and in Europe, no one knows her, and, second, ANY KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE WORLD WHATSOEVER. Once I had taken in the first little spoon of such things as history, economics, philosophy etc. shame and embarrassment was all there was left for me to feel over my admiration for this limited mind. Rand is for people who are frightened of anything more complex than suburban Orange County, if it was an island and had a moat and no bridges (read all about it in Atlas Shrugged)(Or, actually, do yourself a favor, and don't). Her popularity in the US and the kind of crowd she is so popular with, i.e. many elected officials, i.e. people older than 25, is always astonishing and truly scary.
66
Exactly. I grew up in rural Michigan; I knew absolutely nothing about the rest of the United States, let alone the world. Frightened by race issues while I was in high school, I instinctively glommed onto Rand, as Objectivism entirely frees a person from responsibility for the life of anyone else. Quite the relief! But a nasty trap for the politically unwary.
4
A worshiper of the notion of the superman, in the twisted interior of her sick soul Ayn Rand was a Nazi whose juvenile ideas were intellectual pornography and whose talentless prose was and is literary vomit. Why would anyone publish more of it. But of course is has an audience. Small wonder she serves today as inspiration for the nihilists on the the lunatic right and self-proclaimed libertarians, who stop for red lights just the way the rest of us even as they they proclaim her and the notion that some are above and beyond all the rest and can make their own laws.
37
You do know she was Jewish, don't you?
3
Since she changed her clunky Jewish birth name "Alisa Rosenbaum" to "Ayn Rand," is often lazily referred to as "Russian" or simply "Russian-born," and was an atheist all of her life, it's easy for people to overlook her Jewishness, unless one spends more time researching her--two minutes, say--than most people will ever feel like doing.
Fortunately.
Fortunately.
5
Of course I do.
1
Ayn Rand is our James Gould Cozzens.
Trash.
See Dwight McDonald on Cozzens since in all applies to Rand in spades.
Trash.
See Dwight McDonald on Cozzens since in all applies to Rand in spades.
4
So many laws against toxic waste, and yet look what gets unearthed.
60
Wow! The vitriol running through these comments is amazing. Can you say "raw nerve"?
If you hate the message, shoot the messenger.
I guess that's what happens when you advocate for the primacy of the individual in society as opposed to some muddled gobbledygook about the collective good. We need equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. Heaven forbid someone is extolled for being exceptional. Harrumph! That's not fair! Let's put lead in everyone's saddlebag. That way, everybody gets a trophy.
If you hate the message, shoot the messenger.
I guess that's what happens when you advocate for the primacy of the individual in society as opposed to some muddled gobbledygook about the collective good. We need equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. Heaven forbid someone is extolled for being exceptional. Harrumph! That's not fair! Let's put lead in everyone's saddlebag. That way, everybody gets a trophy.
Interesting that someone so obviously and cravenly subservient to the extremely cynical beliefs of others is considered an authority or a creator of any sort of philosophical position. Nihilism is the ultimate in intellectual abrogation. Says a lot about the people who take this meaningless dreck seriously. Suggest replacing with Mickey Spillane
15
I trust a smug reviewer to recognize smugness in other writers.
8
With previously unpublished books coming our from Harper Lee, Dr. Seus, and now Ayn Rand....it's really starting to feel like the publishing industry has no confidence in current writers, and only wants to print the works of the deceased.
17
Really? Three books from very famous authors among the hundreds if not thousands that have already been published this year have you feeling this way?
7
American industry in general doesn't want to take risks on anything. If it can't be rebooted, revamped, or exhumed, it doesn't get produced.
4
It also seems to imply there are no good new ideas knocking about looking for publishers. If that is true --- if a work by Rand, dismissed by Rand herself (and lord knows she was not any great gift to literary criticism), has been rolled out to make a few bucks for New American Library, and if this ruse works --- we are in a lot more trouble than just having another Rand ms. to dismiss.
The end just may be nigh.
The end just may be nigh.
"Bloviate"!
What a great word!
I had to look it up, but I am already finding many uses for it, thinking of a couple of fellow doctoral students, for example.
What a great word!
I had to look it up, but I am already finding many uses for it, thinking of a couple of fellow doctoral students, for example.
5
Will Paul Ryan mandate all of his staff to read this book?
After all, Ayn Rand is his heroine. And this book is "ideal" for his liking.
After all, Ayn Rand is his heroine. And this book is "ideal" for his liking.
10
She's a dead ringer for Tilda Swinton in Snowpiercer
9
Everyone should watch her nutty interviews with Mike Wallace, available on Youtube. Hello, Narcissistic Personality Disorder! Reading this review, I wonder if she also would have carried a diagnosis of Anti-Social PDO?
17
"Objectivism" is so much less catchy than "Scientology".
14
With her pervasive arrogance and cruel outlook, Ayn Rand perpetually ignores the basic fact that self-reliance becomes a virtue only if and when one has the capacity and opportunity to exercise it.
6
She also said people who were charitable toward the infirm and mentally defective were poisonous.
2
Ayn Rand called it like it was. and like it is. She is my idol. Individual responsibility is the key to success, both personally and in societal terms. Until Americans get back to a personal work ethic and stop blaming everyone else for their failings and problems, things will only get worse. Believing that others should pay your way in life is a recipe for disaster.
12
I hope you realize Ayn Rand changed her name later in life so she could receive those Social Security benefits she supposedly abhorred. So much for "ethics".
58
Have you actually read her??? I can't imagine anyone more full of resentment & entitlement.
12
Individual responsible is *A* key to "success," but certainly not the only one. Remember that in "The Fountainhead," Howard Roark could never have been able to build his building himself.
8
Given this critic's less than sterling record I would suggest reading the book as either a Randian or anti-Randian and make your own judgment. Certainly Miss Rand's style and prose are fair game but only insofar as one deliberatively separates the literary from the philosophical.
3
Oh no! And here I always thought that the seemingly never-ending prose and the stilted style were Ms. Rand's strong points and that no one past adolescence took her philosophy seriously (at least without giggling).
4
What a wonderful wife she would have made for Donald Trump.
20
I think one would be better off reading Nietzsche.
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Hummm...how many meanings do we give the word nihilist.
NIHILISM. 1. a : a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless
I don't think that's a very complete description of Nietzsche's work.
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Hummm...how many meanings do we give the word nihilist.
NIHILISM. 1. a : a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless
I don't think that's a very complete description of Nietzsche's work.
5
You can dress an idiot in a suit, and he looks respectable. Just up to the point he opens his mouth.
Same with Rand: dressed in the trappings of respectable philosophy and literature, some fools will fall for it, but anyone with a head on their shoulders can see it as the shallow greed and egotistical self-congratulation it is.
We should stop giving attention to this useless has-been. Someday the only people who will know the name Ayn Rand will be historians of a certain era in American history known for the same shallow self-serving greed.
This junk is sophistry, not philosophy. Your average pouty teenager can think deeper thoughts.
Same with Rand: dressed in the trappings of respectable philosophy and literature, some fools will fall for it, but anyone with a head on their shoulders can see it as the shallow greed and egotistical self-congratulation it is.
We should stop giving attention to this useless has-been. Someday the only people who will know the name Ayn Rand will be historians of a certain era in American history known for the same shallow self-serving greed.
This junk is sophistry, not philosophy. Your average pouty teenager can think deeper thoughts.
32
I am afraid Rand's Objectivism does not even rise up to Sophistry, but remains where it began, as Solipsism. Mentioning her in the same paragraph as Nietzsche does Nietzsche a great disservice.
5
What this self-satisfied reviewer knows about the thinking of Ayn Rand, you could, as my mother used to say, put in your eye. She doesn't even try to take into account that it was a early, unpublished work of a young writer just starting out. Ironically, Kakutani puts down a Nietzschean protagonist (Rand wasn't a Nietzschean) for seeing herself as towering over losers while Kakutani sees herself as towering over losers like Rand and anyone who would be so dumb as to take her seriously. My guess is that no one in Kakutani's world will do anything but fawn over her for putting that bad, bad Rand in her place. Self-satisfaction and intellectual isolation are bliss.
10
NONE of Ayn Rand's characters are Nietzschean, regardless of what she might have said, regardless of what her fans and critics might say. The Uebermensch (Overman) was not some narcissistic power freak, but rather someone who was above politics, a kind of artist at living a higher kind of life. Unlike Ayn Rand, I've read and studied ALL of Nietzsche's works in the original German. It was Nietzsche's anti-Semitic sister who marketed her post-collapse brother as some kind of proto-Nazi. In his own words, Nietzsche had long regarded the Jews as the finest people in Europe, indeed as the educators of Europe, albeit woefully unsuccessful, esp. in the case of Germany, whose nationalism and anti-Semitism Nietzsche so despised that he refused to set foot in Germany for the last couple decades of his witful life--dragged back there only after his collapse in Turin. Nietzsche would have had utter contempt for this pygmy known as Ayn Rand.
67
Amen.
Thank you!
Don't sugarcoat it.
If she is an Uberfrau, why does she sheepishly seek refuge.
5
This has got to be the worse author I have ever read. The Fountainhead has got to be the stupidest, most unimaginative book written. Only a fool or politician would think highly of the inane philosophy generated from this epic pile of garbage. The idea of the 'Self' as being the most important thing in the world is ludicrious and inhumane. It will never work. However, it will work only as speech when politicians want to tout there corrupt agendas.
17
Your point is well-taken, and that is without pointing out the 50-page jeremiad by John Galt himself in "Atlas Shrugged." Rubbish writing. Not even "literary" rubbish.
Hard to say what's more predictable: That Rand's protagonist is a sui generis misanthrope or that the work is uniformly pilloried by Kakutami and NYT readers.
Rand is simplistic and recursive, yes, but to dismiss her outright ("[it's] only redeeming feature . . . [is that it's a] slender work") is equally simplistic shortsighted.
She offers uncomfortable truths about the shortcomings of our world and those in it, and many are worth considering as a counterweight to passive acceptance of mediocrity and torpor. Her dismissive reception here is particularly ironic, given that a majority of my fellow readers undoubtedly consider themselves several notches above the hoi polloi, and mostly self-made, whether they openly admit this to themselves or others).
Her idyllic libertarianism is of course untenable in the real world (one must be quite lucky just to be born genetically and environmentally capable of profitable work and achievement), just as utopian socialism is and has proved to be. Yet there is much to be learned from both.
Rand is simplistic and recursive, yes, but to dismiss her outright ("[it's] only redeeming feature . . . [is that it's a] slender work") is equally simplistic shortsighted.
She offers uncomfortable truths about the shortcomings of our world and those in it, and many are worth considering as a counterweight to passive acceptance of mediocrity and torpor. Her dismissive reception here is particularly ironic, given that a majority of my fellow readers undoubtedly consider themselves several notches above the hoi polloi, and mostly self-made, whether they openly admit this to themselves or others).
Her idyllic libertarianism is of course untenable in the real world (one must be quite lucky just to be born genetically and environmentally capable of profitable work and achievement), just as utopian socialism is and has proved to be. Yet there is much to be learned from both.
21
Gonda sounds a lot like Hillary.
2
Oh, please.
1
Its interesting that a writer whose main characters all seem to be sociopaths would be such a hero to so many modern/neo conservatives.
27
Ayn Rand's last selfie I guess.
Knitted undies do sound like the most interesting image in the book, if a bit dated, like the old girl herself.
Knitted undies do sound like the most interesting image in the book, if a bit dated, like the old girl herself.
13
Ayn Rand, a Jewish Russian emigre whose real name was Alicia Rosenbaum, was an extreme anti-communist right-winger. She worked as a screen writer in Hollywood where she came to believe that communists were clandestinely inserting "collectivist" messages into movies and thereby subverting the individualism which, ideally, characterized American culture. Some of her writings indicate the probability that she was extremely paranoid, believing that communists and other "collectivist" ideologues were lurking just about everywhere, planning to subvert the American way of life. She was an important contributor to the post-WWII anti-communist hysteria which became a secular religion in the U.S.
32
You are not mentioning about what happened to her and her family under the communists once they took power in Russia. She had first hand experience of the violence and repression of the new communist Russia.
2
a name changed by choice, whether through marriage or in order to avoid discrimination from zenophobia or reigious bigotry, is as real as any other name. it would be accurate to say "Ayn Rand, nee Alicia Rosenbaum", though why it is relevant to state her birth name (or to call her jewish which she wasn't - religion is not something one is born into) is not at all clear to me unless it is meant to be demeaning.
1
People are weird about her name. She had a PEN NAME -- Ayn Rand. So do many thousands of authors, actors, etc.
Many regular people changed their names at Ellis Island to sound "more American". Was this some nefarious plot on their behalf?
She was born Alisa Rosenbaum, but she married a man named O'Connor. Most women of that era changed their names legally at marriage. So O'Connor was almost certainly her real, legal name and hence it was on her Social Security card.
"Ayn" is just a fanciful spelling of "Ann". Big whoop.
(Being born a Russian Jew is an interesting fact of her background -- it does not imply she was a practicing Jew at all.)
Many regular people changed their names at Ellis Island to sound "more American". Was this some nefarious plot on their behalf?
She was born Alisa Rosenbaum, but she married a man named O'Connor. Most women of that era changed their names legally at marriage. So O'Connor was almost certainly her real, legal name and hence it was on her Social Security card.
"Ayn" is just a fanciful spelling of "Ann". Big whoop.
(Being born a Russian Jew is an interesting fact of her background -- it does not imply she was a practicing Jew at all.)
I think we should replace that usage of "entitled" by a more accurate term, "self-entitled". "Entitled" does have a meaning and it's not that you think you deserve inheritances, handouts, or adulation.
15
With regard to entitlement and inheritance, as a living person, I am entitled to pass along my property to those I choose. The entitlement, in my opinion, is not about the right to receive, it is about the right to give.
2
John, thanks for your opinion, with which I agree. I was specifically making fun of the misuse of "entitled" when "self-entitled" was what was meant. A definition: "self-entitled" means you decide you're entitled to something without having done that which entitles you to it. An example: A child thinking they are entitled to the parents' fortune, and suing when the parent leaves most of it to (say) the Smithsonian Museum. Not an example: Social Security. You are legally entitled to it if you have paid in during your employment. That is not self-entitlement.
Something new and exciting for the far-right wingers to read this summer.
24
What is the definition of "far right wing"?
1
Like so many writers of influential fantasy, Ron Hubbard, etc., she was born at the right time. She should have seen the trends and possibilities of it then, but what would she think and do in this day and age; with its mega international corporations and governments dominating everything, and the individual either becoming merely a tool, high or low in the system? I suspect she would have been an early suicide, and neither the literary, the philosophical nor the wider world would have missed her.
3
She didn't strike me as the suicidal type. And she lived through the Russian Communist Revolution and the Great Depression, WWII and all the upheavals of the 20th century. She was a tough old bird, and lived to 77.
That does not strike me as the resume of a suicidal type.
That does not strike me as the resume of a suicidal type.
I will not buy this book. I find Rand a terrible influence on the US, starting with Greenspan, Ryan and others. The US should never had left her into the country.
57
“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." John Rogers
152
Perhaps useful as a study in the pathology of the self-righteous prig element of our species. No doubt it will be praised by Dick Cheney, Donald Trump and Ann C.
55
She should have written comic books or graphic novels, though I enjoyed her books when young, but even then they were so obvious. The hero, the enlightened workman, the low and conniving, the preposterous, and then the hollow or self serving goals. Ayn Rand against the saps! Why do we still speak of her? The fact that people still read her novels proves her point. Man is dolt, except for the very special who are the young who read Ayn Rand, And those like Paul Ryan who speak of her and praise her in Middle age-- he would have fit in great as one of the dolts in one her novels.
27
This says it all: " It underscores the reasons that her work — with its celebration of defiance and narcissism, its promotion of selfishness as a philosophical stance — so often appeals to adolescents and radical free marketers. And it is also a reminder of just how much her didactic, ideological work actually has in common with the message-minded socialist realism produced in the Soviet Union, which she left in the mid-1920s and vociferously denounced."
What this does have, in spades, is a crass attempt to make money from the very adolescents and scam artists of the markets. Most of us grew out of this kind of adolescence at 17 when we discovered it was not sustainable.
What this does have, in spades, is a crass attempt to make money from the very adolescents and scam artists of the markets. Most of us grew out of this kind of adolescence at 17 when we discovered it was not sustainable.
10
Was that nasty swipe at socialist realism meant to provide a bit of political balance? I am fairly sure that the well-educated Kakutani has read Sholokhov's "And Quiet Flows the Don", considered to be both socialist realism and, by most people, great literature.
12
It may read better in Russian. It seemed a very good book to me, but definitely marred by the propaganda.
Re: " I am fairly sure that the well-educated Kakutani has read Sholokhov's 'And Quiet Flows the Don', considered to be both socialist realism and, by most people, great literature."
Most people? How many non-Russians have ever heard of this guy? I'd assume no one who hasn't made a special study.
Most people? How many non-Russians have ever heard of this guy? I'd assume no one who hasn't made a special study.
Brilliant, cutting review, Ms. Kakutani. One only wishes Ayn Rand were alive to read it. The observation that nearly all of Rand's work has significant overlap with Soviet propaganda always seems to escape her acolytes. We best keep this work away from Paul Ryan...
44
I remember reading Ayn Rand in college in the early 1970's. At first blush, it had great appeal - particularly among the young men. We followed Rand with Immanuel Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason", written in 1780 or so. We then returned to Rand's criticism of Kant. She not only despised everything about him, she rejected the idea that he was an intellect much less a philosopher. At the end of the day, Kant had pretty much won out over Rand. The general consensus was that Kant recognized/appreciated the role of an individual's nature, emotions, expectations etc., while Rand did not. It was Rand the "individualist" who, in the end it seemed, had no use for individualism. She was seen as the more rigid and less free-thinking.
37
What were you taking?
Tag-team philosophizing - I give Kant a 4.5 - it had a good beat but I couldn't dance to it.
Tag-team philosophizing - I give Kant a 4.5 - it had a good beat but I couldn't dance to it.
Rand's books are positivist trash. If you're sheepish by nature, read Geo. Orwell's "Animal Farm". If you're piggish, read Wm. Golding's "Lord of the Flies".
22
A next text book for politicians of both parties. Considering they have pretty much adapted Ayn Rand, hook, line and sinker.
The idea that only a select few can be above billions, sends a clear message of the United States today.
It is hard to believe that people follow their holy book, praise their supreme being and follow the mantra of Ayn Rand.
Finally, this Ayn Rand book should have remained "lost". The publisher, is trying to thrown water on "To Set A Watchman" and "What Pet Should I Get?". Two great works which would never see the light of day in Ahe rand's world.
The idea that only a select few can be above billions, sends a clear message of the United States today.
It is hard to believe that people follow their holy book, praise their supreme being and follow the mantra of Ayn Rand.
Finally, this Ayn Rand book should have remained "lost". The publisher, is trying to thrown water on "To Set A Watchman" and "What Pet Should I Get?". Two great works which would never see the light of day in Ahe rand's world.
6
Any guesses about where in NY the photo is taken? Could that be Grand Central behind her?
3
Definitely Grand Central, before the PanAm (now MetLife) Building blocked the view. She's standing about 49th or 50th and Park.
I think she's on Park Avenue. That's the New York Central Building (now the Helmsley Building) in the background, before the PanAm Building (now the MetLife Building) was built (in 1960). In the far distance is the Empire State Building.
Yup
Rand makes some legitimate points, but the exaggerations ruin almost anything. I always liked Howard Roark for this: some character asked R what he thought of him, and R truthfully replied. "I don't think of you." This is not unhealthy.
4
She created characters of morality and rectitude while she had none committing adultery with her protegé.
She insisted both betrayed spouses be aware of it caring little for their hurt from her treachery.
A bad, mean woman.
A worse author.
She insisted both betrayed spouses be aware of it caring little for their hurt from her treachery.
A bad, mean woman.
A worse author.
3
Art is not life.
And Ayn Rand's work is not art.
3
Thanks, but no thanks. If I wanted to read terrible writing with an agenda, I would at least make sure that I share that agenda.
37
It sounds like this one book that isn't written in the florid style of Soviet propaganda which she so disliked but tended to emulate. OTOH the story sounds like coverage of the Kardashians, so i guess there is a place for Rand in current writing. It's just not quite what she thought it would be.
14
When will they publish a book about how this selfish woman had the nerve to collect Social Security?
144
It is true that Ayn Rand collected social security payments.
She also justified this on the grounds that she was collecting restitution
for all the SS taxes she (like all of us) was forced to pay to fund social security
and other government welfare programs. Arter 50 years, the War On poverty has been as successful as the War On Drugs,
She also justified this on the grounds that she was collecting restitution
for all the SS taxes she (like all of us) was forced to pay to fund social security
and other government welfare programs. Arter 50 years, the War On poverty has been as successful as the War On Drugs,
What do you think selfish means?
JRMW,
and don't forget her education, compliments of Russia.
and don't forget her education, compliments of Russia.
2
I guess that even the best gigs have their soul-killing days. A Christ like act of self-sacrifice -- thanks for suffering through it for the rest of us, Ms. Kakutani.
85
That's an awesome comment!
12
Leave it to Ms. Rand to write this year's Republican Party Platform from the grave.
159
Couldn't have said it better!
11
Sounds like Gonda is the feminine version of Donald Trump.
44
Just what we all needed.
Either this vintage gem ramps up the time-frozen adolescents who worship her to new levels of stupid, or it's bad enough to keep everyone's mouth shut as to whether they read it or not.
Either this vintage gem ramps up the time-frozen adolescents who worship her to new levels of stupid, or it's bad enough to keep everyone's mouth shut as to whether they read it or not.
19
I can overlook clunky prose in the service of a rollicking story, or a well-researched work of nonfiction. I can enjoy a beautiful work whose author or characters seem motivated by an ideology different than my own. But Rand can't write, AND her ideas are poisonous. I made it through the Fountainhead fairly cackling at the inanity of the thing. Never will understand this cult of terrible personality.
115
I agree. In 1993 I plodded through "The Fountainhead" (evidently mistakenly classified as "literature" at the bookstore) and found it repulsive.
3
If you actually made it all the way through Fountainhead you have a far stronger stomach than I have.
1
Sounds painful, but like an apt character study of those who live through their 1.2K followers and who think that waxing philosophical in statements that don't call for intellectual depth or substantiation are doing well with 16K retweets, stars and thumbs up.
8
"a pessimist ... alienated from a world she regards with disdain." sounds like a description of many conservatives I know personally. I have never met an optimistic conservative in my lifetime but would like to some day, but at my age (my mid 60's), I am running out of time.
43
That's funny. My experience has been the opposite. Conservatives I meet (as opposed to those in Fox "debates") are routinely optimistic, while my liberal acquaintances are liberal because of their pessimism. Calls for liberal, government intervention derive from fears that without an expanded role for government, the world will continue its path to ruin. For liberals, the world is a bad place: think about the environment, income/wealth disparities, race relations, the role of business in political life. In spite of great ecological progress over the last half century, did you ever meet a happy environmentalist?
1
Was this written before or after Ms Rand's signature epic, "To Mock a Killingbird"?
74
Before. It's actually a first draft. It turns out, by the way, that Ayn Rand had had to resort to plastic surgery to make her look less like Dominque Francon, although unlike Dominque Francon (and Kay Gonda), Ayn Rand did, in fact, "knit her own underwear".
1
Trump's new campaign manager.
93
I'm afraid Kay Gonda might not be sufficiently narcissistic for Trump and his campaign. If she annoyed him, we'd have to worry about which body parts he was associating with hemorrhaging.
3
Even in death she is "Ideal" for the role.
3