I’ll have to look that up – it certainly doesn’t square with the Lenin described in Comrades: 1917 – Russia in Revolution, by Brian Moynahan (by no means a ComSymp). Nor even with the Lenin described by arch-conservative Paul Johnson in [url=]Modern Times.
Rand had a chance to personally witness how rapidly altruism turned to despotism, seeing as she’d lived in Russia until emigrating in 1926. Lenin and Trotsky wanted best for the “all” that didn’t include the million so people they’d have to kill first. Plus, of course the constant surveillance the “all” needed so the “all” didn’t step out of line.
The real tragedy of communism is that it requires constant vigilance against the citizens, not the government.
Ditto.
There’s an awful lot of overlap between the two, but I do agree that you should read The Fountainhead anyway… eventually. Give yourself a break. If you do feel a primal need to investigate Rand more fully, try reading her semi-autobiographical tome We The Living. It’s a little depressing, but insightful (in terms of understanding Rand).
Nay. Communism was founded by Karl Marx. And Lenin and Trotsky were neither high-minded, nor altruistic-especially not the latter!
But I agree Roarke was pretty empty. He never really seemed to relax and enjoy himself. I kinda liked Gail Wynand, if only because he was a bastard, but he was a fun bastard. He amused me.
I do recommend reading THE FOUNTAINHEAD, tho I must admit I’ve actually only skimmed it. I’ve read ATLAS several times, also ANTHEM, & the various essay collections, but WE THE LIVING- not at all.
I usually start friends off w/ ANTHEM & then recommend ATLAS if they want to go totally deep into Ayn, with FOUNT afterwards.
I agree, you should read *The Fountainhead, *but not right away. I’ve read them both many times, and have signed & inscribed (to me) First Editions of these, and her other books.
Nay. Marx only provided an intellectual superstructure for a political movement that already existed before he joined it. Paul Johnson in Intellectuals recounts how Marx’ philosophizing rubbed some early Communist League members the wrong way. One, an actual working man, protested he “had not become a socialist to learn doctrines hatched in a study.” Sounds a lot like the relationship between the philosophical-Objectivist Ayn Rand and the Libertarian Party (of which she never approved, from what I’ve heard). Wonder why Johnson didn’t include her in his book? She certainly fit his (idiosyncratic and dishonest) definition of an “intellectual”!
Asl for Lenin and Trotsky, I cite them as “founders” because they were the first to gain control of a state and try to put the theory (that is, one of many, many variants of it) into practice.
Don’t give me that Stalinist agitprop, you betrayer of the Revolution!
A retired architect I know told me, “All of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses have one thing in common–the roofs leak.”
So do Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes. A roof is most likely to leak along the edges of its planes, and Fullerdome is all edges. (Doesn’t mean the domes are useless, only that they’re not to be preferred when keeping the rain out is a top priority.) A lot of these problems of disjuncture between architectural ideals and practicality are explored in How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built, by Stewart Brand.
This is true, and those fluffheads annoy the hell out of me. But it’s not, as BrainGlutton points out, in any way a tenet of socialism.
I believe his point was that those buildings are emphatically not boring. Have you seen the Seven Sisters?
These? Not exactly boring, but – as much as anything Speer built for Hitler – they’re kind of overwhelming. Built to embody and express the power and glory of the State. Which would be as far as you can get from what Rand/Roarke presumably was aiming at.
I can’t really comment, as I haven’t read the book. I just wanted to counter Sam Stone’s assumption that buildings built in the Soviet Union were by definition “boring Communist structures”.
Which buildings were you referring to?
I was thinking – and I’m not the first to say so – that Roarke’s “modernist” buildings as Rand describes them resemble, more than anything else IRL, the bleak monumental structures Speer put up for Hitler in Berlin – the latter being described by James Howard Kunstler in The City in Mind as Art Deco architecture stripped of all its feminine curves. Certainly they resemble nothing Wright ever did – not even the mansion looks like anything out of Wright (so far as we can tell from verbal descriptions). And the “Temple” might as well be Speer’s projected (but never buitl) “Great Hall of the Reich” on a smaller scale.
I hope this isn’t too much of a derail, but does anyone have a theory as to why Rand used Irish surnames for so many of her characters, in both ‘The Fountainhead’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged’?
To whit: Hank Rearden, Dagny Taggart, Howard Roark, Peter Keating, and Ellsworth Toohey.
Even her former heir apparent, before the falling out, changed his name from Blumenthal to the quasi-Hibernian Branden.
More likely an anagram. Branden = Ben-Rand
As for the OP. Read Fountainhead, but not right away. As others have said, it’s a more ejoyable book. Great characters. Yes, there are a few speecehs, but not anywhere near as long as Atlas. Do not, however, bother with the movie. It sucks.
Now there’s a movie that’s crying out for a remake.
I don’t know what would be worse-- the original, or an updated version staring Collin Farrell and Angelina Joli. Or maybe Will Ferrell-- he has red hair, doesn’t he?
Here’s one: She was a Russian Jewish immigrant living in New York. Giving her characters Jewish names would’ve raised too many complicated cultural-political implications (in those days, Jews=Reds). Giving them Anglo-Saxon names would have implied they were negroes (this was New York in the '50s, understand), and that would be totally unworkable considering so many of them are high-powered players (also totally unacceptable to white readers, even those willing to wade through her shrill, tedious Objectivist preaching). Otherwise, as far as she knew, Irish surnames were the only kind to be found in America! 