Posted on 01/05/2005 11:22:24 AM PST by annyokie
Exactly
"Uncle Toms Cabin" is full of caricatures too.
As is "The Wandering Jew".
Etc. ad infinitum. Novels as political tracts are nothing new, and on the whole they aren't good novels.
Perhaps it is you who suffer from ADD,ADHD,and/or a terminal case of juvenile snottiness.
I think "The Fountainhead" is still in print. I don't know of many fiction works lasting that long without a revival. (Mozart's operas (note the double plural) have never been revived, they're still in the repetroire.)
Bwahahahahahahaaaaa!!!!! Good golly, general, you truly have a unique and wonderful way of getting straight to the point!
Most (if not all) of Rand's critics make that mistake about altruism.
The Fountainhead was better as a novel. Most likely because the evils were personified and one could focus on them individually. Atlas Shrugged just has a bunch of interchangeable bureaucrats as the bad guys (accurate, but not dramatic.)
Good point. Being a mom and loving it, maybe that's why I couldn't warm to her, though I agree that Atlas can shrug and is trying to right now in illegal-alien-infested states.
Duing the 18th century, America was considered an intellectual backwater (except for Franklin) in all areas except governmental theory, in which the Americans were considered to be the leaders.
"Uncle Toms Cabin" is full of caricatures too.
As is "The Wandering Jew".
Etc. ad infinitum. Novels as political tracts are nothing new, and on the whole they aren't good novels.
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A non-political example: James Fennimore Cooper wrote some of the worst prose even written (see Mark Twain's essay on the Literay Sins of James Fennimore Cooper to see one of the most searing, scathing, and hilariously funny reviews ever written in the English language), but nitwithstanding that, his story "Last of the Mohicans" as manifested in the Michael Mann film of the same name, is as masterpiece. Compelling characters, epic sweep, historical backdrop, romance, struggle, war, life, death, hatred, revenge... it has it all. (Okay, I admit it, I have a soft spot for Madeline Stowe, too.)
In the original book form, it is a disaster; I you don't believe me, you can believe Twain.
And that's a problem, because the literary flaws of the work eventually come to overwhelm and overshadow the message she wants to convey. I think, and the responses on this thread tend to support me on this, that there are a great many people who, by about page 600 or so, come to conclude that the proper answer to "Who is John Galt?" is "Who gives a damn?" This is a case where the messenger interferes with the message so very badly as to render it indecipherable to a goodly portion of her readership, because a lot of people simply aren't willing to slog through the acres of literary muck to find the pearl hidden somewhere in the sty. And as a result, despite the commonly accepted aphorism to the contrary, this is a case where the messenger really needs shooting, and shooting with great enthusiasm, followed by an unburial so as to shoot the messenger yet again.
It's a tough gig she set up for herself - I don't think there's been a decent philosopher who was also a decent novelist since Voltaire, and Rand failed to break that streak rather spectacularly. Atlas Shrugged is living proof of the truth behind the old saw - basically, if you want to write a novel, write a novel. If, on the other hand, you want to send a message, call Western Union, because the history of attempts to do both in one shot is littered with casualties, Rand being merely one of the more recent. Influential? Certainly, but it's entirely possible to be influential without being a literary masterpiece, as Ayn so ably proves.
Well, yeah. That point, made repeatedly throughout the novel, is about as subtle as a brick to the head. My concern is not what her point was or whether it was worthwhile or insightful or whatever - what I'm saying is that the method she chose to deliver that point unto thee has more holes in it than a shotgunned swiss cheese.
Yes, and Buckley's book about chambers, Red Hunter.(I think that's what it's called.)
Now, if you haven't read Chambers' book Witness, do so.
I read all of Rands books beginning with Atlas Shrugged in late 1964.
I agree.
I think what also makes it a better read is because the central issue in the Fountainhead (integrity vs compromise) is something the average reader could identify with.
Amen.
The great contribution that America has made to the World is in political theory.
Well, the written word is pretty powerful.
Tom Paines 'Common sense' and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' were very effective in moving people to act.
Rand's novels seem to have that ability also, maybe because they are so black and white.
There's always a connection;-)
"She also got her husband to leave his then-wife-and-family for her. Not much of a role model."
Ahhh .... didn't know this. I've read the book the Cult of Ayn Rand, but I don't recall this gem of a detail in there. What I do recall was that her husband from the very beginning was perfectly content to be witness and non protesting while she did her 'thing' w/ her inner circle, esp Branden.
This husband leaving wife AND kids tid bit ... do you have a source? For it is Rand's relationship to children I have always found to be the key point of focus when discussing her 'philosophy'...
[Sam the sham] Childrearing is altruistic. It is totally subordinating your schedule to the needs of another. I think you are making the common mistake of misunderstading what Rand meant by áltruistic'.I think Rand should've called it "enlightened self-interest" vs. "self-sacrifice" or "self-abnegation". Instead she named the fight as "selfishness" vs. "altruism".[fortheDeclaration] She meant giving up a 'higher value'for a 'lower one'.
[Doctor Stochastic] Most (if not all) of Rand's critics make that mistake about altruism.
Thers'a rather more common vehicle to lay out philosophical issues, known as an "essay", and somewhere within the vast, elephantine bulk of the novel is a terse, cogent, well-reasoned essay, of about 50 pages or so, just screaming to get out of the literary prison it's currently in. I would have been very interested to read that essay, and I probably wouldn't be nearly as hard on that essay as I am on the novel.
I thought that about Galt's Speech. She should have just admitted to herself that she was developing a philosophy, and that her new philosophy deserved a non-fictional treatise to introduce it to the world. Then the novel that illustrates the sense of life embodied in her philosophy could blossom as a novel.
Plus, I felt that every page could have been 3/4 its actual length with a little bit of softening up of the sentence structure. But I think she prided herself on her precise, excruciatingly grammatically correct use of English. Which I think partially explains why the dialogue is so stilted as well.
Atlas Shrugged is living proof of the truth behind the old saw - basically, if you want to write a novel, write a novel. If, on the other hand, you want to send a message, call Western Union, because the history of attempts to do both in one shot is littered with casualties, Rand being merely one of the more recent. Influential? Certainly, but it's entirely possible to be influential without being a literary masterpiece, as Ayn so ably proves.
As a novel, I did enjoy The Fountainhead more. But I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned We The Living. That was her best novel <ahem> qua novel, IMO. Maybe it's because she was merely trying to illustrate the reality and essential contradiction of the Communist revolution, and she herself had said that she hadn't developed the philosophy of Objectivism when she wrote it. So her sense of life shines through the novel in a much less forced way, and reveals itself to be much more realistic & humane for it.
I agree the terminology is hard to deal with.
One has to read her to understand where she was coming from.
One cannot say I love you without the I.
The great enemy she was going against was Kant, who taught that an act is only a virtue when one's highest values are given up.
So a husband must save an unknown woman and allow his own wife to drown.
If he saves his wife (even at the risk of his own life) it is not considered a virtue, but scorned as being 'selfish'.
You can see the roots of Nazi Germany and Communism in that philosophy.
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