"Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of s**t, I am never reading again."
ping
Too bad the world has grown so ugly, or this would have been a hoot.
Rand ping.
I liked Tolstoy’s “War - What is it Good For?”
The economist Murray Rothbard was a friend of Ayn Rand’s until she chastised him for having a Christian wife.
Rand— Great ideas. Lousy writing....
Ayn Rand as serious literature is quite weak, but “Anthem” alone can put as much interest in a young reader as “Ender’s Game” or “Starship Troopers.” “Atlas Shrugged” was a decent read, but not canonical. I did like “The Fountainhead” the most though.
She doesn’t do well with having a voice, but her characters are interesting and have life, and her message is very important. Flannery should consider, however, that Ayn was not born into English. She also was more of a philosopher than a novelist - you ever read Faulkner’s poetry? Nah, I didn’t think so.
In 1960, The Fountainhead was THE book to read on campus. Its popularity would have caused a great deal of concern to those who had so little use for Rand’s philosophy, regardless of her writing style.
“I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail.”
Ho ho ho! Pretty good insult.
"Many who have read the book, or at any rate reviewed it, have found it to be absurd, boring, or contemptible, and I have no reason to complain, since I have a similar opinion of their work, or the kind of writing they evidently prefer."
There is ultimately nothing so juvenile as arguing over taste. Personally, I much prefer Rand's essays to her fiction and find O'Connor genuinely execrable in all her forms.
Thomistic Philosophy is a great introduction to Aristotelian philosophy. This handful of pages is worth more than a modern college education, since it deals with first principles.
Why bother sifting through Ayn Rand’s tiresome novels for ideas when you can simply read Ragnar Redbeard and have them laid out for you in the original form?
I just got done reading “Call of the Wild” by Jack London.
"Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of s**t, I am never reading again."
How many books did Flannery O’Connor sell?
How many books did Ayn Rand sell?
Let the consumer judge which is a better messenger.
Sense of life is set in childhood. It determines whether you love or hate one work of art or another. I love Ayn Rand’s fiction. Her novel The Fountainhead changed my life. Atlas got me going. The Comprachicos at the end of the New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution gave me an understanding of why my education crippled my rational faculty and the drive not to let them claim one more progressive education victim. That was 40 years ago. I’ve been happy philosophically ever since. When she was alive, I knew her personally and found she could take the current state of the world and make sense of it in a way no one could. It was a rare honor to have known a genius. They come along infrequently in history. Like her or hate her, she was an original thinker, astonishing to watch in her living room or lecture hall. I grew to love her. Thus, when people want to engage in arguments with me about her, I don’t answer. She needs no defense, her works are her defense.
Flannery O’Connor is far superior to Ayn Rand. Her fiction has the depth that comes from the accurate understanding of the fallen nature of her characters and their need of redemption. Rand’s work remains on the shallower level because without the proper understanding of human nature that comes with understanding Christianity, it is going to miss the mark.
I’m sure Rand’s atheism was distasteful to O’Connor. Nothing like a good cat fight between authors.
She was right about Tolstoy. She was right about a lot of other things, too.
L