Whittaker Chambers 1957 Review of Ayn Rand

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/ChambersAynRand.php ^ | 1957 | Whittaker Chambers

[Larry Lucido]

I read Atlas Shrugged and Witness. Rand and Chambers are both great thinkers. Chambers was not only mistaken in this instance but he unnecessarily poisoned the well between Rand and conservative shakers of the time. Rand herself could not see past her bitterness over her treatment in National Review, even when William Buckley offered to make up. It was tragic all the way around.

That said, Atlas Shrugged endures. How is Witness doing? Who is playing the lead in the movie?

[Larry Lucido]

Ah, just remembered. Harrison Ford played the lead. :-)

[Lorica]

bookmark

[DiscoProJoe]

What an incredibly boring review. I just watched the recent documentary, “Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged,” and it presents this article as the “most scathing review” the novel ever received in the months following its publication in 1957.

So I googled it, hoping to be humorously entertained by some stubborn, grumpy old geezer screaming insult after insult — line by line — but all I got was a boring mumbo-jumbo lecture with a worldview opposite of mine. The only valid point he makes is about the novel’s characters being too black and white (i.e., all-good or all-evil), but actually, Rand created them for dramatic effect.

Anyway, I want my 15 minutes back, so I can go spend it with my fellow atheistic, individualistic friends here in lovely capitalist China, where I’m happily building my life and living my values!

[stfassisi]

Dear friend,

I recommend reading the following book, it will help you grasp many things

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28054

[DiscoProJoe]

Hi stfassisi,

Thanks for the recommendation. I might look at it a little when I have the time, although I can’t guarantee it will change my views.

Likewise, you (and everyone) can check out an article I wrote this past October. It covers the topic of abusive manipulation tactics, and how to be less susceptible to them.

http://discoprojoe.hubpages.com/hub/If-I-Wanted-to-Hurt-You

Happy reading!

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Excellent, perceptive analysis, by Chambers.

Miss Rand acknowledges a grudging debt to one, and only one, earlier philosopher: Aristotle. I submit that she is indebted, and much more heavily, to Nietzche.

I had come to the conclusion that she never read Aristotle. She didn't exemplify any relationship to "the master of common sense."

[stfassisi]

I thought you conclusion was nice where you said...

With all things considered, in your life and in this world, you were meant to be unique, but not lonely; self-interested, but not self-centered; and were made to be an interdependent trader in a network of relationships, not a completely independent island in a vacuum.

[rayjenkins]

There’s much irony that Vladimir Nabokov and Ayn Rand (nee Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum) were both born in St. Petersburg around the turn of the 20th Century, both eventually wound up in the USA, and both wrote their major work in English. The difference: Nabokov is now regarded one of the greatest novelists of all time, and Rand is regarded by any serious person as history’s consummate flibbertigibbet.