Lakeshark: "I remember getting to the famous "Galt speech", thinking to myself that finally she's going to lay it all out.
And wanting to slit my wrists about one page later.........ten, fifteen pages later he's still talking and somehow people are STILL listening to him on the radio all over the US of A...
I think a sense of humor would have helped her a lot........."
TBP: "Read all the way through The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Skimmed Anthem.
I've read The Virtue of Selfishness, , and other works.
I don't agree with everything Rand has to say, but I do agree with much of it, especially on capitalism and markets."
Dittos, dittos to TBP.
To Lakeshark's desire for more humor -- so what's not funny about Howard Roark laughing? ;-)
Perhaps more to the point: we should realize how much great comic material was available to Ayn Rand, coming from those world centers of international socialism (Soviet Russia, China) and national socialism (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy).
Especially for somebody of Jewish heritage, the whole world was a barrel of silly monkeys, you could hardly keep from rolling on the floor laughing out loud over it all, right?.
Of course, growing up in Russia, Rand doubtless inherited their darker, more ironic sense of humor, often so dark and ironic some people can't tell the difference between their laughter and crying.
While Ayn Rand was still a beautiful young woman, not millions but tens of millions of innocent civilians and conscripted soldiers died in the most horrible ways imaginable -- because of national and international socialism.
So Rand's humor was always infused with her certain knowledge of where socialism leads.
Finally, why, why, why does nobody ever point out the totally obvious fact that John Galt's speech is Ayn Rand's answer to Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor?
Indeed, I would propose that no young person should be allowed to read Ayn Rand without first reading Dostoevsky.
Then they can begin to appreciate Rand's great sense of humor. ;-)
As to her sense of humor, all I said is she could have used one, it might have helped.
The observation that her writing is bad is a correct one, she will never be considered a great novelist except by those who are true believers. As previously stated, her observations concerning statists are spot on, her understanding of how they gain and hold power couldn't be better. Philosophically she could point out what was wrong about the totalitarian left better than most. Unfortunately she didn't do quite so well with formulating how we should live and counter that totalitarian impulse, and how we could become full as human beings; her prescription for how to live was kind of stunted.
Hey, I have nothing against the woman, she made some great observations. I just find it difficult to laud her as the second coming of literary and philosophical genius.