How close has Dan Brown come to her sales?
You might win on that one. Brown is worse.
Ragnar Danneskjold and Kay Ludlow have two sons in the hidden valley in Atlas. The objectivist principles of child-rearing get a paragraph or two.
My eyes must have glazed over and I missed it. How do Objectivists reproduce? If there is no one to inherit the ideology, it would die out, no? Maybe Ayn didn’t think this through. I can see Dagny stopping to have a(yet another) cigarette and pondering this–asexual reproduction in a lab made of that blue-green steel like substance she nattered on about for so long… yes, that’s the ticket!
I agree. My impression of Ms. Rand is that she was probably a sexual masochist, and was attracted to abusive men.
Her husband was the biggest mystery concerning her. He was a very nice man, quiet and polite, and that’s all I can say about him. For all her talk of women being “hero worshipers,” there was absolutely nothing heroic about her husband. He was tall and lanky, of course . . . and sported an impressive bulge.
As a writer I don’t think she’s any worse than a lot of other writers of the old “best-seller” genre. She’s no worse than Arthur Hailey (Airport, Hotel,) for example, though Mario Puzo was a much better writer. Of course Hailey or the Irvings didn’t stop their action for hundred-page over the top tirades against collectivism. But that seems to have worked for her.
Yeah, that is the thing, as mentioned before – if her work were not being previously “sold” to us as such a life-changing, earth-shattering thing, it would not be such a let-down to find yourself facing a pretty standard potboiler, that is periodically interrupted for extensive speechifying.
(CAPTAIN KIRK: “I always assumed they did so… logically?”)
Of course they would reproduce. It is objectively necessary that such physically and mentally fit specimens pass on their genes, BUT, even otherwise it would not die out, man – if it’s the Truth, objective reality, A is A, then unless there is a total extinction of the capability to use reason, someone will be around to figure it out.
Though considering both Rand’s own real-world love-life and some of the scenarios in the novels, the kids may have to deal with some complicated blended families…
She says good stuff, but she’s long-winded about it.
Ya ever get stuck in mud after a long rain, or Spring Breakup, with both feet, and when you try to escape you risk having your boots sucked off, or falling face first into the quagmire and having to wallow there, struggling to crawl out of the mess when you try to get away?
It’s much, much worse, and it’s in your HEAD man, in your HEAD!!!
