I can honestly say that I haven’t. I’ve never actually finished a Rand book – tried like hell on more than one occasion, but I’ve never been able to get more than 30 pages in without having some kind of seizure or something. She’s not the only one, though. There are a lot of allegedly “great” writers that I can’t plod through. I can’t even attempt to judge whether what she writes has any merit, because the language just makes my eyes glaze over. And I have read approximately 75 gajillion Harlequin romances, so I know from bad writing. (I think.)
I read Anthem. Did an essay on it in high school for the Ayn Rand Institute and was one of their winner-types. I liked Anthem, even though I completely disagree with Objectivism as a philosophy.
Coming off of that, I decided to give The Fountainhead a try. A bunch of people had recommended it to me/bought it for me, and I wanted to do the next year’s contest.
Have I mentioned that I despise long-winded writers?
I couldn’t stand her prose. The ideas? Feh. They didn’t matter. Her prose just felt. . .dry, and long, and glazed-eye inducing. It was an utter shock, because I enjoyed Anthem enough to devour it in one sitting (which isn’t hard, as it’s not a very long piece, but I distinctly remember telling people to leave me alone and let me read).
I think that, when she was forced to be brief, she could be very good, but that when she wasn’t, it sucked. Kind of like Neal Stephenson.
When was Stephenson ever forced to be brief?!
If I had approached her works as fun reading looking for a nice beach book I’d have never finished a single of the books. However it is readable when compared to other works with interesting philosophical ideas such as almost anything by Hegel, Levi-Strauss, or Umberto Eco the latter of which is the pinnacle of unreadability to me.
Then again it’s much easier to read someone else who’s ripped off her ideas and put them into their own works, i.e. Anton LeVey.
I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged when I was a freshman in college. I really loved them then, but I’m not sure how I’d feel about them now.
Previous CS threads:
Just finished “Atlas Shrugged” – should I read “The Fountainhead”? [spoilers OK]
I’ve read The Fountainhead and most of Atlas Shrugged (skipped the John Galt speech). I didn’t think they were bad at all, and Fountainhead at least employed some effective symbolism. I found one scene a bit moving, when Peter confronts his own emptiness and his inability to connect with Dominique–he came that close to redemption, and blew it.
As for the John Galt speech, I guess I’d look at it the same way as “The Book” that Winston reads in the middle of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. Stops the plot dead in its tracks, but for the sake of making a clear point.
You skipped WHOSE speech?
(so did I)
That’s the best post of all time.
I tried to read “Atlas Shrugged” 4 times.
First, in the Spanish translation. I couldn’t get through it. Tried to do it twice. Couldn’t. The writing was too awful. I thought: “Maybe it’s the fault of the translation, that is just bad”. So, I got my hands on the original English version and started reading again.
Same result. Tried twice to read the book, and couldn’t go through it. Totally undigestible.
As someone said before, even though I don’t agree with most of his political positions, I breeze through P. J. O’Rourke’s books, I find them extremely readable and personally think that they are sometimes riotously funny. That is definitely NOT the case with Ayn Rand. She is, in my opinion, anything BUT readable.
Just my 2 eurocent!
My mistake, I just figured you were quoting someone clueless.
My sentiments exactly. She’s a hoot, if you read her to laugh at. She has to hold the highest spot on any chart tracking the confluence of baddest writing x highest profile.
I think everybody does. You’ve been whacked over the head so much with her philosophy by that point, it’s safe to skip the radio speech and not miss anything. And I say that as someone who enjoyed Atlas Shrugged.
And as tiny as it was, “Anthem” still went on too long. I had that book inflicted on me during my sophomore year in high school and even at age 15 I thought her prose was leaden, preachy, and heavy-handed. Kurt Vonnegut covered the same ground in “Harrison Bergeron” but made his point much more effectively in only a few pages whereas Rand needed a whole book.
You’re also dead right about Rand being humorless. You sometimes get the impression from her that she thought having a sense of humor was some sort of character flaw.
Actually, you are whacked over the head with her philosophy in the first 30 pages. You could put the book down right then and not miss anything. People complain about the John Galt speech, but the entire book is just a John Galt speech. Really Ayn, we get it. We get it right away. No need to hammer on about it page after page.
You know what really bothers me? That a girl I briefly dated suggested that I read Atlas Shrugged. In return I gave her my copy of Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire. Man, did I ever get the short end of that deal.
Dude, The Fountainhead is short, not all that repetative, and reads fast. (Since when is ~750 pages considered long? What are we, in high school?) It’s actually a fairly entertaining book too if you can remove yourself from the message. The prose isn’t really all that bad either. Admitadly it’s not great, but I have read worse. The DaVinci Code’s prose, for example was worse, and the book was longer. On the other hand her characters are made out of cardboard, but that wasn’t the question you were asking.
Get it on audiobook if you have to. Rand is one of those cultural touchstones with which everyone should have a little first hand experience, even if you end up not liking it.
She explicitly makes the point (through Roark) in The Fountainhead that a smile is a defining characteristic of an idiot and a frown that of a thinking person.
Interestingly, the only character in the book who typically wears a smile (and cracks jokes, though they’re very dry ones) is Toohey – not an idiot, but the Evil Genius of the story.
Late to the party here (that’s what I get for not reading the Dope for a day!) but I’ll put my two cents in anyway.
I love Atlas Shrugged. It’s one of my favorite books, and I reread it every five years or so (yes, I skip most of Galt’s speech–but I did read it the first time, all the way through). The first time I read it I was 13 years old, and I’m in my early 40s now. I’m not a Randroid, and I certainly don’t expect everyone to like it (believe me, I’ve met some pretty scary Rand aficionados–the type that give Rand fans a bad name, somewhat akin to what hardcore wild-eyed fundies do for normal everyday Christians). In fact, I think Ayn Rand herself was a pretty messed-up individual with some pretty wacky ideas (the one about the natural state of women is hero-worship of men is right there at the top of the list), but nonetheless I think she made some pretty good points in the book.
It’s not fashionable to mention it nowadays in our left-leaning society (and on the left-leaning Dope, most likely), but even before I read Rand I always felt that people should take responsibility for themselves and their actions, not expect others to give them handouts, and strive to be the best people they can be. I just can’t really see what’s wrong with those ideas. Yeah, Rand kind of hits you over the head with a sledgehammer about the whole thing, but as others have pointed out, it’s supposed to represent black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. It’s more of an allegory than a “real” book. I like the larger-than-life characters, and I also like the more ambiguous characters like Eddie Willers, the Wet Nurse, and Dr. Stadler. I think in many ways the book is prophetic, and still quite relevant (maybe even more so) to today’s society.
Am I a conservative? No, because I don’t believe that the state should be legislating morality, or that the church should have any say about directing the lives of anyone but its own members. Am I a libertarian? I used to think so, but lately the libertarians seem to be all about legalizing drugs (which I’m to some extent in favor of but I think there are much larger issue to be dealt with first). I guess what I am is a combination of an objectivist and a classical liberal–basically, I’m in favor of personal liberty and personal responsibility, and I want those who “know what’s best,” whether that’s the religious establishment or the secular “religion” that today’s liberalism seems to be turning into (the anti-smoking, militantly pro-environmentalist crowd, for example) to get out of people’s way and let them live their lives. And before anybody comes down too hard on me for that, I do recognize that there are a lot of problems with that approach, and a lot of people who will take advantage of it for their own ends. Even with that being true, though, I personally think it’s the best approach for a free society to take.
Okay, that kind of wandered off the point. But I like Atlas Shrugged and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I liked The Fountainhead, too, but not quite as much. The movie was terrible, btw 
And it does bother me when I get lumped in with the nuts, just as it would bother a normal everyday Christian or Muslim to get lumped in with the fruitbat fundies.
Ok…I may have to break out a thread in GD or something, but if the slight hijack isn’t minded…
Are there really people out there who think that no one should take responsibility for their own actions, that everone should just rely on others to get them through life, and that people should strive for mediocrity? Come on? I am not wanting to pick on you, you just kind of struck a nerve.
I consider myself to be fairly left leaning. My personal politics tend to lean as far to the left as anyone on this board…I don’t see this as a “left vs right” idea. Hell I don’t even see that as an “ojectivism vs. whatever you call what Rand was railing against” idea. I am not sure that is what Rand was trying to say, but I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who will disagree with your statement.
Anyway…sorry for the hijack.
I figure Toohey is by far her best, most interesting character, because the “good guys” are pretty much interchangeable, but the villain being more interesting than the hero isn’t exactly limited to Rand.