I agree. Luckily, so far there’s been no #2 in this thread so far, except from the Rand lovers who suggest that people pretend to dislike her books due to some kind of peer pressure.
If the OP had want to make up his own mind, in a vacuum, without input, he wouldn’t have come here looking for input.
Fair enough. I took your statement as more unequivocal because the same post included your belief that people only pretend to dislike her due to some fashion of the day.
I think it’s a wonderful movie to watch, but it’s clear that the director took a somewhat satirical approach to the text. And I think Rand’s ideas are worthy of satire, so yeah, it’s a good movie. King Vidor never made a bad movie, and he made some truly great movies that reside permanently at the apex of the canon. This is one of his sillier efforts, but some of my favorite movies (Written on the Wind, Starship Troopers, Dancer in the Dark) are straightfaced satires.
Oh, simmer down. I was responding specifically to John Mace’s post and I forgot to quote him. :rolleyes:
. . . And more to the point (sorry, had to jump a bus from work), you still haven’t said why you didn’t like the movie: you simply stated that it was a terrible movie. Now, I didn’t write a whole essay, but I told you what I didn’t like about her writing (selfrighteous pomposity, etc.); I didn’t simply state baldly that these books are bad.
So, so far, all you’ve really done in this thread, John, is to inform us that the movie is “terrible,” period, and suggest that only a certain kind of suggestible sheep will pretend to dislike Rand’s writing.
Not that I think either of can–or should–convert the other; only, I think this kind of discussion benefits more from, like, engaged, analytical opinions, than from bald statements and dismissive accusations of gullibility.
How about those who suggested that people who enjoy her work are weebles who marched off a cliff: “Because if someone asks where to start with Ayn Rand, that means they have not yet been lost. It’s a clarion call to rescue a soul on the brink of a cliff.”?
It’s hard to tell with metaphors, and I suppose there’s oddles of backpedal room. Maybe you meant “lost” in the sense of “enlightened”. Or “rescue” in the sense of “encourage”. Or “brink” in the sense of “discovery”.
Or maybe you read a post that included such phrases as “think of the children!” and “a heroic impulse” as purely hyperbole-free and one hundred percent serious.
:rolleyes:
One post at a time, please. The one I put on the table is yours. What did you mean by suggesting that I and others are marching lockstep off a cliff?
So, what did you mean by suggesting that I and others are marching off a cliff? Doesn’t that metaphor typically refer to people who are blind about something or whose minds are numb?
Mods, can we get a yawny smiley, stat?
Aren’t you more in need of a smiley that expresses how brain-dead people are who read books you don’t like?
Regarding your march over the cliff metaphor, I believe your conclusion is mistaken. People who enjoy Rand novels can be bright, promising, even fully functional members of society.
Lib, the next time you feel a flameout-aborting namechange coming on, I suggest “CS Threadkiller.”
It means Thelma and Louise should have used the brakes.
*#(@!)@!!!
Ok, can you guys settle down? The discussion is about which (if any) Ayn Rand to read. You do not need to pick at each other, and you will cease NOW.
With respect, I think it’s about where to start, which implied to me that the OP actually wanted to start. Atlas Shrugged was the book with which I started, and the book that led me to be interested in her philosophy generally. After reading it, I read the nonfiction essays, and was impressed with the deductive development of her philosophy. Eventually, I adapted it for myself. I found that, with only minor changes to some of the premises, I could deduce a philosophy that was compatible with both my Christianity and my classical liberalism. I’m not sure whether I would have come out the same way had I started differently. As I said before, her magnum opus deals both with the theory and the practical application of objectivism. It is a long and sometimes arduous read, but it gives you everything she’s got in one place.
By way of opinion, I think Atlas Shrugged has a more interesting story, but Fountainhead has better characters. The characters in the former are pretty much stereotyped while Gail Wynand (based loosely on Hearst, incidentally) and Ellsworth Toohey from the latter represent Rand’s least sympathetic protagonist and most interesting antagonist. Toohey gets a magnum opus speech of his own, and it’s far better than Galt’s, explaining as it does that fascism and communism have exactly the same result and why he’s actively pursuing it.
Yes, I agree. Gail Wynand is one of my favorite characters in all of Rand’s works, and Toohey is fascinating. I think some of her more morally ambiguous characters are some of her most interesting (I mentioned previously Dr. Robert Stadler and The Wet Nurse in AS, both of whom struggle with their morality as the “good” and “bad” characters never do, and who come to very different conclusions.)
Fond as I am of Hank Rearden, Francisco d’Anconia, and Ragnar Danneskjold, the ambiguous characters are “meatier.” (Note I didn’t mention John Galt–I always found him to be the least interesting of Rand’s protagonists, since he has very little conflict and is too “cookie cutter perfect.”)
Some of the best inter-personal human drama I’ve come across is when Wynand…
…becomes best friends with Roark while he’s still married to Dominique. Great stuff, and those scenes really round out Roark’s character nicely.
Which leads to an interesting hijack- maybe we want to open a thread on this:
how many “classical liberal” or “conservative” Christians find much to admire in Ayn Rand’s writing, while objecting to her dogmatic atheism and her interesting rationalizations about marital fidelity.
If you open a thread, let us know. It sound’s interesting. 
Another thing about Atlas Shrugged as a starting point with Rand is that you get to decide both whether you like her underlying theory and whether you like how it might be implemented. I found myself making mental notes as I read — I’d like to change this one thing slightly and reject that other thing as unnecessary, and so forth. By the time I finished the book, my own version of objectivism was formed in my head. It has served me well for a long time, helping me to make sense of a lot of disorder.