I recommend starting with Atlas Shrugged. It’s (in my opinion) the best of them, and is decent science fiction even if you don’t like Rand’s philosophy. True, Anthem is a lot shorter, but if you really want to have the Ayn Rand Experience, you want to go with Atlas Shrugged. If you like it, you can always go back to the others.
I think it’s worth reading. You might well hate it- many people do- but if so, you’ll be able to enjoy hating it with great passion and intensity. It’s a book that’s hard to feel neutral about.
The same has been said about Rand herself. People had an instant attraction/repulsion when meeting her, and if it was attraction, it was impossible to let go of.
I met her in the mid-60s, and knew her about a year (till she, of course, denounced me as being “hopelessly irrational”). She was the most mesmerizing person I’ve ever met; she had this huge consciousness that took ownership of everything in her vicinity; you almost forgot that she had a body. It was so easy, in her presence, to become one of the “Randroids”; I don’t know why she didn’t hook more people than she did.
All in all, knowing her was very much a positive experience. I can’t even list the things she taught me, and even with my subsequent disagreements with Objectivism, those disagreements have also been a result of the critical thinking I had learned from her.
And I must say that 99% of the criticism I hear about her “personal” life is, at best, out of context. Her memory deserves better than that.
I just had an image in my head of listening to Atlas Shrugged, as read by Ben Stein…
The Horror.
I actually read Atlas Shrugged in High School - as recreational reading. Twenty-five years later, and I STILL haven’t read the entire radio address segment. I had a friend who stated that the way to read Atlas Shrugged was to either skip the radio address, or read ONLY the radio address.
That’s very good to hear. I got worried when I read some of the biographies (such as the one by Barbara Branden)–I’d be glad to hear that there’s more to it than that. I just always had trouble justifying some of her views (such as the whole “purpose of woman is hero-worship” thing, and what I’ve heard of her rather odd personal life) with the rationality of the rest of her philosophy.
I have a feeling she thought a lot of people were “hopelessly irrational.”
I heartily concur with the idea that the better question is “Why should I start?” Anthem isn’t terrible, largely because she lets the story tell itself, and it’s over quickly, like pulling off a band-aid.
Atlas Shrugged shows Rand’s “talent” as an author. The characters are as two dimensional and as poorly developed as the ideology that she wants to beat you over the head with for a thousand pages, and then gives you a bolus of for another hundred pages, just in case you are still conscious at that point.
Her characters are as black and white as could be, but that is because she seems to honestly believe that some people are born to be awesome entrepreneurs who can do no wrong, and if they were to go away, the world would fall to shit. (Many people might think that other people would step up to take their place, but they’d clearly be mistaken. Good decent visionary entrepreneurs were installed essentially by a higher power, and have to struggle against the hordes of retarded socialists who have no idea what to do in order to live on their own.)
One of her characters is held at gunpoint and told “Don’t make any false moves.” He responds “I never do.”
Having read some other 50’s sci-fi, I would tend to put that down as the style of the times, for the most part. Either that or I just had poor luck.
See I think the problem that a lot of people have is that they look at Rand as an American libertarian. While in truth, she was just a lady who fled Soviet Russia and (essentially) tried to set herself up as the James Randi of communism. Essentially, she was just laboriously pointing out all the bad things that happen under communism. So when people say that “things wouldn’t be like she says”, well maybe that’s true in regards to how life would be under her idealised capitalism, but in terms of what happens under communist control she was speaking from her own real life experience, so most likely she is right.
So yes, under a communist system, once everyone who was an honest entrepreneur has had to flee or give up, no more will stand up to take their place. And this is why Russia has been doing so poorly since they abandoned communism–industry is still controlled by the dishonest thieves who climbed the communist ladder, so everything continues to run through graft and intimidation.
And no she wasn’t saying that if they left, the world would turn to shit, she was saying that if you let the socialists take over and turn your back on the free market, then you’ll lose the honest workers of every level in the country. The honest leaders going on strike was (to Rand) just a symbolism of this, the same as Atlas represents all of man. She felt everyone should strive to be like these demigods, so for the heroes of man to leave the world is the same as those values they represent leaving. Or, moreso, being cast out by the socialist movement.