If you're at all interested in her aesthetic principles, give The Romantic Manifesto a try--it's an essay collection, and quite short (by her standards at least--about 200 pages).
My point is that she had at least as much cause to reject Dostoevsky on "moral" grounds as Tolstoy. I'd bet a fiver that she has to twist herself into quite some contortion to justify that one.
Ayn Rand is interesting, in my opinion, as a pathological case. In that respect she's very interesting - like, super weird. As I said, she and the social ripples around her would make a brilliant subject for a great comic novelist, if there were one around with the depth to get it right psychologically. But I'm not going to work on anything like that, so I have little reason to read her. Sorry if I'm offending you by being so dismissive. I do appreciate your comments.
Thanks for the rather punchy, refreshing literary and ideological analysis of Rand in this thread. It's a pity you're not going to contribute more words to a critique of her ideas, but I can certainly understand why.
In one brief excursion you've managed to survey the land of Rand and come away with the essence of what I found so absurd about Atlas Shrugged, the only book of hers I've read.
As a young pup I found it enjoyable, and her relentless romanticism did manage to cultivate within me an appreciation of capitalism, industry, and money at some emotional level (that was not unlike jaysonelliot's experience with more traditional financial self-help books).
However I left the novel amused by its absurdity and extremism and promptly discovered the world of Objectivists and the cult of Rand. At that point amusement turned to bemusement at the ideological adoration heaped on her by what seemed to be a whole intellectual movement. Eek.
As you mention, it's easy to see why the greed-is-good financialization crowd go in for Rand - she provides a satisfactorily-sized ideological fig-leaf for naked greed.
gruseom|13 years ago
Ayn Rand is interesting, in my opinion, as a pathological case. In that respect she's very interesting - like, super weird. As I said, she and the social ripples around her would make a brilliant subject for a great comic novelist, if there were one around with the depth to get it right psychologically. But I'm not going to work on anything like that, so I have little reason to read her. Sorry if I'm offending you by being so dismissive. I do appreciate your comments.
justsee|13 years ago
In one brief excursion you've managed to survey the land of Rand and come away with the essence of what I found so absurd about Atlas Shrugged, the only book of hers I've read.
As a young pup I found it enjoyable, and her relentless romanticism did manage to cultivate within me an appreciation of capitalism, industry, and money at some emotional level (that was not unlike jaysonelliot's experience with more traditional financial self-help books).
However I left the novel amused by its absurdity and extremism and promptly discovered the world of Objectivists and the cult of Rand. At that point amusement turned to bemusement at the ideological adoration heaped on her by what seemed to be a whole intellectual movement. Eek.
As you mention, it's easy to see why the greed-is-good financialization crowd go in for Rand - she provides a satisfactorily-sized ideological fig-leaf for naked greed.
I'm off to read some Dostoevsky.