Ok, so after hearing so much for so long I finally got this from the local library to see what all the fuss was about and....damn. While I have a lot of respect for a lot of Rand's philosophy (not all of it) her writing style is torture to me. And I can't imagine I'm going to be able to drag myself through this tome SO.... for those of you who are RandFans and have read the book, walk me through it - both the plot, and the message being conveyed. Spoiler it if you want but please, tell me what I'm supposed to get from this thing so I don't have to torture myself for the next month picking it out of all that bloviation. Oh - and if you are a Rand hater, feel free to through out your standard rant - but be advised I don't give a rip for a discussion of the merits of Rand in this thread, I'm just interested in the plot and theme of this particular book.
i read Anthem and loved it, eventhough it painted my beloved soviet union in the wrong. this one, however, i just couldn't get into it the way i got into Anthem.
The only book of hers that I read was Anthem, I thought it was pretty good. Its short, you should try that one Nova.
I tried reading the fountainhead a few years ago after reading through some of her nonfiction. It put me to sleep after a few pages. Still, pretty good for writing in a second language.
I've been thinking of reading it, but threads like this give me pause. Ignoring the propertarian ideals, which I already know I'll dislike, is it that badly written? And how long is it?
Everyone has different tastes. For me, I find that I can skip PAGES of elaboration and miss almost nothing of the actual story. For example (and I'm kind of making this up but it's a general illustration) Hank Reardon decides after work to walk home. she spends about 5 pages telling you the sort of man Reardon is, what he thinks of the world, what people think of him, so forth and so on over the course of this walk. nothing is HAPPENING (except a guy walking down a path) and no one is speaking. I much prefer that such information furthers the story. If you can't work it into the sotyline, then give me a preamble where you list the major players and take a couple of paragraphs to describe the background info I need to know. As it is, it just puts a huge drag on the movement of the story. It's NOT about a language issue or anything (albeit sometimes I find her dialogue a bit stilted) - it's just that I can't have the course of the story interrupted for several pages of parenthetical exposition that doesn't move the story.
I enjoyed Rand's writing in Atlas Shrugged. The worst part was the excruciatingly redundant speech by John Galt towards the end, but the rest of the book was engrossing (political messages aside).
That book is a work of fiction designed to make the simple minded feel better about acting immorally.
While we're on the subject, "rational self interest" too often leads to "fuck everybody else, I've got mine." You can argue that's not immoral, but it's definitely not ethical.
You could probably argue the second point, but if you seriously haven't seen the first point demonstrated on this very board countless times, then you haven't been paying attention.
It's entirely ethical. It's your belief that others should be forced to believe otherwise that makes you a corrupt piece of shit.
