newcritics

I often wonder how she would explain the music of The Beatles…

She has her place, but without collectivism we’d all still be in the trees.

I suppose I feel the way you do about the books, but I find that when I go back to them it quickly becomes apparent that Rand couldn’t right a believable line of dialogue to save her life. Curiously, as faras Atlas Shrugged goes, I live in Guelph Ontario, which was founded by John Galt. So I know who he is.
I think of her didacticist rather than a novelist though, she seems to have a limited understanding of human nature, however much she can write from her own opinion and structure a plot.

ie she couldn’t write(not right) a believable line of dialogue. sorry for the other typos, I’ll slow down.

Jerry,

Re: Rand’s lack of ability to write believable dialogue; I couldn’t agree more. But again, her books are based firmly in the idealistic world, not reality per se. Although I found the dialogue to be unrealistic and contrived, I think she makes up for it when she describes at length the thoughts her characters are having, the emotions they are feeling, and the motivations they have behind their actions. The way she does this, in my opinion, is unparalleled - she puts thoughts that we all have in writing in a way I have never seen before in a book.

I was thinking about this in the bathroom just now (don’t we all do our best thinking whilst taking a pee?) and I concluded that Rand definitely didn’t write these books to be enjoyed, for their dialogue, plot, or otherwise. She wrote them as a doctrine, as a literary example of her “perfect, ideal world.” You could almost call The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged “propaganda.” Think about those fifty or more pages at the end of Atlas when John Galt does the radio broadcast. (I am just finishing up Atlas.. Full disclosure: After about thirty pages of Galt’s diatribe, I skipped to the next chapter.. I think I got the gist of it all..)

My reaction to this is odd. I read “The Fountainhead” in high school, and loved it. Most certainly I had no ideas about believable dialog then, although my biggest dirty little secret was that I wanted nothing else but to be a fiction writer. Seeing certain failure there, I ran as fast and hard as I could. Even in those confused days, much as I enjoyed “The Fountainhead,” reading it cover to cover, it didn’t qualify as “good writing” to my vague, untutored mind. Page-turner, yes. Classic, no.
Then, too much as I loved “The Fountainhead,” I couldn’t get through “Atlas Shrugged,” or any of her other books. Even then, as a would-be writer, I considered it only fair to give any other writer the benefit of 100 pages, unless the work was assigned and then I read it scrupulously, like it or not. One hundred pages of “Atlas Shrugged” didn’t work well enough to push me on to page 101. Of course, that was ages ago.
In college, however, I studied real philosophers. My courses required that I read from Plato through to Sartre, in the actual texts, albeit translations (sometimes.)
The course list, scrupulously read, included Kant (my favorite), but also Marx, Adam Smith, Maynard Keynes (not fun), who still factor fairly big in philosophy regarding what’s right or wrong in terms of commercial fairness. Hobbes gave us a pithy, all too true picture of our lives with that “nasty, brutish, and short,” line. And Machiavelli could not be sold short. In many ways he was not wrong.
Compared to these big-wigs, of course, Ayn Rand doesn’t stand a chance, but I doubt she intended to write philosophy as they did. For one thing, they never sold well, and still don’t compared to her. But what she wrote amounts to a hybrid, and people have often used it to champion selfishness. Perhaps it’s not that far from the movie, “Wall Street,” with Michael Douglas’s line overtaking Hobbes’: Greed is good.
Not really and certainly not always. not:e heohas often Sheple

I don’t remember much about the novel, read it many years ago and have no interest in returning to it. What I do recall is Atlas Shrugged, which is even more ridiculous, (in paperback his radio broadcast amounts to close to 80 pages I think)and completely inorganic. Whatever Objectivism is about–laissez faire Capitilism, self-interest, refuting Kant– her books are dull tracts, not novels. (King Vidor actually succeeded in humanizing Roark, Francon and the rest more than Rand ever did. Those final shots in the ambulance have more empathy than anything she ever wrote.)

The movie did have its strengths (and weaknesses) but as a stone mason i kept worrying about the workers eyes doing all that quarry-work without safety glasses.
The Harlequin Romance he-man, she-woman stuff was little harder to take than when I read it in high school in the 70’s, but I do remember being titillated as you say Jennifer.
But what a horrible bunch of dump-on-Ayn crew we turned out to be, not much objectivism here, all subjective poo-pooing.
All that said, you began by talking about being challenged to your political roots, and I think that too challenged me. It could be one of the reasons I think of myself as an Independent Communitarian.
I reserve the right to hold my own opinions about the common good, but as long as I have equity in the commonwealth, then I’m glad that everyone else does too. And if they don’t, I’m willing to help them get it. There is too much Social Darwinism in Rand for me, humans are actually symbiotic lifeforms, we don’t breathe or metabolize our own food for ourselves, the symbionts in our cells do it for us (they used to be called organelles, but they have their own DNA). Life is not about dominant predators, its about mutual benefit, the trick is develop an organic form of government that is not as machine-like as the State (with all its bureaucratic mechanisms) but nor can our government simply be a sea of single-celled individuals all doing what they please.
The next generation will be raised knowing that we - and nearly all other life forms on the planet - are symbionts, and that will change the way humans think, and it will change the way they problem solve.

“There is too much Social Darwinism in Rand for me.”

That’s odd, because by my reading, there isn’t any. Rand held that each of us should pursue our own self-interest, neither sacrificing our self to others nor others to ourself.

She held that we should deal with each other as traders (both economically and spirtually), where each party benefits.

She held that the political system of capitalism is what enables human beings to pursue their own interests, and that rather than resulting in mass starvation among the poor (which is what “social Darwinism” implies), it creates an abudance of wealth that enables everyone to live better.

Are you sure you’re familiar with Rand’s ideas, or are you confusing her with someone else?

What do you people mean by “believable dialogue?” If you mean people just don’t talk like that, then I think you’ve missed the point. No one ever talked like Hamlet, either.

When thinking about novels as far out of the contemporary mainstream as The Fountainhead and (especially) Atlas Shrugged, one needs to be careful not parochially apply standards deriving from that mainstream. Why is lack of “realistic dialogue” a flaw? Shakespeare and Homer’s dialogue isn’t realistic or meant to be. Neither is Hugo’s or Rostand’s or even Oscar Wilde’s. It is not fault that these authors don’t write characters who speak as ordinary people do, nor is it a fault in Rand. Her goal wasn’t to present people as one encounters them in every day life, and there is no basis for judging all literature by standards that derive from this sort of goal. Rand’s dialogue is not “unrealistic” it’s *stylized* in such a way as to highlight those aspects of reality that the author thinks are most significant and interesting.

Readers used to naturalistic novels often come to Rand’s works with a prejudice that they need to overcome before they’re in a position to evaluate them. The best approach is either to think of her novels as sui generis–to take them in their own terms, putting one’s preconceived notions about what literature should be aside and asking what the novels accomplish–or else to compare them to literary works from a range of periods, rather than just to other mid-20th Century novels. Rand self-identified as a Romantic writer, and comparisons to other works from that school can be especially illuminating. Someone who thinks of her writing in this way may still dislike it, but he will not dislike it in the parochial manner that I think is exhibited by some of the earlier comments.

As to whether Rand’s novels are didactic or works of propaganda rather than proper novels, they certainly do aim to propagate abstract ideas, and in this sense can be called propaganda, but they’re not didactic or propagandistic in the sense of having their literary features subordinated to the purpose of teaching or persuading. Her novels all have exciting and inspiring plots and compelling characters. The ideas are conveyed organically by the plots of the novels. The philosophical speeches give abstract expression to what’s already been conveyed in this fashion and they serve important plot functions. If one reads carefully, one finds important changes in the way in which characters think and act after certain speeches has been made. This is most evident in the case of Rearden in *Atlas Shrugged* after he hears Francisco’s speech on the meaning of money. The abstract perspective conveyed by Francisco to Rearden causes Rearden to come to certain realizations and to take certain actions which drive the plot further. Similar remarks apply to the other speeches in Atlas and The Fountainhead.

As to how her philosophy compares to that of the “big names” of the past, I think it compares well, and I’m not alone. There’s a growing group of philosophers affiliated with major universities studying Rand’s works and influence and in many cases advocating her ideas. There are recent or forthcoming books on Rand from a number of well regarded academic presses, including Oxford and Cambridge.

Of course each reader needs to decide for himself whether and to what extent Rand’s ideas (or anyone else’s) are true and important, and discussion with other readers can be an aid in doing this, but intelligent discussion of ideas does not consist in listing the names of other authors that one was once assigned and then simply announcing which one’s preferences.

When thinking about novels as far out of the contemporary mainstream as The Fountainhead and (especially) Atlas Shrugged, one needs to be careful not parochially apply standards deriving from that mainstream. Why is lack of “realistic dialogue” a flaw? Shakespeare and Homer’s dialogue isn’t realistic or meant to be. Neither is Hugo’s or Rostand’s or even Oscar Wilde’s. It is not fault that these authors don’t write characters who speak as ordinary people do, nor is it a fault in Rand. Her goal wasn’t to present people as one encounters them in every day life, and there is no basis for judging all literature by standards that derive from this sort of goal. Rand’s dialogue is not “unrealistic” it’s *stylized* in such a way as to highlight those aspects of reality that the author thinks are most significant and interesting.

Readers used to naturalistic novels often come to Rand’s works with a prejudice that they need to overcome before they’re in a position to evaluate them. The best approach is either to think of her novels as sui generis–to take them in their own terms, putting one’s preconceived notions about what literature should be aside and asking what the novels accomplish–or else to compare them to literary works from a range of periods, rather than just to other mid-20th Century novels. Rand self-identified as a Romantic writer, and comparisons to other works from that school can be especially illuminating. Someone who thinks of her writing in this way may still dislike it, but he will not dislike it in the parochial manner that I think is exhibited by some of the earlier comments.

As to whether Rand’s novels are didactic or works of propaganda rather than proper novels, they certainly do aim to propagate abstract ideas, and in this sense can be called propaganda, but they’re not didactic or propagandistic in the sense of having their literary features subordinated to the purpose of teaching or persuading. Her novels all have exciting and inspiring plots and compelling characters. The ideas are conveyed organically by the plots of the novels. The philosophical speeches give abstract expression to what’s already been conveyed in this fashion and they serve important plot functions. If one reads carefully, one finds important changes in the way in which characters think and act after certain speeches has been made. This is most evident in the case of Rearden in *Atlas Shrugged* after he hears Francisco’s speech on the meaning of money. The abstract perspective conveyed by Francisco to Rearden causes Rearden to come to certain realizations and to take certain actions which drive the plot further. Similar remarks apply to the other speeches in Atlas and The Fountainhead.

As to how her philosophy compares to that of the “big names” of the past, I think it compares well, and I’m not alone. There’s a growing group of philosophers affiliated with major universities studying Rand’s works and influence and in many cases advocating her ideas. There are recent or forthcoming books on Rand from a number of well regarded academic presses, including Oxford and Cambridge.

Of course each reader needs to decide for himself whether and to what extent Rand’s ideas (or anyone else’s) are true and important, and discussion with other readers can be an aid in doing this, but intelligent discussion of ideas does not consist in listing the names of other authors that one was once assigned and then simply announcing one’s preferences.

Sorry for accidentally posting (essentially) the same post twice.

Following Greg’s comments above is a hard task, because I couldn’t agree with him more.

To me, the reason Rand’s ideas have been so often overlooked and shrugged off without much thought is because her ideas are incredibly radical (from the root up) and demand much more than mere introspection from the reader. One cannot study her philosophy and interpret it under the light of the prevalent meanings of concepts and notions from traditional philosophy or common parlance.

Take for example Rand’s opposition to not only dictatorship, tyranny, communism, socialism, collectivism, and statism, but also to democracy and equality and egalitarianism.

It appears, at first glance, silly for Rand to oppose democracy–after all, that is what the mainstream folks wish to spread across the globe.

What then *did* she advocate!?

It is much easier (and intellectually less taxing) to assume that Rand preached and advocated some kind of aristocracy of the gifted or the rich, an oligarchy, or the rule of Neitzchean ubermensch. Or, even easier would be to dismiss Rand as a ranting egoist.

But it takes an honest, unprejudiced investigation into her ideas to realize that she–consistent with the rest of her views–held democracy as nothing better than the tyranny of the majority, as the practical application of utilitarianism in politics, where the majority (the masses) can choose the law of the land without regard for individual rights, wherein if there were a society of enough Nazis then one could legally exterminate the Jews (as it happened in Nazi Germany), or if the majority people in some country were not ready for self-determination among homosexual couples then such sexual expression can be outlawed (as is the case in democractic India).

Even the thugs in Hamas were democratically elected into power in palestine.

Anyway, this was merely one example to illustrate the radical level at which Rand functioned. As other examples, the traditional philosophical notions of intrinsic value, agent-independent valuation, non-omnicient (and therefore, imperfect) knowledge, the mind-body problem of duality, and the problem of identity/self are overturned and disposed with at their roots. Rand did not seek to merely solve these problems but fundamentally point out how these problem arose in the first place–due to false and illogical premises that ignored man’s existence, nature, and relationship with reality. For example, for Rand, talks about “values” are meaningless without a valuer.

Anyway, I have commented enough atleast for you to take some serious interest in rethinking your own ethical and philosophical roots, and considering Rand’s ideas from a more intellectually serious and honest (unprejudiced) perspective.

A beautiful work, uplifting, inspiring … and motivating!

Thanks for your post, Jennifer.

The real fun comes when you join an actual Ayn Rand discussion forum such as http://www.rebirthofreason.com or even a local club site such as http://www.PropelObjectivism.com for a direct dialogue with Objectivists. I encourage you to do so.

Jennifer, apparently the serious discussion on Rand finally began after the amateurs had their say. I’ll have to admit that I haven’t read Rand since high school, lo these 30 years ago now. I did watch the movie of Fountainhead recently.
As for not liking her dialogue, I guess it’s a case of how it sounds to my ear. I don’t much like Hemingway’s dialogue either. Not being a scholar of the 1600’s I have no idea what people spoke like back then, but given Shakespeare’s having invented so many words it’s unlikely that anybody spoke like he wrote either. I’m not sure my objection is a lack of realism itself, and having the movie dialogue as the only recent connection to the story I’m clearly talking from ignorance rather than knowledge, I just never believed I was listening to human beings talking to one another. Maybe her dialogue is an alienation device intended to force us to think about her ideas rather than her plot, but then why the Harlequin Romance story line.
All that said, I remember liking Atlas Shrugged but couldn’t tell you anything about it other than that the line Who Is John Galt is repeated several times.Glad the specialists weighed in.
So I’ll surrender, and go to my library and re-read Atlas.

Jerry,

An author’s decision to make his dialogue more or less closely resemble typical speech definitely has effects, but I’m curious as to why you think that more ordinary dialogue encourages one to focus more on the plot, while less typical dialog like Rand’s focuses attention on the ideas at the expense of the plot. That’s not my experience. I find that Rand’s decision to strip her dialog of the sorts of ordinary features that associate a given person’s speech with a geographical area, time period, or social class has the effect of focusing attention on both the plot and the ideas at the expense of the sort of “local color” which can sometimes be charming in certain sorts of period pieces (e.g. Huck Finn), but would be distracting in a work like The Fountainhead.

Rand’s sort of dialogue also has the effect of making the characters seem more like people (motivated, as real people are, by their ideas and values) and less like stereo-types. In reality, each person has any number of traits that are simply absorbed from the culture around him and are therefore distinctive to his region and time. If an author decides to emphasize these features it’s because he thinks that they are especially important to who the characters are. Rand’s decision to de-emphasize these sorts of traits reflects an opposite view of human nature, but I don’t think it draws one’s attention to this view, as much as it draws ones attention to those aspects of the characters and their actions that Rand does think are important, and these are the very aspects that are central to the conflicts that drive the plot.

Perhaps, though, we’re talking at cross purposes, since you’re opinion seems to be based largely on the Fountainhead film. I do think that much of the dialogue comes off as strange and stilted in the movie. The visual aesthetic of the film doesn’t match the style of the dialog (it’s too ordinary) and the acting and directing leaves something to be desired.

-Greg

I was really thrown for a loop when I first read the Fountainhead too. (And my name is Jennifer…although I’m sure any other Jennifer knows that’s not much of a coincidence.) What really fascinated me was the ruthless way Ayn Rand judged her characters, from a perspective that was completely foreign to me. That was what drew me in. The more I read, the more unusual her perspective seemed–especially the bold and unequivocal way she presented ideas. I thought–how can she be so sure of herself? At the same time I could see that she thought to question things I had never thought to question before–and I considered myself pretty smart at the time.
In any case–I was hooked, and still am almost 15 years later. I hope you decide to read more of her.

I don’t think Rand is a novelist, but it has nothing to do with inability to write convincing dialogue, or the vagaries of plot construction, or the tenets of Objectivism. She’s a dull, clumsy rhetorician (her short novel Anthem reminds me of one of those Twilight Zones where the moral is pounded home every 30 seconds or so lest the meaning be lost)who dispenses with all the irrationality, folly, unreason that make human nature what it is. Roark and Galt aren’t characters, they’re Platonic supermen, ego ideals of some Objectivist perfection with Rand’s license to rule the world, but they’re not human beings.
Also: Vidor’s film does have stilted dialogue, and the acting does leave something to be desired–but look at the soucre material! Gary Cooper railing against small men and weak ideas…for some six minutes! But Vidor along with DP Robert Burks (who shot about a dozen movies for Hitchcock) get a few things right: the strong rigid lines, the light in the quarry and that final POV shot in the ambulance.

Sean,
If you consider the portrayal of heroic men and women, and heroic ideals, to be dull, what would you consider exciting?

If you think that irrationality, folly and unreason are the essence of human nature, do you hold those qualities to be vices? If so, do you hold reason and wisdom to be virtues? If you do, then why would you object to the portrayal of the rational man as heroic?

The more rational one is, the more human he is. Isaac Newton was far more human than Adolf Hitler. Which would you rather have as your ideal?
Many people are irrational, unreasoning fools. It does not follow that they have to be. A human being chooses what kind of a person he will be, he creates his own character.

I do not find Ayn Rand’s writings dull. I find them exciting and inspiring! She succeeded very well in her purpose of the projection of an ideal man. Of man as an end in himself, functioning at his very best, fully rational, living for his own sake, refusing to sacrifice himself or to sacrifice others - and thriving.

This ideal is reachable for humans. It is an ideal precisely because it is both possible to man, and the very highest goal that man can aspire to.

It’s interesting that you mention Anthem, since it is considered the intellectual ancestor of The Fountainhead. Anthem falls under the dystopia genre as its theme emphasizes the importance of individualism in man’s life and the need of the ego as its foundation.

One way in which she did this was the first person perspective, which was unlike all her other fiction. It allows us to know exactly what Equality was thinking. Also by having the reader think as a collective i.e. using the third person plural “we”. By doing so, the reader is able to recognize that “we” is not used as the normal plural sense in which it is meant to be used but rather even when Equality is alone he uses it to refer to himself, enter the contradiction and the horror that the destruction of the individual causes.

Anthem is not the cause of the constant pounding and neck stomping that was prevalent during its time and today, but it is a way out of it. As Equality so vividly demonstrates as he escapes into the Uncharted Forest and is able to start living for the first time. If this meaning is lost on anyone it is no fault of Rand’s. As to who that leaves, check for yourself.

To all those who are interested in reasoned discussion on Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, as Miss Janisch expresses, I would such starting with her works themselves. There is a suggested reading list here.

I know I said I’d go to the library and get the book but I haven’t done that yet, we’re all having so much fun here.
Richard,
I’m not sure I can agree with you that a good human is more human than a bad human. But then I don’t idealize any human, certainly not myself. I might like one human more than another, I might prefer to be in the company of one over another. And certainly writers have produced some extraordinary villians who are more interesting than their heroes.
Roark is an architect, and while this pertains to the movie more than to the book because in the novel we only have words about architecture, while in the movie we have the promotion of the modern skyscraper et al as Roarks work and I find that particular vision of the city scape to be exceptional ugly and dysfunctional. But that may be a cheap shot at the book.
That said, I’ll go back to the nature of dialogue, because as a playwright, human speech fascinates me. A long time ago I developed a notion about dialect and dialectic, the emotional and the intellectual voices of a ‘character’. Dialogue is most interesting to me when it conveys two things: personality, the sequence of an individuals’ feelings; and character, the sequence of their ideas.
I don’t think it matters to me whether dialogue appears in a play, a film, prose or poetry. If dialogue doesn’t carry both polarities I don’t think it has much power.
In the end I don’t have much use for people who are all strength and no weakness. The entire natural world exists because biochemical-electrical weaknesses allow for bonding, St.Paul’s notion that ‘in our weakness are we made strong.’ I don’t think Roark is a strong person, and I think his independence from all communitarian impulses makes him weak, but in a way that prevents me from bonding to him or his ideas.
Again I don’t know enough about Rand to speak about Objectivism, but I’m not much interested in supermen, and I’m almost certain that I don’t believe that ‘people who don’t need people are the luckiest people in the world.’

In reference to the comment that:
“… without collectivism we’d all still be in the trees.”

It is without individualism, independent thinking and the advent of capitalism that man would still be “in the trees”.

Those who still live in fully collectivist (tribal)societies literally do live in whatever conditions are found in nature in
their area. They live in poverty and
die young.

Those who live in the world’s most individualistic, most capitalistic societies, live in the space age, the information age, the poor these countries are wealthy compared to the average person in tribal
societies, and we live to a ripe old age.

The difference is not resources. Africa has lots of minerals, fuel, etc. So do other countries with primitive, collectivist cultures.

The difference in the success of their countries and ours, is the difference between mysticism and reason. It is the difference between altruism and individualism. The difference between collectivism and capitalism. Civilization is better than tribalism. Collectivism sucks.

Jerry,

If I may presume, Richard was not basing his evaluation of whether one is human or not on the fact of good vs. evil. I think he meant to go much further as a starting point. You must first recognize that man’s nature is defined as a rational animal. Reason being the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses. If this is taken as your premise, going all the way towards a system of ethics based on rational self-interest, then you will see that it was Hitler who threw out any claim to rationality when he constructed a system of thought based on the destruction of reason which by its nature is anti-life, anti-man, and as a consequence can be view as actions of the sub-human or inhuman.

As to the model buildings in the film, they were never meant to illustrate Rand’s theory on aesthetics. In fact she made a point not to linger on them too long in the film as they would surely be criticized for their unrealistic nature.

Oops! I meant to say “the poor *in* these countries”

I suppose I’m not a progressive in the sense that I’m not convinced that all this technological advance is particularly rational, it’s certainly not sustainable, and depending on how badly it collapses, we may all be back in the trees, albeit the trees will all be dead.
I guess my difficulty with your POV Richard is that you (and Rand) seem to insist on divided singularities, individualism equals good and collectivism equals bad. We live on a bi-polar planet, why shouldn’t we all have varying degrees of bipolarity ?
I’m not sure a planet full of Roarks would be much fun to live in, in fact I think it would be rather dreary, some sort of purgatory in fact. Unlike Roark, I actually like other people, I may not trust many of them, but I try not to hold that against them.

Help I’m posting between posts.

Michael, I suspect that humans are the only animal that is irrational, and I think there is a good reason for that,
perhaps arising out of uncertainty, the dependence of our survival on imaginative insights from skewed perspectives, and something to with improbability theory and the fact that two of earth’s most abundant gases are reactive and should be blowing up and putting an end to the planet except for the highly improbable fact that all the life on the planet appears to be engaged in the common purpose of regulating the planet’s gases by breathing an atmosphere beneficial to all the life on Earth.

Hello All,

I just wanted to throw in my lot with the other Rand fans. I’m a big fan of the Fountainhead, but an even bigger fan of Atlas Shrugged (my favorite book!)

I first read her non-fiction at age 16, then read the novels a few years later. I found them absolutely riveting. Romance, intrigue, the rise and fall of empires, action, battles of the intellect; her books have got it all.

I can’t help but laugh at the lady who said she skimmed over the last 40 pages of John Galt’s speech because she “got the gist of it all” in the first 30 pages. I have a BA in philosophy and have been studying religion and philosophy seriously for over 15 years, and I *still* learn things from closely reading Galt’s speech.

Rand is a brilliant philosopher, artist, and novelist. She definitely derserves a thorough reading.

Jennifer, I’m happy that you found yourself a good book to read!

–Dan Edge

Let me just say that I am so delighted that we’re having such a good discussion and debate about Rand and The Fountainhead. I had a feeling this would happen, and I am most pleased.

I’ve refrained from commenting because often you can learn a hell of a lot more from “listening” rather than speaking.

In response to Dan’s last comment: “I can’t help but laugh at the lady who said she skimmed over the last 40 pages of John Galt’s speech because she “got the gist of it all” in the first 30 pages. I have a BA in philosophy and have been studying religion and philosophy seriously for over 15 years, and I *still* learn things from closely reading Galt’s speech.”

That was ME, Dan! haha.

I’m sure you’re absolutely right; I was so anxious to get on with the rest of the story and watch the world fall through the “looters” fingers like sand - I couldn’t read Galt’s broadcast in its entirety for that reason as well! I am finishing the book up right now, and I promise to go back and read every page of his speech, because no doubt it is thought-provoking, to say the least.

Thanks again everyone for another great thread!

I am writing this from my local Library where I am about to check out some Rand if they have any in.
But of course, more fun than thinking about reading Rand, was this thread, thanks Jennifer, a good time was had by all.

Jennifer,

Now that you have read some of Rand’s fiction, you should consider reading some of her non-fiction. The non-fiction helps you to understand the novels — why the characters act and think the way they do; what motivates them.

You could start with “Philosophy: Who Needs It?” or “The Virtue of Selfishness.” Later, try reading “The Ominous Parallels” by Leonard Peikoff — this is a book about how the United States is going in the same direction as Nazi Germany, because we are following the same philosophic ideas that led to Hitler’s rise. Read about it here: www.peikoff.com

Also, go to the website of the Ayn Rand Institute www.aynrand.org

There is a lot of misinformation out there about Ayn Rand, so make sure you learn from a reputable source.

Enjoy!

I too have been lurking on this thread, rather than posting and have learned quite a bit - mostly that three’s a tremendous debate about Rand’s legacy. this has been great reading - thanks everyone!

“Unlike Roark, I actually like other people, I may not trust many of them, but I try not to hold that against them.”

This is a common misconception, but in fact, Roark likes other people–passionately. Consider his attitude toward his customers, toward Mike, toward Cameron, toward Wynand, toward Dominique. He did not simply say, “Oh, those are fine people.” He was deeply devoted to them because he *respected* and *admired* them.

For the same reasons, he did *not* like Keating or Toohey. To have affection for them would have been treason to Wynand and Dominique.

Why? Because to like someone is to value him. Who you like and who you love reveals your values, your standards. Yet there is nothing good about Toohey and Keating, nothing to like or admire, and so to like them would be to announce that one either has no standards, or that one’s standards are corrupt.

Now, let’s consider this from the other side. Did the “social” people like Keating and Toohey actually like other people? Absolutely not. They both used and manipulated people in order to substitute for their lack of self-esteem (Keating sought prestige and approval–Toohey sought power and domination).

This is why Roark says, “To say ‘I love you,’ one must first know how to say the ‘I’”. It’s why Ayn Rand held that the only person capable of liking people is the independent man, the one who doesn’t need people in order to live and feel validated.

Consider your own experience. With what kind of people have you had your most positive relationships? With needy people? Or with people who have their own lives and their own goals? The dependent person or the independent person? The person who will do anything for your approval or the person who doesn’t need your approval, and does for you what he does because he genuinely values you and wants you to be happy?

I’m not going to pretend here that I have a masters degree in literature and that I understand all the nuances of the points the some of the more astute and learned contributors here have made in this thread.

However…

I was a little disappointed that no one commented on my initial point:

I often wonder how she would explain the music of The Beatles…

I wasn’t kidding. Most people would say that The Beatles had two Howard Roarke’s in their midst, and who (but a few) would say that the music that John Lennon and Paul McCartney created alone after the breakup of The Beatles eclipsed the music they did (along with the contributions of George Harrison, Ringo Starr and George Martin) as a de facto committee, or even came close? I don’t think this is a rare exception – I think genius can often prosper from the input of other individuals of lesser talent as easily as it can be diluted.

I am contending that pure, laissez-faire capitalism can be as much (if not more) of an obstacle to progress and improving the human condition as pure socialism. I would argue that art and craft in a capitalistic society suffer much more due to compromise imposed upon the artist and artisan by management who are concerned about increasing profit and cutting costs than by less apt colleagues who do not share in their singular vision. I don’t know that Rand would have completely disagreed with that statement, but many of her disciples profess exactly that.

My problem isn’t with Ayn Rand or with The Fountainhead - it is with people who use her work as an excuse to allow, justify, and advance the agenda of the wealthiest people to the determent to the rest of us.

Richard if you find Objectivism something to live by or strive towards, or find her portrayl of the heroic inspiring, good luck reaching those exalted heights. Still doesn’t make Rand a novelist–and that’s where this thread began.
Your phrase “the more rational one is the more human” would pretty much eliminate the likes of Kafka, Joyce, Musil, Gombrowicz, Tanizaki and a zillion other 20th cetury writers (not to mention at least three-quarters of English Lit.)who rummaged around the corners of the psyche, cataloging the permutations, foibles, follies, lusts–and occasional beauty. So the anawer to your intial question Richard is no, I don’t find it exciting because they’re not men and women–they’re Forms, big ego-Ideals that march thru the books in lockstep to rail, cavail, and hector all the miserable cretins who want to supress their abiding genius. Whatever Objectivist lessons she’s teaching,it’s not fiction. Compared to the dizzying leaps of her (birth-countrymen) Gogol or Bulgakov or even the early(recent) fiction of Victor Pelevin, she’s pretty dull.

Unfortunately my library didn’t have a copy of Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged checked in, but I did get We the Living and the Romantic Manifesto.
I won’t say anything more about Fountainhead until I’ve re-read it. I started the manifesto, and clearly I too believe there is an objective reality that exists and which can be understood and dealt with.
She does write clear philosophical prose without horns growing out of her tongue, and I agree with much that she says without much difficulty, so far…
So perhaps our Randians can explain whether she addresses notions of paradox,since she appears to want to deal with both reality and ideals in the same breath…seemingly without recognizing the importance of common good distinct from individual good.
As per the Viscount’s comments about the Beatles, I too am discomfited by what I sense as an extreme individualism in her thought. Granted her Soviet childhood gave her no reason to trust collectivism, and granted that two individuals like Lennon and McCartney (as opposed to Lenin and Trotsky ?) transcended their individual strengths by combining them precisely because they were confident in their individual abilities, and equally assuming that if Ms. Rand had a large rock to move in her yard she would have not tried to move it alone but would have asked for help from however many people it might have taken to move the rock, and thus isn’t actually as extreme as some of us are assuming she was, can the Randians (not collectively of course) watching us muddle through this say that she did recognize paradox, but was simply trying to build a society one human at a time ?

“I think genius can often prosper from the input of other individuals of lesser talent as easily as it can be diluted.”

That’s true, and Ayn Rand would not disagree. To take one mundane example, in the most recent issue of *The Objective Standard* (an Objectivist publication), the first article is co-written by Yaron Brook and Elan Journo, and I am confident in stating that working together they developed a better article than either would have on his own.

But that doesn’t destroy that what each of them contributed was *his* contribution, made possible by *his* own effort, and for which *he* deserves moral credit.

Moreover, it is not *always* true that great creations are the work of multiple people. Think of the great discoveries and creations in history and what you generally see is the work of one great human being: from Aristotle, to Newton, to Edison, to Darwin, to Ford, to Shakespeare, to Beethoven, to Ayn Rand.

“I am contending that pure, laissez-faire capitalism can be as much (if not more) of an obstacle to progress and improving the human condition as pure socialism. I would argue that art and craft in a capitalistic society suffer much more due to compromise imposed upon the artist and artisan by management who are concerned about increasing profit and cutting costs than by less apt colleagues who do not share in their singular vision.”

As opposed to the “compromise” imposed on him by government beuracrats?

We have two choices: either leave people to make their own way on a free market, where they must try to persuade others of the value of their achievments–or give the government the power to decide which artists and producers are entitled to patronage.

History has shown what happens in the each case: In the former we get the car, the computer, and *The Fountainhead*. In the latter we get PBS and Piss Christ.

(Ayn Rand wrote an entire essay on this specific point. See “To Dream the Non-Commerical Dream” in *The Voice of Reason.*)

“My problem isn’t with Ayn Rand or with The Fountainhead - it is with people who use her work as an excuse to allow, justify, and advance the agenda of the wealthiest people to the determent to the rest of us.”

The agenda she advanced and which Objectivists advance is: freedom. Which means, capitalism, the social system that protects man’s rights by leaving him free from physical force.

Such a political system protects the rights of all citizens, rich or poor, and so enables them to pursue their own welfare.

“So perhaps our Randians can explain whether she addresses notions of paradox,since she appears to want to deal with both reality and ideals in the same breath…seemingly without recognizing the importance of common good distinct from individual good.”

It’s not that she didn’t reconize it–it’s that she denied it. To be good is to be good for *somone*, for some particular individual pursuing some particular goal. There is no collective good apart from the good of each individual that makes up a group.

On the contrary, the only purpose of such a notion is to sacrifice the welfare of actual individuals, which is just what happens in nation’s that uphold the “public good” rather than individual rights.

So here we come to a whole new kettle of fish.
“Moreover, it is not *always* true that great creations are the work of multiple people. Think of the great discoveries and creations in history and what you generally see is the work of one great human being: from Aristotle, to Newton, to Edison, to Darwin, to Ford, to Shakespeare, to Beethoven, to Ayn Rand.”

In this I think like a social creditiste, science is rooted in the work that others did before, Shakespeare based Romeo and Juliet on earlier texts, everyone adds their piece to the puzzle, nobody creates in a vaccuum. Rand herself in ‘manifesto’ calls herself a bridge between the past and the future.

“We have two choices: either leave people to make their own way on a free market, where they must try to persuade others of the value of their achievments–or give the government the power to decide which artists and producers are entitled to patronage.”

How is a market run by corporations any freer than a market run by government ? Personally I’d like to see free enterprise unshackled by corporate capitalists (precisely I suspect because corporate capitalism is collectivist. so maybe I’m more extreme than Rand, maybe her support of capitalism is nothing more stemming from the weaknesses of her anti-communist childhood biases.) The idea that the market is free is absurb, and the Social Darwinism I spoke of earlier is beginning to rear its ugly little head. Social Darwinism is dominant predator bio-economics. But the Fact is, the REALITY is we are symbiotic life forms, humans don’t breathe for ourselves, the symbionots in our cells do, we exist only because of Mutual Benefit.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the state is as dangerous as corporations, and I certainly don’t think capitalism as a political system enables the poor to do anything but serve their predatorial masters.

I think I’m even more of radical individualist than Rand was because I don’t fear common good, I don’t fear self-sacrifice. I guess my ideal man is a little closer to Jesus than to Roark.