When the dancer Penny gets pregnant, by Robby (a med student working at the resort for the summer, who is hanging out with Baby’s sister, and much liked by Baby’s father), Baby tries to talk Robby into paying for an abortion. Robby refuses, saying, “Some people matter, some don’t.” Then he tries to lend Baby his copy of Atlas Shrugged (not The Fountainhead), so long as she promised to give it back because it’s got his notes in the margins.
I seem to recall some of those ideas having been promoted somewhat earlier by a fellow by the name of Adam Smith . . .
Possibly. But having read both Rand and Tolstoy, I’d have to say it might also be that, taking out the proselytizing from both authors, Tolstoy was about a million times better simply as a writer.
Pretty much the same. I made it much farther into Moby Dick (but still never to the end). Atlas may have shrugged, but right now he sits on my bookshelf mocking me.
Oh, I never even attempted Moby Dick – the closest I ever got to reading that book was … well, listening to a Moby CD, I guess. When I wrote that, I was thinking particularly of Faulkner (who, as far as I can tell, only wrote one good sentence: “My mother is a fish”).
I also have apoplectic fits when I try to read Hemingway, although he gets half a pass from me because I once got an A on an AP English paper by comparing one of his novels (The Sun Also Rises, maybe?) to Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”
More of a Vonnegut girl myself, is I guess what I am saying.
Wow. My hat is off to you, sir.
I tried the Atlas Shrugged essay contest in university, thinking it might have been a profit making opportunity and being a reasonably good writer. I balked a little when I picked up a copy of it and realized how long it was, and I think I managed to make it about 3/4 way through before deciding I had better uses for my time.
As I explained in my post, I liked the stories. I think architecture and trains are interesting. I like near-future dystopian fiction. I liked the descriptions of life in New York in a more glamorous era. I liked reading about Toohey’s machinations. I liked hearing ideas about how a radical advance in metallurgy would change things. All in all, I thought the plots were pretty good.
In spite of their flaws, I found them both to be major page-turners.
I must confess…I didn’t really notice the typeface in either one of them. 
But Smith didn’t attempt to integrate his economic theories with ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, psychology, art, sex, etc., etc., etc.
Oh yeah? Try reading some reviews of Steven Seagal’s On Deadly Ground. I’m not sure if search links work on this board, but try this out. Searching entire threads for “on deadly ground” in Cafe Society gives 22 hits. Five of those threads have the word “worst” in the title. Other titles include “Movies that insult your intelligence.”, “What’s the most preposterous film ever? […]”, and “Movies so bad, they’re good”. One of the many reasons this movie is so bad is the preachy tone it takes on environmentalism.
As for Ayn Rand, i bought Atlas Shrugged on tape for a road trip, and ended up fast forwarding about 20 min during the Galt speech. It’s fun sci fi, but the preachiness was overbearing. It seemed like she was trying to make a real argument against socialism, but the story was unrealistic, filled with strawmen. The self-righteousness of the author made the book unbearable at times.
Earlier. The Big U and Zodiac aren’t that long.
I’m answering at this point in the thread, so if anyone’s beat me, kudos.
Sure, although I think he did write on ethics. I’m not saying Rand deserves no credit at all for trying to roll all these things into a popular novel, just that her ideas, as I’ve heard them described, do not sound all that original. (Disclaimer: I haven’t read her work.)
I would also note that the threat of communism as an ideology (as opposed to the threat of the Soviet Union as a rival power) was at its height in America when Rand started her writing career, but was basically gone by the time she published Atlas Shrugged.
Smith’s economics was merely economics. Rand’s Objectivism was a complete ethical-philosophical belief-system (and not a school of economics at all) and was fairly original with her.
Pretty much. Many American Communists, acting on Stalin’s orders, went undercover and got jobs in the government and labor unions – and most of them then got caught up in their careers and gradually lost interest in being Communists. You can read the story in It Didn’t Happen Here, by Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks. (The Communists in the State Department, BTW, had been thoroughly purged by Truman, long before Joe McCarthy ever got wind of the problem.)
You don’t do Smith justice. Read that Wikipedia article you linked to, especially the part about his first major work, the Theory of Moral Sentiments.
I only read about 10 pages of Atlas Shrugged, but I did read the entire plot summary at Spark Notes and that was more painful than almost any other book I can recall reading. Authors who fail should at least fail in amusing ways, as Jim Theis did.
Or bad sex.
Both. I found Rand to be misogynist. I read her (AS) back in HS ( honors Econ class), like most of us did–the black and white, cookie cutter characters appeal to that age group as a whole. She seemed to have Ideas and Significance.
yeah, well. That said, I did enjoy Anthem and not just because it was short.
IMO, Rand preaches where she should allude. She spends way too much time telling when she should be showing. Frankly, by the time she got around to explaining what “Who is John Galt?” meant, I no longer cared. I also remember lots of smoking in the book–smoking is not a moral issue for me; I don’t care if you or anyone else smokes. And Dagny (or was it Dabny? Memory fails) was annoying and John Galt was a righteous prig. I think it’s like Catcher in the Rye–you need to read AS at a certain time in your life.
Oops–I left out a thought or two. Re the smoking–it seemed to me (when reading it) that the smoking was sublimated sex. The way she describes lighting up was almost pornographic (maybe I mean erotic. I don’t care enough to split hairs). Which is odd, since the sex in the book could be completely missed. Maybe she had a smoking fetish?
Just started rereading Atlas Shrugged - because of this discussion - and one thing became apparent quickly. Rand’s “good” men all have one of two traits: a) an “expressionless” face or manner of speaking; b) an air of, or a potential for, “violence.”
I surmise what really turned Miss Rand on about the capitalist male was his refined thuggishness. Men who mattered, who got things done, were hard and uncaring. Caring made one compromised and weak.
Yep. Pretty much. It’s been 2 decades since I read her, but I don’t think there are any children in her books. Good capitalists don’t require nurturing. Or something.
You can find worse pretty easily.
As novelists go it’s mid-range stuff. It is bad by the standards of the attention is receives - she might be the worst writer to ever sell as many books as she has - but it’s not as bad as some.