Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

[GrumpyGregry]

Who has read it?

What did you think?

 

[MacB]

yes many years ago and not much until I realised that people were actually basing real life stuff on her spoutings...that worried me and still does. If I was trying to be serious and a bit charitable I'd say she starts out well, in that work and other stuff. But doesn't go anywhere, it's just cherry picking other bits from greater minds and abjectly failing to pull it all together.

But just have a google at some of the people that were within her sphere

 

[GrumpyGregry]

yes many years ago and not much until I realised that people were actually basing real life stuff on her spoutings...that worried me and still does. If I was trying to be serious and a bit charitable I'd say she starts out well, in that work and other stuff. But doesn't go anywhere, it's just cherry picking other bits from greater minds and abjectly failing to pull it all together.

But just have a google at some of the people that were within her sphere

I may have pre-empted that. I read a piece saying this work was beloved of the neo-cons, a devastating critique of socialism and the welfare state and almost the 'sacred text' to some (yes I'm talking about you Alan Greenspan), and that knowledge made me want to read it.

 

[slowmotion]

I've never read any of her books but I did have quite a giggle at the film of The Fountainhead
[media]
]View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swOxKu80JpU[/media]

 

[MacB]

I may have pre-empted that. I read a piece saying this work was beloved of the neo-cons, a devastating critique of socialism and the welfare state and almost the 'sacred text' to some (yes I'm talking about you Alan Greenspan), and that knowledge made me want to read it.

I actually came to the book via a very different angle, I was devouring scifi fantasy stuff and someone gave me a copy. From that perspective it was hugely disappointing so that probably clouded my judgement a bit for starters.

But when I mentioned people and sphere of influence Greenspan was at the forefront of my mind.

I suppose it's a bit like Nietzsche, some even claim it's him simplified and made accessible but I think that's garbage. Though I'm not prepared to re-read it to see for sure. I'm afraid it just strikes me as something that morally scuzzy people like to latch on to in order to try and make their scuzziness seem respectable.

 

[Hip Priest]

Simplistic, poorly-written and as gruelling as doing the three grand tours back-to-back with square wheels. It has become popular amongst certain conservatives because it reinforces their worldview.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Simplistic, poorly-written and as gruelling as doing the three grand tours back-to-back with square wheels. It has become popular amongst certain conservatives because it reinforces their worldview.

Ayn Rand created their world view, she didn't reinforce it.

 

[MacB]

Ayn Rand created their world view, she didn't reinforce it.

Hmmm, I think the worldview was already there and it's always been a case of trying to cloak the scuzziness in respectability. The proliferation of books in the US re self help through selfishness, capitalism with god and a ton of other 'wonky' stuff is very telling. It's actually amusing to read/hear some of them trying to reconcile Christian values with greed.

There is a persuasive logic in the underlying theme of not being able to help others if you don't help yourself. Like a doctor needs to stay healthy in order to carry on healing others, or at least that's the way they like to portray it.

 

[marinyork]

I may have pre-empted that. I read a piece saying this work was beloved of the neo-cons, a devastating critique of socialism and the welfare state and almost the 'sacred text' to some (yes I'm talking about you Alan Greenspan), and that knowledge made me want to read it.

I had this sort of conversation about the book (and other writings) with someone at work a year ago. It's really hard to portray how loved the book is in small bits of america. I used to have quite a few libertarian friends in the states and they weren't obsessed by it, but it's a topic that would come up quite a bit. They knew people who were very into it. I had a lot of difficulty convincing my colleague how obsessed people were about it.

In a literary sense, no I don't like it much. I think that some of the people that like it so much probably have a disposition to like novels that have allegories about government and issues of 'freedom'. There are of course plenty of better written (and shorter) existential novels. Even putting that aside I find two other american authors of the same era much more interesting. If you take the book seriously, I think the biggest flaw is that a particular section near the end of the book could have actually replaced the whole rest of the book with a bit of editing (Galt's speech of which you can find on-line assessments of it better than what I can write). In some senses this is unfair because the book isn't just about what people think it is about, but for me (a) her philosophies on other things are better explained by other people and other books for which they are borrowed (b) the sanction of the victim (see chapter 14) and other bits is particularly unclear and comes across as contrived with a few hollow bits of dialogue. On the other hand if people follow up (b) with other writings of Rand (or other people) they might actually be bored solid.

Contrary to what a lot of the fans of the book say, I believe that the book is very much of its time and not even more applicable today. If you want to understand the american libertarian and conservative movements and that era, fair dos, read it. If you are wanting to read it for some other reason one may be disappointed. The other thing that annoys people when discussing it is that the book is about a strike (yes you read that correctly). Given some of the followers of the book, this is deliciously ironic.

 

[dellzeqq]

Couldn't get started. I was attracted by the name of the heroine, Dagny, which is (I assume) lifted from Knut Hamsun's Mysteries. I've got a bit of a thing for Hamsun and for Kierkegaard's 'Fear and Trembling' which is, I think, the springing point for both Hamsun and Rand (and, the cleverclogs amongst you might say, the Fridays Tour).

I did read The Fountainhead during my first year of architecture studies. I say 'read'. It's a comic book without pictures. The work of an idiot. There's a message in it that pre-pubescent architects thrill to - and, when I say pre-pubescent, a tour of London's horizon might tell you that however wrong Rand was about everything, she wasn't all wrong about architects. Crudely put you can divide metropolitan architects in to two varieties, both named after supposedly conservative American women - the upwardly-thrusting Randites and the mingling convivial apostles of Jane Jacobs. Jacobs work is a plea for thoughtfulness, Rand's is in praise of thoughtlessness. Money, huge money, goes in to thoughtless buildings from Dubai to Kuala Lumpur and from Uzbekistan to the Elephant and Castle, and since we now know that Greenspan and others were Rand acolytes, it's not surprising that the really, really huge money went in to thoughtless banking.

Rand's world, the simple world in which objectivity can be defined by a simple diagram or the so-called 'price mechanism', is the world of the fantastically wealthy, and, to them, the ties and attractions that fuel everything from cities to cycling clubs are meaningless. The reaction against, the world in which meaning endures, people form affiliations and pursue common purposes, that's my world, and I reckon it's a better one than Rand's by a very long way.

By way of a ps - Rand's ur-man did exist. His name was Robert Moses. He didn't build up, he built through, parting swathes of New York with bulldozers to build expressways (there's a plug for 'All That's Solid Melts in to Air' somewhere). I doubt that, apart from LBJ, any man bears more responsibility for the 'counter-culture'.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Well I've reached page 70, want to marry Dagny and punch her brother, and meet John Galt.