New SDMB Project: Kathi Reads Ayn Rand

Cafe Society
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Okay, you all know me as that lovable leftist liberal bitch from previous subjects, such as the US in Latin America, or Russian History-The Tsars!

Well, everyone’s favorite Russophile is stepping up to a challenge-to read Atlas Shrugged.

Why am I reading this? Well, I consider myself first and foremost a liberal, a leftist who follows the philosophy of Aleksandar F. Kerensky, rather than Marx. I am definitely opposed to selfishness, laissez faire capitalism and that the government is against the people. (I don’t like using big and little government, because I believe that government should be viewed as the people, as part of the people, and not something to be for or against).

I make many arguments against certain views, many of which are held by people who follow the philosophy of Ayn Rand. I figured-what the hell. KNOW what you’re criticizing, right? So I guess I’m putting my money where my mouth is.

And so, dear Dopers, I ask for you, to help me through this journey. For those of you who are absolute Objectivists-please do not cheer and tell me I’m going to change my life. For those of you who abhor everything Rand stands for, please do not tell me that I will be brainwashed, or I am wasting my time. I believe in educating myself, and reading the good AND the bad, so I have the knowledge to make up my own mind.

With that, my first impressions-
Holy crow! 1100 some pages! I will say it is not so much the length of the book that intimidates me. My favorite books include Stephen King’s IT and Gone with the Wind, both of which are pretty much the same length, both of which I have read countless times over and over again. I don’t mind long books. I’m only worried since it’s a library book, and I can’t pace it out so well, as well as I’m reading other books, a bio of Glenn Miller and The Crucifiction of Liberty by Kerensky. Both are library books as well.

Another thing-it looks, well, dry. I’m also afraid that people will get the idea if they see me carrying it around. I asked the advice of my advisor, a complete liberal I look up to very much-(just don’t tell him that!)
He hasn’t read it, but he said it seems worth reading-that even the bad is worth reading, to make up one’s own mind.

And so, with that, here I go!

deep breath

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Hey! I just started Atlas Shrugged a few days ago. A friend of mine had been bugging me to read it (actually, I haven’t really talked with her in almost a year, but when we were in school together she did), and I obtained a copy some six months ago, and got over my first impressions (which were similar to yours) just last week and actually started to read it. What say you to a discuss-as-we-go sort of conversation? Since the friend who suggested the book to me is in Flordia now and we’re not so much in touch, I’d love to hear what someone else who’s approaching this for the first time is thinking about it.

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Good choice. Between Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead, Atlas is a far better book and presents Rand’s philosphy less ambiguously (ha!).

As a novel (aside from the philosophizing) I really liked Atlas Shrugged. Yeah, the bad-guys are cardboard, but so are the ones in, say, Buck Rodgers, and I really liked Hank and Dagney.

I think you’ll hate the philosophy, hate her characterization of liberal views, etc. But if you can get past that, it’s a pretty good story.

Oh, and everyone skips most of the 80-ish page speech towards the end. Read the first 3 or 4 pages, until she begins repeating herself then just jump past it.

Fenris

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Hey!

I always considered Killer Kane to be the Captain Ahab of the spaceways, depth-wise!

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…and just read Anthem and The Virtue of Selfishness.

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I’m gonna hand this off to Euty -n- Uke over in Cafe Society.

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If you skip the loooong speeches it goes faster (and you don’t miss much, since the speeches basically restate, and restate, and restate the main theme of the story, over and over). I liked it, but not as much as the Fountainhead.

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Thanks. Sorry, Unc-I wasn’t quite sure where to put it.

I only chose Atlas because it was the only one the library had on the shelf. I was going to take Fountainhead but couldn’t find it. Oh well.

But before I get seriously into it, I HAVE to finish Crucifiction…it’s due next week, and I’ve already renewed it. And I guess I can read Ayn along with the Glenn Miller bio…although I keep blushing and giggling like a school girl over it.

For some reason, I get so self-conscious aobut my crush on the guy-even though no one cares-and I’m the only one in the room…
As far as getting to the speech, I don’t know if I will before it’s due-I used to be a faster reader, but that was when I read only one book at a time-like I said, I’m reading the Kerensky book, the Miller bio, and I’m working with a few other books on Eastern European royalty.

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Read it many years ago. Coming from a family that had been associated with both railroading and the steel industry, I actually started it because I thought “Hey, a novel about people involved with railroads and steel!” Well, duh.

Despite the book’s great length, I think it moves along pretty smartly, and paints a fairly interesting, and chilling, picture of an economy that has wound down from sheer entropy. If it wasn’t for Rand smacking the reader upside the head with Objectivism every 50 pages or so, it might be considered one of the great post-apocalyptic novels (although it’s far from an apocalypse that has brought the world to the state described in the book).

Hmmm, now that I think about it, it would be interesting to compare Rand’s future landscape of the USA with the portrait of a future America sketched by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash.

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Cool. I loved “Snow Crash.” However–

I am not reading Ayn Rand until someone tells me how to pronounce her first name.

Seriously.

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Guin–If you can stand Ayn Rand after Atlas Shrugged, you might want to check out her first novel, “We The Living”. This is one of those “semi-autobiographical” first novels. It deals with a young woman in the aftermath of the Russian revolution, and how she struggles to survive given how society is collapsing around her, and the day to day petty humiliations of a communist regime.

Just remember that Ayn Rand has an incurable strain of Russian pessimism. Even though her conscious mind rejects pessimism she can’t escape that cultural conditioning. I always thought the dystopian collapse of society in “Atlas Shrugged” came from the indelible imprint of witnessing the Russian revolution. Hell, even as we speak Russia is going through something pretty similar.

And it’s pronounced “Ine”. Long “i”, “n”.

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You can safely skip the 100 page radio speech. it’s not like the message isn’t obvious enough during the actual story of the book that she has to throw in the speech basically telling ou what she has already outlined for the last 800 pages. I actually kinda liked Atlas Shrugged other than that, although I am no Objectivist.

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Aiiii, noooooooo… Stay away from “We The Living” – it is SO BAD. The writing is so shallow and florid (we called it “Passion and the Proletariat” in my english class). Every character is a carictature (sp?). The message is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. People are continually having limbs cut off by the tram. [keanu Reeves voice] Heinous! [/KNV]

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Limbs cut off? Cool!!!

Hey, I LOVE Russian culture, don’t forget. I’m in the middle of reading Doctor Zhivago-pacing myself so I can read my library books and I LOVE it!

I stole the edition of DZ from my grandfather-I just told my gramma I wanted to borrow it, and she said go ahead-he orders books and stuff from Time Life, Readers Digest, etc etc and just collects them. And no, it isn’t obridged-it’s a reissue as a classic. LOVE Pasternak, Kerensky. I started to read Anna Karenina and I loved it, but I couldn’t finish it in time, evne after renewing it, because I had so much else going on, so I’m going to wait and read it until I can buy it.

So the Russian pessimism doesn’t bother me.

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I’ve always heard it pronounced I-an.

Now start readin’ Atlas Shrugged!

Fenris

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I think it rhymes with ‘pine’.

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Rhymes with pine. Once upon a time, I knew the origin of it; the “Rand” came from her first typewriter, a Remington-Rand, IIRC.

Lots of people recommend skipping the “This is John Galt” speech, but I can’t second that. I didn’t find it to break up the narrative flow (mostly because the flow is randomly chunky to begin with), and while there’s nothing new thematically within it, there are sections of it that are good solid rant (another high point of ranting–if not logic, but the vitriol is part of the fun of looking at the Rationality espoused–is the bit where several hundred people die on a train in the slow collapse of everything, and she spends several pages spinning it so they, essentially, deserved it). Look at it as a long manifesto included whole within the book.

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One thing that is tripping me up is the metaphors! Good god, the woman really piles them on, and most of them are rather trite.

I would say Stephen King is really the master of the metaphor-his are unique and well used. But Rand describes EVERY little detail…

I think the first name was from a Finnish playwright. The original name is Ayna.

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Funny, this is exactly my opinion of Anthem…

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Oooh, good luck. I actually liked The Fountainhead much better.

I got an audio version of Atlas Shrugged after I read The Fountainhead and decided I should read some of Rand’s other stuff. I drove from LA up to San Jose listening to it. Then I drove from San Jose back down to LA still listening to it. And I still wasn’t finished!! [sub]I’m a little proud of myself for resisting the urge to fast forward, though[/sub]