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So, I'm trying to read Atlas Shrugged...

post #1 of 20
12/15/11 at 2:33pm
Thread Starter 

...and wow, there is almost no good way to end that sentence. Anyway, I'm 358 pages in, because, silly me, I wanted to have a more informed opinion of Ayn Rand and her work instead of just parroting other people's views on it.

 

Right now, I want everyone in the book Rand seems to think is heroic to die slowly and horribly. I've done a little research on Rand's shitty childhood and her disturbing teenage infatuation with a killer whose name escapes me, but that hardly excuses the batshit insanity of her philosophy as presented in AS.

 

Now, I realize that people have an inherent selfishness, but I also believe that in addressing others' interests, one's own interests are bolstered. Basically, making other people happy makes YOU happy as well. Rand, by contrast, is deeply suspicious of emotion and helping others.

 

Any thoughts, fellow Chewers? Pray for me as I stick it out. I want the full breadth of Ayn Rand's madness to be laid out before I call that great Dorothy Parker quote to mind: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

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post #2 of 20
12/15/11 at 2:52pm

After your done, try tracking down a three part BBC documentary called All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace.

 

Brilliant and scary as the first episode deals with how Rands philosophies - by definite design rather than accident - have come to affect the entire modern world and its current philosophical underpinnings (among a lot of other topics it draws connection between)

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post #3 of 20
12/15/11 at 2:55pm

My mom interviewed her once. Just a spiteful, crazy recluse. That's all you need to know. Her and her cultlike cronies (Greenspan and his ilk) have fucked up this world good and proper

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post #4 of 20
12/15/11 at 3:08pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Rain Dog View Post

After your done, try tracking down a three part BBC documentary called All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace.

 

Brilliant and scary as the first episode deals with how Rands philosophies - by definite design rather than accident - have come to affect the entire modern world and its current philosophical underpinnings (among a lot of other topics it draws connection between)


I like you, mate, but I sure as hell don't need any more reason to want to nuke this planet from orbit.

 

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post #5 of 20
12/15/11 at 3:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Spider View Post


I like you, mate, but I sure as hell don't need any more reason to want to nuke this planet from orbit.

 



No no, it's not depressing honestly, it's incredibly fascinating and Rand is touched on mainly in the first ep - its the parallels and lines they draw between objectivism and other underlying ideas that inform 21st century society that make it essential viewing...

 

 

 

Quote:

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is a three part BBC documentary series[1] by filmmaker Adam Curtis, well known for other documentaries including The Century of the Self, The Trap and The Power of Nightmares. The first episode aired on Monday 23 May 2011 at 9pm on BBC2.[2]

It claims that computers have failed to liberate us and instead have "distorted and simplified our view of the world around us".[2]

The title is the same as a 1967 poem and collection of poems by Richard Brautigan.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(television_documentary_series)

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post #6 of 20
12/15/11 at 3:24pm

 I wonder how many of Rand's right wing followers would still blindly follow her if they knew her real name was Alisa Rosenbaum.

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post #7 of 20
12/15/11 at 3:24pm
Thread Starter 

Eh, I may check it out at some point.

 

Did anyone see the "Part 1" movie this year? I've heard it's positively dreadful.

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post #8 of 20
12/15/11 at 3:35pm

Chris, I tried to read this when I was a non-political teenager because supposedly it was literature and realized about three-quarters of the way through exactly what you described in your original post.  I never finished it.  I don't see why anyone would.  It's just horsesh*t.  On this one, PK is exactly right. 

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post #9 of 20
12/15/11 at 3:39pm
Thread Starter 

I appreciate the advice, but I'm gonna finish it. I rarely stop reading a book, even a shitty one. I honestly WANT to get to the 40-plus page John Galt speech just to see if it's as ridiculous as I've heard.

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post #10 of 20
12/15/11 at 3:41pm

Ayn Rand was just fucking sociopath who needed to find some sort of way to justify her sociopathy.

 

And no, before anybody asks? I don't give a shit if the communists drove her out of Russia, it's not like she was some poor peasant the Cheka abused for amusement.

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post #11 of 20
12/15/11 at 3:49pm

The question is whether this book is the greatest work of literature ever crafted or if it's a pile of shit.

 

"A is A" - there is no inbetween.

 

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post #12 of 20
12/15/11 at 3:57pm

Though from what I know about it I don't find it hard to believe this book is shit, the reactionary fury of the people that hate it kind of makes me want to see what all the fuss is about...

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post #13 of 20
12/15/11 at 4:06pm

Most people who are reactionary towards Atlas Shrugged are reactionary because it's a shit book.

 

I'm not nominally one to say "Don't read this book" because I think we're all adults who need to make up their own minds and stuff. But unless you like numerous pages about how hard it is to be a rich industrialist and how everybody's out to fuck you over? I'd advise you to read something else.

 

 

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post #14 of 20
12/15/11 at 4:12pm
Thread Starter 

See, this is why I didn't start the thread earlier, because you lovely folks would be trying to talk me out of reading it at all like I was a suicide jumper.

 

Instead, I'm in it for the long haul. It's a shit book, but it's that kind of fascinating "WTF?" brand of terrible.

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post #15 of 20
12/15/11 at 4:27pm

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by LaurenOrtega View Post

Most people who are reactionary towards Atlas Shrugged are reactionary because it's a shit book.


I get the impression it's more because they don't like the ideology of it.

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post #16 of 20
12/15/11 at 4:55pm

Which is also fair. Because it's an absolutely abhorrant ideology.

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post #17 of 20
12/15/11 at 5:00pm

At the risk of making an overstatement, Rand's work always seemed to me like it was the "self-rationalization of a sociopath" in same way that something like Mein Kampf was the "self-rationalization of a psychopath". 'Abhorrent' is the right word.

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post #18 of 20
12/15/11 at 6:28pm

The problem with Atlast Shrugged is that it's 1000 pages.  That's long enough to wear out idle curiosity or a sense of intellectual even-handedness a few times over.  Then you're just left with the prose, which is dreck, and the philosophy, which is great as long as you're rich and privileged but can't enjoy it without reassurance that you totally deserve it despite all evidence to the coSUBMITntrary.

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post #19 of 20
12/15/11 at 6:34pm

Though I'll admit, the part where they shoot the security guard during the rescue attempt because he's unable to think for himself and get out of their way is kinda funny.

 

"YOU MUST CHOOSE!"

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post #20 of 20
12/15/11 at 8:22pm

Shameless plug:

 

A friend of mine recently wrote a book on Rand and Atlas Shrugged:

http://www.amazon.com/Rand-Hates-Tuscaloosa-Joplin-ebook/dp/B006CC1CNE

 

 

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