Personally I love reading novels of worlds that have no basis in reality. I also love authors that repeat themselves over and over because I have memory issues and can’t remember the last sentence I’ve read.
Oh, and I also love reading novels of worlds that have no basis in reality.
I don’t know. She sucks you in with the atrocious writing and two dimensional characters who are all just stand-ins for an opinionated author, but she really seals the deal with the fetishization of rape culture and how it inexorably ties in with hyper-capitalist American culture. It’s really the whole package.
I can’t defend any of that, and I’m ashamed to say, that crap worked on me for a bit as a man barely a boy, in the 90s. What helped me was looking at other movements like scientology and Charles Manson.
Just trying to say, don’t throw someone in the trash just because they read trash.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
Fountainhead worked on me a bit. I still think integrity and innovation are important, but I bet I would have gotten that way even if I hadn’t read it.
I don’t make weapons, I don’t work for Twatter or Faceboot, I do make an effort to keep refining and upgrading designs instead of endlessly recycling the old, I do pull out dead useless code. I don’t win every battle and I don’t even fight every battle. And very generally speaking I do think if you do work you are proud of you will be happier.
At the same time you should not assume you are the smartest person and if everyone is doing X you need to at least consider that they are on to something.
See? You don’t need a 400 page novel. A paragraph works.
I just think it’s fascinating that racists can write. Like, good for them.
“This book is a testament to how even the most stupid among us can write a fully fledged book with words, chapters, and everything.” ~@tea
I struggle to see how anyone could have written the Turner Diaries and not have either been trolling or gotten some serious “Are we the baddies?” Energy in the process…
Yeah, honestly, I don’t mind reading novels that argue points I disagree with, but the repetitiveness is unbelievable. One of the reasons John Galt’s 60 page speech is so intolerable is that all of the points he makes in it had already been made two or three times before.
Does he actually have a speech, that lasts 60 God damn pages?
Yes. And I really hope whoever shelled out cash to see the Atlas Shrugged 3 movie had to sit through every agonizing second of it on screen.
If it wasn’t it sure as heck felt like 60 pages.
I like science fiction too!
“This author deserves to die on welfare”
She did technically die on welfare.
Thatsthejoke.jpeg.zip
She criticized society, yet chose to participate in it. Curious!
To borrow a Britishism: Are you daft, mate?
You want her to live out in the woods? That’s basically a death sentence, yeah?
Oh! That’s some good stuff. But then why didn’t you upload the reference, fam? Or at least add “/s”? ^^
I should’ve, I thought it was more obvious.
Poe’s Law, fam! ^^
Since everyone else is talking about Ayn, let me tell you about Dorothy Parker.
You know that movie, “A Star Is Born?” She wrote the original version. She was a famous writer, known for her devastating insults. She was also an early Anti-Fascist and supporter of Martin Luther King, JR.
Totally underappreciated and far more deserving of fame than Ms. Rand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Parker
And one of the greatest wits of American history. She deserves to be up there with Twain.
If nothing else, she should be remembered for all time for coming up with the phrase “what fresh hell is this?”
Dorothy Parker was once asked to use the word horticulture in a sentence. “You can lead a horticulture,” she replied, “but you can’t make her think.”
If nothing else, she should be remembered for all time for coming up with the phrase “what fresh hell is this?”
Well there you go, I know nothing else about her and she’s already my new favourite person.
Also famously an early lgbt ally. Before the term gay existed in the 20s and 30s the polite way of asking if a man was homosexual was if they were a friend of Dorothy.
TIL. I always thought that only referred to the ‘Wizard Of Oz.’
Back when I was in junior high in the early 1980s, I found a copy of Atlas Shrugged on my father’s bookshelf, and started reading it. I can’t remember how far I got into it, but I do remember thinking it was just awful in just about every way: story, writing, pacing, everything.
I asked Dad about it, “Oh, that. It’s terrible, isn’t it?” A friend had given it to him. Neither one of us finished reading it and after that it ended up at a book reseller.
On the plus side, he’d gone through his books and gave me James Clavell’s Shogun to read, which was an awesome novel.I tried reading it twice and didn’t finish either time.
The only other book I struggled with was Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The travel-log sections were entertaining, and the relationship with his son was interesting, but the discussions on the nature of quality were completely lost on me.
I did get through Zen on the second attempt because I thought it was worth it. I saw no value in Atlas Shrugged at all.
Zen and the Art was a big deal for me. A journey to the state I wanted to leave. It made me love what I was giving up.
What or where were you giving up?
Montana. Great place to grow up. I left to see the world and for work. Now I can’t go back (until I retire maybe) for job and personal reasons.
Was your father an English teacher? That’s how I ended up reading those books around that age. Add some Hesse and the Gulag Archipelago and we may be related.
Dad had an interesting career. Started as an office clerk for a railway with only high school education. Then he got into using an IBM 650 (IIRC) for doing freight rate calculations. How he managed that transition, I have no idea. He didn’t care for being cooped up all day flipping switches, dealing with punch cards and tapes.
He switched to marketing and got on there very well and retired after 37 years as a regional director.
He always has a book on the go, even now at 83. He has an eclectic pile of them that he kept, from Zane Grey to an early history of the Civil War written around 1870.
So interesting. I just read everything on the shelves. It was mostly confusing. Animal Farm is not like Charlotte’s Web.
The audiobook isn’t so bad. It’s certainly 64hrs of audio… And took me 3 months.
I like to fall asleep listening to audiobooks, except they have to be kinda dull otherwise I get actually invested. You may have just picked my next one!
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the characters are well-written imho.
I hate to break it to you, but the characters in Atlas Shrugged are famously one-dimensional. They’re terrible caricatures who are 100% good or bad. They never develop or learn anything new about themselves.
It’s obvious who’s good and bad from page 1, which makes the massive length even more ridiculous. It could have been a pamphlet that said “money good, helping people bad”.
The best possible book review is just a recycled quote from Billy Madison:
“what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
That’s how I ingested it. I did it on work related cross country drives at 1.3x speed. It was… underwhelming and made me ask “What the hell is this?” and “She can’t seriously see the world like this, right?” many, many times.
Shogun is a good one. My favourite book for a long time, and it currently sits on my bedside table for a second read. I’m just amazed that you mentioned it.
I remember not picking up another book for some time after finishing Shogun. I wanted to hang onto it as long as I could. It’s epic.
I still cannot believe a novel this terrible inspired a successful movement that was thoroughly endorsed by presidents.
If I had a time machine I would go back in time and publish it, but make sure that it only had a limited release. Never got super big just big enough so that some people had heard of it, and then I would sue Ayn Rand when she published her version. Win easily and announce that I wrote it as a parody, mocking people who think that being overly self reliant and rejecting community is a good way to live, for they are like house cats… overly dependent on others yet thoroughly convinced of their own independence. “As Ms. Rand demonstrated by stealing my book and claiming it as her own.”
Then I’d put a time capsule with the fucking source code to Bioshock 1, 2, and Infinite somewhere to preserve those games in the timeline.
The damage that book has done to this world…
Really elaborate plan that will probably end up failing because the book, and its author, only got big because it gave greedy bastards an excuse to be so unashamedly greedy. If not this trash then another work of trash.
Ayn Rand did more than write a book, she actually started a movement and even had a fling with L. Ron Hubbard to learn how to properly cult…
She never believed in scientology and thought L. Ron was a great man for running such a successful con.
She also hated religion in general, for she saw it as a form of collective bargaining and hated it for encouraging people to not be selflish.
Rand was a monster
Win easily and announce that I wrote it as a parody, mocking people
Then watch it backfire horribly. Conservatives (including those who call themselves libertarian) are blind to satire. You might remember that the_donald was satirical at the start. So was the game Monopoly.
Yeah but Ayn Rand’s reputation would be ruined and she would never have started “Objectivisim”
“The question isn’t if I am allowed to do these things, but rather who is going to stop me?” - Ayn Rand, not even pretending she isn’t the villain.
That question probably hit different in 1955 than it did in 2005
I mean they still had comic book villains back then, didn’t they?
My point is not based in comic books
In 1955 the society told everyone don’t do shit to change anything. It was a time of restraint and repression.
In 2005 society was in a revolutionary mode and told everyone to question and disrupt everything.
So to tell people to challenge what was allowed in 1955 actulally was a good and vital thing to change society. In 2005 challenging what was allowed was mostly done for personal gain, exploiting the system.
It will probably tie back to mind control efforts fighting communism.
There has always been a market for telling people what they want to hear.
Oh boy let me tell you about some horribly written books often touted as the words of God.
If you’re talking about the Bible. Religious texts typically require historians and theologians to figure out the meaning of… lots of hard to understand passages requiring a context not easily understood in the modern age.
It’s not like Ayn Rand which was an incomprehensible mess from its inception.
Among other books in the same spirit. Collections of folk tales twisted into horrible cults.
Reading Atlas Shrugged is more like a hazing ritual conservatives inflict on each other.
I look back and my parents let me read this in high school without comment…like wtf mom and dad.
It’s an intelligence test. Either smart enough to smell the bullshit, or you need to be tutored on critical thinking.
You mean the ones that can read anything longer than a National Enquirer piece. There must be dozens of them!
I dunno, when I was in high school there were a number of Ayn Rand essay contests with prize money.
I won’t say they’re good books but I did make good money from reading them.
I remember reading The Foundtainhead and, when I finished I realized what a lousy, shitty philosopher Ayn Rand was.
And that all my architect friends had terrible egos.
Is that where Ted’s ego came from in HIMYM? I thought it was just Ted, but maybe all architects are horrible?
That’s my experience, I framed houses for a few years after college and the architects thought they were gifts from God. Engineers were mostly cool, though. Most of them would understand “Your design is dumb and here’s why. We’re gonna have to change it” and they’d usually learn from it.
My best day on a job site was watching the architect wearing zero safety gear walk right into a temporary support for a wall. It was fantastic.
That explains a lot about Frank Gehry. That and a complete lack of aesthetic sensibilities.
And that all my architect friends had terrible egos.
Not as bad as engineers but in my experience yes. Which is fine, it would be nice to have a few unique buildings to look at.
Very early on in my career in consulting engineering, I had an architect tee-off on me for changing the ceiling heights of the office space she’d designed.
I’m electrical, all I was concerned with was circuiting her lights, that was it. I had documentation showing that I’d worked off of exactly the same ceiling heights she had sent me. Heights that she’d apparently changed somewhere along the line without informing the client, who was an international conglomerate, and notoriously picky to work for.
That could have blown over, had she not berated me over email while CCing the client, my management and just about anyone else involved with the project. I made sure to “reply all” showing where the change had happened. She was replaced on the project the following week.
After that I stuck to industrial projects, where the buildings were non-descript concrete and steel boxes with no architectural involvement.
Generally firing an architect midway through a project means the project is dead, particularly since they control the permitting and if they are the arch of record they have their stamp on it. Wonder how that went.
I have to be in the minority of sane people who enjoyed this book.
To be fair, I had no context and read the first 10 pages assuming it was satire. The rest of the experience was bizarre. In the first chapter the main character ignores the advice of the train employees and orders the train to run despite the signal being red. It’s touted as taking responsibility when none else would. Utterly insane to me that someone who had been out of the area for decades, making management level decisions, would decide they know better than the worker on the ground who does the job daily. The contempt and arrogance leading to destruction - a great critique of management structure and survivor bias. How is it not satire?
Through the looking glass with a self important free capitalist narcissist, with almost no experience of the world and commerce outside their bubble, self hating tirade against perceived inability. Fascinating stuff
I read ‘The Fountainhead.’ It was enjoyable the same way a book about talking bears who fly magical ponies would be fun, a fantasy not connected to actual human life.
I’m the person who basically never throws a book away (I did once, but I bought a replacement after the old version literally broke apart in several places). But I would light a chimney with “Atlas shrugged”, if only to prevent it from falling in gullible hands.
Our high school literature teacher gave the class each a copy of Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead as a graduation gift. This was before I knew anything about these books, but once I figured it out it explained a lot about her. Nice for the most part, overdramatic and cheap at times, mostly just went to work or the casino, and smoked like a chimney.
Never read those books though I might still have them somewhere, I’m bad at throwing out gifts.
It does not spark joy. Don’t let it take up your precious real estate. Out it goes.
The amount of people with both the patience to read it and the inability to tell that it is describing a fantasy land with magic and wizards is worrying.
Eh, it wasn’t bad as a revenge fantasy. You might like it if you enjoy thinking about how all the people who don’t appreciate you would be screwed if you just left. The political philosophy being proposed won’t be too offensive if you already lean libertarian.
My main objection to the book (other than the infamous speech, which I admit I couldn’t read all the way through) is that it’s a sort of morality play with with exaggerated good and bad and no shades of gray, but it keeps denying this and insisting that the real world really is that black and white. The reader ought to take it with more than a little pinch of salt.
Oh, and that Ayn Rand’s self-insert has a BDSM fetish I really would have preferred not to know about. (Why do authors keep inserting their kinks into books? I’m looking at you, Robert Jordan. And especially at you, Piers Anthony.)
My main objection i similar to our but broader in scope. None of the main characters feel like real people. They are Platonic Ideals of Ayn Rand’s fantasy lifestyle, full stop
That always annoys the shit out of me when not one well. It can be done well, but it takes a significantly better author.
I think author-kinks are a bit misrepresented (especially with Jordan, who I read more as commentary on power dynamics) but the point is not invalid at all.
None of the main characters feel like real people.
Apparently she did that on purpose. From Wikipedia:
She wanted her fiction to present the world “as it could be and should be”, rather than as it was. This approach led her to create highly stylized situations and characters.
I consider that to be a wishful revisionism on her part. The truth is shes just a bad writer.
The charactors in her first book “Anthem” are exactly as wooden and fake as the charactors in “Atlas shrugged.” She never developed any finesse or depth because real people aren’t as shallow as the imaginary people she dreamt about.
You might like it if you enjoy thinking about how all the people who don’t appreciate you would be screwed if you just left.
I see you have read my dream journal.
You really can’t win. If you people are dependent on you it means more work if/when you take time off. If people don’t need you, they don’t need you and this world is just that colder.
Ugh, Piers Anthony. I remember absolutely LOVING Piers Anthony’s books as a kid; I went back a while back to reread them as an adult (and read the ones I hadn’t read before) and good god, but I could not do it. Even beyond the terrible puns (not as fun when you’re not like ten years old) and the really regressive ideas of gender roles, after the third book with a young teen girl seducing a virtuous middle-aged man because he was the only one who truly loved her, I was just staring at my old books in horror.
(A few years back someone linked me to his Hi Piers newsletter, which moved to the Internet a while back. I got as far as seeing him talking about the sexual attractiveness of girls at menarche - their first period, which can be as young as 9 - and I had to stop because of the full-body shudders.)
Why do authors keep inserting their kinks into books?
Oh… I suggest you don’t read my books when they come out. They’re romance novels entirely focused on my kinks.
Chuck Tingle? You’re on Lemmy?
So what’s up with this novel? Can’t find anything obvious about it - only that it’s mighty popular among conservatives (which is usually a red flag)
There are plenty of articles going into great detail- here is one- but essentially it is a showcase for Rand’s moronic and hateful Objectivist philosophy and it has such ludicrous ideas in it as suggesting railroads would do great if it wasn’t for the pesky government getting in their way and after society collapses, the brilliant industrialists will all live in paradise just as soon as we find a way to create electricity by violating the laws of physics.
For those who are already familiar, this cartoon summarizes the problem with Atlas Shrugged quite succinctly.
I wanted to read this book so I could see what the fuss was all about. I’ve never made it 80% of the way through any other book and then intentionally stopped reading it. Everything about the way it is written is so bad. The characters are all made of cardboard. The situations that arise make no sense. Pretty much everything about the book makes no sense and is just to drive the story towards whatever idiotic conclusion Rand wanted.
When John Galt finally appeared and I realized he was just three incoherent speeches in a trench coat and not an actual attempt at writing a character, I basically abandoned finishing the book in disgust.
Competition is a great idea to these bozos until they realize that it’s possible for them to lose.
Even if they had robots they would still need to be tooled ;)
This would have been a welcome addition to the book.
It’s just one of those novels that many bookish 17-19 years have read. I think it is worth reading in the sense that I think reading the Bible is worth reading. It is popular enough that you sorta have to have some familiarity with it. Popular because it is popular at this point.
Basic setting is (I am going to steel man it) the world is falling apart from communism and the US is pretty much the last functional country. However instead of slowly drifting down like everyone expects suddenly the US is declining much faster. The reason is all the Jeff Bezoses are going on strike secretly.
The plot follows an heiress to a train company as she tries to hold things together and has an affair with one of her clients.
Eventually everything falls apart and the Jeff Bezoses launch a plan to rebuild but with a new rule that they are running everything.
The end.
Started reading Atlas a couple of months ago and put it aside after a third or so. I am used to reading “conventionally boring” stuff but this was such a slog. Super sterile, the characters are stereotypical, the message Rand wants to bring across seems awfully clear very early on. It may be the historical context that makes it more interesting, I didn’t see it, though. Just couldn’t do it.
Reading your comments on this thread is a relief, maybe there is nothing wrong with me after all.
Just wait till you get to the last third, where the ideas that weren’t subtly telegraphed in the first two thirds will be even less subtly shouted in a hundred page long speach.
Yeah I got that impression from the other comments. I might go back to just that part for the hell of it. Seems to be kind of a meme.
Beware, it’s a 3hr long monologue.
No no…at least get to the rapey bit…then you can solidify your hatred of that wretched wind bag in granite…its just before the speech that takes like 100 pages.
“slog” absolutely defines my experience. A really tough read.
what book would be the opposite of AS
edit: I guessed grapes of wrath, which was the pick of someone on a quora post on the topic - https://www.quora.com/What-book-might-be-considered-to-be-the-opposite-of-Ayn-Rand-author-s-Atlas-Shrugged
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test?
Atlas Nodded
Illuminatus?
100% 👍👍👍 the BBC did a great docu-series on Raynd. If you’re wondering what it is that you can’t quite put your finger on about her work, it’s that she’s utterly miserable. A person whose geat intellect can’t even make them joyful is a person whose intellect has turned against them.
