Honest question: Is there any literary merit to Atlas Shrugged as a book, its message aside?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

I'll confess I've never read it, was never assigned to read it, and frankly haven't had much of an interest in spending much time reading it when there are other things I could be reading.

I have read basic plot summaries so I have a general idea what goes on the book, but that itself hasn't sold my interest either.

I'm just curious because every once in a while I'll hear people here and there rave about it, or see someone reading it, and I have to wonder if one places aside Rand's actual message, if there's some sort of literary merit to the form of the book itself, or is it all just a giant slog?

The thing is, there are examples of works of art that are odious in terms of their content, but have been notable in their presentation if one could manage to objectively set aside the unavoidable prejudices that come with the work.

For example, "Birth of a Nation" cast a favorable, sympathetic and heroic light upon the Ku Klux Klan. That being said, it was considered some groundbreaking filmmaking techniques not seen before in Hollywood.

And Leni Risfensthal's works--most notably "Triumph of the Will--are widely considered to have incorporated some of the most innovative works of cinematography that would have been lauded if not for the fact that the subject matter of her films were Hitler, Nazi imagery and evidence of some of the most disturbing acts of cult of personality in human history.

So--as someone not intimately familiar with Atlas Shrugged or any of Rand's works--is there anything that can gleaned of it strictly for its artistic merit, message aside, or is it all a flaming bag of poo both inside and out? From what I've read about it, I know it features a 70 page soliloquy from John Galt, which has me firmly leaning in the flaming bag of poo department.

[Cary]

1. I picked it up and found it unreadable.

Third rate science fiction, from a 4th rate philosopher.

[forgotmylogin]

64. It consists of words, printed on paper and bound like other books.

And is usually shelved in the "literature" section of a bookstore. If you can find one... Or at the library.

[Cary]

74. Cute

I take it you're an Ayn Rand fan. I'm so happy for you.

[forgotmylogin]

75. Heck no.

Other than enjoying the Ayn Rand satire in the Bioshock video game, I've really had no desire to read those books nor any other media based on them.

I was just making a snarky comment. "Is there any merit...?" "Well...it's shaped like a book..."

[Cary]

77. Oh. Sorry.

[H2O Man]

2. No.

It advocates ethical lobotomy.

[Vinca]

3. The only value I can imagine is finding a first edition at a yard sale and selling it.

[exboyfil]

4. No.

It is dull and tedious. If you are going to make such an investment in time, then pick a decent series.

[Wounded Bear]

5. I tried to read it once or twice...

couldn't drag my way through it. Reads like an old Russian novel, without the exciting characters and epic plots.

I can't remember ever reading a review that mentioned any redeeming values that weren't from RW/Libertarian shills.

[malthaussen]

6. I can only speak for "The Fountainhead,"

... which I tried to read some 40-odd years ago at the urging of a friend. The literary merit was non-existent. I could barely plough through a hundred pages of the garbage.

-- Mal

[potone]

7. No.

It is lousy as literature, philosophy, psychology and economics. There is a reason that her work is not taught in academic departments in any of those fields.

[stevenleser]

8. I've previously said, if you like the superhero genre and treat it as such, you can like it.

I liked it. Rand's vision of what a superhero is and the super economic/political philosophy would be is no more real than Kal El/Superman.

Nothing is more illustrative of that than the fact than Rand's superheroes in Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead are based on a serial killer, as admitted by her.

There is no real value in any of her work than enjoyment in terms of enjoying fictional superhero novels and to understand the nonsense into which various folks on the right put so much stock.

[PatSeg]

13. I read Atlas Shrugged

The Fountainhead when I was very young. I enjoyed them at the time probably because of the "superhero" theme. Looking back, I have no idea how well written they were. I don't think my literature appreciation was very highly developed at that age. People read all kinds of books, all the time, as we didn't have the Internet, smart phones, or cable TV.

[stevenleser]

20. I think that's why Libertarian types try to get young people to read it. They might fall for it.

And why not? Rand wasn't dumb about one thing. She knew that if you gave people a philosophy that was essentially an excuse for their worst instincts and behavior, a large group would gravitate to it.

That's what Rands philosophies are. An excuse for selfishness and an unwillingness to help others. Folks who like being selfish naturally gravitate toward her.

[unblock]

26. that's exactly right. "intellectualism" in the right-wing is an endless search for

a better rationalization for greed.

[PatSeg]

28. And it all was wrapped in

the concept of being a unique individual. At 19 and 20, I was very into individualism, mostly as rebellion against conformity. I really wasn't seeing the selfishness, I saw heroes who wouldn't compromise their talent or values. Looking back, I can see how absurd and disturbing her philosophies were. She took her anti communist leanings and took them to the other extreme.

[Wounded Bear]

60. At that age, most people are trying to define themselves...

and most are looking for some unique quality to separate themselves from the mundane.

Most grow out of it. I'm not sure I ever did, being a loner most of my life. But I never could read any of her longer works. I read the short one...Anthem? Whatever. But I'm a pretty staunch progressive.

[PatSeg]

65. Yes

It was a time of seeking and pulling away from my parents' generation. It was easy to be drawn to anything that contradicted the mainstream. Much of my knowledge at the time was rather shallow and superficial, as I was experimenting. At my core I was always more liberal than the world I grew up in, and that has not changed. Now I have plenty of experience to reinforce my ideas and I know enough to admit how much I don't know.

I had really long train commute in those days and no TV, so I had plenty of time to finish long books!

[kcr]

83. Yep, a normal part of human emotional development is the separation phase.

We're designed to go through it to separate from our parents and our pack. It's a developmental phase that we're supposed to outgrow because humans are social animals. We're meant to be group oriented, not individualists. Some people get stuck at certain emotional developmental phases permanently and never make it to the fully developed state. Youth in that phase would find rugged individualist literature especially appealing, as would anyone stuck permanently in that phase.

[PatSeg]

84. Yes, that explains a lot

It also explains why some republicans get hooked on Ayn Rand and never outgrow her.

[nolabear]

23. I think you're exactly right. There's a reason they appeal to very young people.

They're supremely adolescent, two-dimensional aspirational screeds. I read them when I was a teen because (hey, I was a kid) I was in love with a boy who thought they were life lessons. He wanted it to be that simple.

They're plodding and laughable if you have any maturity or life experience but they certainly appeal to a niche that isn't necessarily pathological at fifteen or twenty, but when you don't outgrow it and recognize it's a complete fantasy you might be a sociopath.

[Mellomugwump]

44. I liked it too....

I don't know if I would say it had literary merit, but there were quite a few aspects of the story that I liked. I liked the idea of finding work you love and applying a strong work ethic. I also liked the anti religion aspect of it, and I think the Republicans are closer to the characters in the book that she despised that hide behind religion. They're also anti-intellectual, which she was not, and I also don't think she'd like the Trumps who got where they are through inheritance and greed rather than by hard work and a strong work ethic.

I also agree in the value of selfishness as far as not living your life to please other people and to conform to the norm.

I don't think her characters were greedy, which is also something I don't think she would like about modern day republicans. However, they didn't exhibit compassion which is a problem.

I've just never seen Ayn Rand as the monster that many here do. I see her as somebody who expouses some good values, but went too far due to the circumstances of having survived in a communist regime. I personally think she was closer to us in philosophy than the current day republicans, but she had some major flaws.

[radical noodle]

9. I read it

It wasn't memorable. Don't waste your valuable time.

[HughBeaumont]

10. There's "writing" and there's "typing".

Atlas Sharted is the latter. Whole lotta not sayin' shit.

[HAB911]

11. I read it in HS

I remember it being incredibly dense, like teak dense, dark and paranoid even as I considered myself an objectivist at the time.

[LisaM]

12. She is a facile writer and the characters,

while cartoonish, are clearly designed to appeal to a black and white thinking mindset. They are essentially propaganda. On that level you could say the writing succeeds, but I wouldn't call them literature.

[TheBlackAdder]

14. It's the follow-up to Fountainhead, a book which goal is to attack American Community Values.

.


Place the people against one another, instead of being community-based. Tell everyone to go against Judeo-Christian values and concentrate on self-affecting desires. Then, Atlas comes out and tries to further extend this message by pitting worker against worker, trying to devalue collective labor movements and reinforce selfish endeavors.


Both of these books suck, written at a teenager level, which fits right in with the mentality of those who enjoy it. It's sort of like the movie Ben Hur, being filmed at an 8-year-old's intellectual level. These books are part of the "Libertarian Living Bible" series. It plays on the minds of those who are self-affecting, giving legitimacy to their ant-Christian & anti-American thoughts and actions. Since these people already deceive their community and their relationship with their church and God, these books don't make a negative impact in their lives. In fact, it bolsters their pettiness and thirst for mammon.

.

[ismnotwasm]

15. I didn't think so

She does ok character building, but her dystopia really wasn't all that clear, if you were say, 18 and it was your first political philosophy book, I get why it would make an impression. I liked that she had a "strong" female protagonist, except there was like, only one important one--all else was male and unexciting. Mostly though? Blah blah blah

There is merit in reading a biography of Rand though.

[regnaD kciN]

59. I'd say her character-building is among the worst traits...

Don't take my word for it -- even a critic for the conservative National Review noted that her characters would require substantial work to even become two-dimensional.

It really is straight out of comic books. All her heroes and heroines are beautiful, strong, unaffected by any obstacles, and brilliant (by which she means "ready to go off on a multi-page speech of my philosophy at the drop of a hat&quot . All their opponents are physically-repulsive, have ridiculously-ugly names, display utter incompetence in everything (which, of course, is why they believe in altruism -- because they know they're inferior and would be weeded out in any meritorious natural selection), and cannot muster a single cogent argument against the heroes; only "cry" or "wail" replies like "You can't think that way! You just...can't!"

Really, I think her novels are a self-selecting test. Even before she starts laying on the objectivism thick, if you can read her novels and accept her characters and dialogue as even vaguely realistic, you're probably lacking the critical judgment that would allow you to see through her philosophical house of cards.

[OriginalGeek]

16. when I was a young teen

and steeped in religion from a fundamentalist mother and stepfather it was an interesting escape. I don't remember really how much I liked it but I finished it and her novella "Anthem".

I liked the libertarian concepts until I grew older and decided I liked helping people even more.

I'm still not completely against limiting government interference in my personal life - Pot, of course, being the biggest thing there. I wish weed was completely legal and I will keep voting for candidates who agree AS LONG AS they are also socially liberal.

I don't feel it's "gubmint interference" to feed hungry people and cure sick people and shelter homeless people and educate everybody and let any person marry any other person no matter what configuration their parts or brains are and those things are more important to me than getting to smoke a doob. So I'll happily pay taxes to support those things and vote against people who use my tax money to give breaks to billionaires and blow up brown people and harm the environment and make war against women and children and other living things...

[Dr. Strange]

18. Atlas Shrugged was okay.

The stories from that and from her shorter work "Anthem" were fine in and of themselves, but as they say in the industry: Show, don't tell.

She spreads a lot of ink telling instead of showing. In particular, with Atlas Shrugged, you're getting a story half of the time and a lecture the other half.

[LanternWaste]

19. Rands fiction sucks for the same reason so much sci-fi written in the past twenty years sucks

Rand’s fiction of yesterday sucks for the same reason so much sci-fi written in the past twenty years sucks. It is endlessly didactic and moralistic, so busy preaching it forgets to pay close attention to life.

Her characters deliver lectures rather than engage with each other. You don’t have to look closely to see they are puppets with Rand’s own lips moving eerily under the mask, her angry eyes staring out through holes in the rubber face. The bad guys in her books are called generosity and altruism and they speak only in bromides and Rand gleefully bats them down.

She is unable to write plausible dialog, her protagonists are decidedly one-dimensional, her exposition writing far too minimal to convey necessary context.

[regnaD kciN]

21. Honest Answer: No

In fact, before I even got to Rand's philosophy/politics, her writing style had thoroughly put me off. Think cheap romance novel coupled with poorly-scripted superhero comic book.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

22. No. It's crap.

It's poorly-written, long-winded and tendentious. I couldn't finish it because it was so damn boring.

[Mme. Defarge]

24. No.

[no_hypocrisy]

25. No.

And you can't blame it on the editors. Rand refused to let them move a comma.

It is unreadable. It lacks logic. The prose is tedious. The style is flat. It is forced fiction to justify Rand's ode to selfishness and egotism.

[edhopper]

27. Compare and contrast

"Who is John Galt?"
The light was ebbing, and Eddie Willers could not distinguish the bum's face. The bum had said it simply,
without expression. But from the sunset far at the end of the street, yellow glints caught his eyes, and the
eyes looked straight at Eddie Willers, mocking and still—as if the question had been addressed to the
causeless uneasiness within him.
"Why did you say that?" asked Eddie Willers, his voice tense.
The bum leaned against the side of the doorway; a wedge of broken glass behind him reflected the metal
yellow of the sky.
"Why does it bother you?" he asked.
"It doesn't," snapped Eddie Willers.
He reached hastily into his pocket. The bum had stopped him and asked for a dime, then had gone on
talking, as if to kill that moment and postpone the problem of the next. Pleas for dimes were so frequent
in the streets these days that it was not necessary to listen to explanations, and he had no desire to hear
the details of this bum's particular despair.[/blockquote

or?

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth becasme pale pink in the red country and white in the gray country.

[rickford66]

33. I used to sign my s/w as John Galt.

Somewhere, sometime, someone had to ask "Who is John Galt?"

[PsychoBabble]

36. Type type type type ....

I can hear the keys clicking.

Good Lord that is awful.

[pnwmom]

29. No. If you have time for a giant slog, read War and Peace, the complete works of Tolstoi,

or Moby Dick.

Don't waste a giant slog on Atlas Shrugged.

[missingthebigdog]

30. No.

In fact, I am fairly convinced that nobody has actually ever read it, lol. I think it is one of those books that people say they have read because they think it makes them seem intelligent. Any philosophical value it might have is crushed by the sheer volume of meaningless prose. I am a very committed reader; but I just could not get through it. Her pacing and sentence structure are severely deficient, and her characters are flat and unremarkable.

[Foamfollower]

31. John Rogers said it best.

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

[SchrodingersCatbox]

37. Was going to post that myself.

That quote says all that really need be said

[LAS14]

52. Sorry, I don't get it. What are orcs? nt

[Jim Lane]

80. Orcs are creatures in [i]The Lord of the Rings[/i]

The point of the quotation is the old switcheroo. If you're familiar with The Lord of the Rings, you recognize the initial description as being applicable to that work. You expect the author to go on to discuss Rand. Then the punchline about orcs tells you that the author means the initial description to apply to Atlas Shrugged.

BTW, The Lord of the Rings is a fantasy novel that includes humans and some of the traditional fantasy types, such as elves and dwarves. It also includes Tolkien's own inventions, notably hobbits. Orcs aren't completely traditional or completely new. They're sort of Tolkien's version of goblins. They're always evil, although sometimes some orcs will do something that helps the good guys by killing other orcs who serve a different villain.

[LAS14]

82. Thanks! Nice of you to take the time for a good explanation. :-) nt

[irisblue]

67. LOL

[hunter]

32. The Unabomber's manifesto was much more coherent and concise.

I believe Rand suffered hypergraphia.

Her use of amphetamines kept her focused enough to write novels, but maybe that wasn't a good thing. People used her. She was not a happy person. Reading her stuff makes me cringe at first, but then it just makes me sad.

[Binkie The Clown]

34. At age 20 I read it and thought it was great. In my 30s I read it again. It's pure crap. n/t

[dalton99a]

35. Better than L. Ron Hubbard.

[hunter]

61. Nope. Hubbard was a craftsman of penny-a-word-pot-boiling space opera. Rand is simply deranged...

... in a sad sot of rode-hard-and-put-away-wet kind of way.

I dare say Rand's ass-kissing-and-rapist-praising ideology is more repugnant, and has done far more damage to our society, than Hubbard's spewed from the toilet intellectual offspring.

John Travolta in Battlefield Earth is mostly harmless. Even a rattlesnake-in-your-mailbox is statistically less dangerous than a Paul Ryan or Donald Trump.

My own hero author is Philip K. Dick.

I am a creature of chaos and reflections. I don't care if anyone is human or replicant.

[malchickiwick]

63. Shout out to a fellow PKD fan!

I agree with you re: LRH too. I read the Mission Earth series, and while it was not earth-shattering, it was certainly better than anything AR could come up with.

[SwissTony]

38. Tried reading it in my twenties. Awful. Didn't get very far.

I thought maybe it was because she was writing in what, to her, was a second language.

[SomethingNew]

39. Depends on the definition you use.

If you define literary merit as aesthetic merit, then it has very little. Rand was not a gifted writer.

If you define it more broadly and bring in considerations like cultural influence, then one would have to acknowledge its impact.

[hatrack]

41. It makes the "Left Behind" series look like Tolstoy

.

[6000eliot]

42. Not a bit.

Hack literature and pseudo philosophy.

[Javaman]

43. it's about as intellectually stimulating as is reading the ingredients to a bag of Doritos.

I would rather stare at the sun until I went blind if I subjected my brain to that pile of shit book again.

it's written by someone with the intellect of a a 10 year old to appeal to people with the intellect of a 3 year old.

[WinkyDink]

45. No. And I studied literature.

[colsohlibgal]

46. No

She was sick upstairs and just spewed her selfish wins thoughts out on the pages.

[Atman]

47. I find anything by Carl Haissen to be imminently more intellectual reading.

Let that sink in for a moment.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

48. Well, I would hope so.

Skink 2020!

[Baconator]

49. Read it twice...

Never made it through his speech at the end...

[LAS14]

50. Yes and no.

I read it in high school, just because it was a best seller. I knew nothing about politics, economics, Ayn Rand. At the time I thought it was a good enough read to read a couple more books, but gave up on her for being formulaic and shallow. Not to say I didn't like the values of the main characters.

So I think that the answer is probably "no," except for the fact that I remember the feel of those books 50 years later, and I can't say that about every book I read. So I have to give them something for being compelling. (Not that I was compelled to adopt her philosophy or anything.)

[Jonny Appleseed]

51. The title is pretty great imagery

But by even writing the book Ayn Rand betrays the philosophy of the book.

[malchickiwick]

53. It's Great!! As a cure for insomnia or as a chloroform substitute.

I couldn't get past the first few pages. It was utter word-salad garbage! My reading time is FAR too valuable to waste on such dreck.

[Iggo]

54. I'd have to ask my high school self, and he'd say "No. But I only read about four pages." (n/t)

[Warpy]

55. Not really, I finished it in silly giggles

because the damned thing was so ponderous, patronizing, and preachy. I admit I skipped the multipage polemics passing as conversation between characters. I found the premise ridiculous and the characters preposterous and totally unlikable.

The only thing that kept me soldiering on to the bitter end was that I was a compulsive reader. Oh, and I wanted to be able to say I actually finished the damned thing.

Young males of a certain type tend to skip the silly story and go right to the polemics. I skipped the polemics and laughed at the silly story.

[haele]

56. Not really.

Looking at it critically as a work of fiction, it ranks around the Bulwar-Lytton ("It was a dark and stormy night&quot or James Fenimore Cooper level of hyperbole in writing. It's basically an ideological essay on "virtues" - on steroids.
For Dog's sakes, there's a 10 page f'ing speech praising the virtues of "Personal Freedumb" (Selfishness without the self-interest...) that happens in the middle of the luke-warm wedding - that's given by the spurned suiter of the bride, not to mention John Galt's soliliquy.

The protaganists don't have antagonists that are equal to them, and there is not struggle really to be overcome. Their antagonists - that is to say, 99% of the population around them - are so weak, when they decide to stop "bearing the weight of the world", the rest of society just collapses into anarchy, and the only non-wealthy capitalist/inventors - or their heirs - that are left are the faithful toadies that worship the masters.

At least Cooper's protagonists really did require the occasional Deux ex Machina to save their asses and is entertaining in a juvenile play-acting way.

Atlas Shrugged is basically just the type of story that is told at an endless white-tie dinner party to entertain a bunch of rich f'ers who want vindication for fatuously flaunting their inherited wealth and building up their precious little snowglobe existances.

As Dorothy Parker was attributed to have said "This is not a novel to be lightly tossed aside, it is to be thrown with great force..."

Haele

[eppur_se_muova]

58. LOL! Great quote. nt

[guillaumeb]

57. An insight into the mind of a Libertarian.

Interesting that a Libertarian who claimed to be against government programs applied for and accepted Social Security benefits.

[delisen]

62. Romance Novel for Certain Types of Men

Ayn Rand wrote Romance Novels for men. while their entitled to their fantasies, it seems many are confusing these with real adulthood.

To be John Galt is to be anti-regulation-regulation and laws stand in the way of Real Men
Real Men built the world, the rest of us should be grateful but we are too stupid to realize it.

A real man takes a woman if he wants her; she wants to be taken by a real man. She wants to be raped.

From the Fountainhead: (Imagine the young Paul Ryan or Rex Tillerson reading this from their favorite author
and now perhaps confusing Donald Trump with their fantasy hero.

"He moved one hand, took her two wrists and pinned them behind her, under his arm, wrenching her shoulder blades."

"She tried to tear herself away from him. The effort broke against his arms that had not felt it. Her fists beat against his shoulders, against his face. He moved one hand, took her two wrists and pinned them behind her, under his arm, wrenching her shoulder blades.…She fell back against the dressing table, she stood crouching, her hands clasping the edge behind her, her eyes wide, colorless, shapeless in terror. He was laughing. There was the movement of laughter on his face, but no sound.…Then he approached. He lifted her without effort. She let her teeth sink into his hand and felt blood on the tip of her tongue. He pulled her head back and he forced her mouth open against his".

[bigmonkey]

66. Friedrich Hayek and William Buckley both found it unreadable.

Not heroes of mine at all, but if even leading conservative lights like these badmouth it ...

[TheBlackAdder]

72. And those two wrote some of the biggest shit piles on the planet!

[irisblue]

68. 2 hardback copies held up the couch in my first college commune.

Since it was under the missing rt front leg area, I doubt anyone read it.

[Worktodo]

69. No it's pretty useless

Total fantasy where the super awesome people (who are super awesome at everything!) are thwarted at every turn by the pesky losers who make up 99.9% of humanity. There are no children in this world (weaklings!) Rand is fascinated by Steel, Trains, Engines, etc. and neglects super useful things like plumbing and water sanitation.

I liked to joke (to myself of course cause who else has read this book):

Who pumps John Gault's septic tank in Galt's Gultch? Why Peter Plumber of course the owner of Pete's Plumbing the Greatest Plumber in the World. He invented Pete's Plumbs. Without Pete's Plumbs there would be no plumbing at all! The water would run uphill! But he was held back by the damn bureaucrats, yada yada. Imagine Pete's Plumbs made with Reardon Steel! "My God", said Dagney.

[Alice11111]

70. A very personal experience was born of Any Rand's books

I read all of her works in my mid 20s, when she was very popular. I was curious about why she had caught fire with so many. When I had almost finished, I decided our society had become shallow and was desperately seeking a philosophy, and a hero, so desperately that it was "accepting" her writing & philosophy. I was a philosophy & lit major, so I had read a lot of real literature and philosophy. Nonetheless, I could enjoy a good read, that was not great literature. It was her message that was intolerable.

My best friend of 15 years called, and she had been reading her also. I remember the room and chair where I was sitting during that conversation. We had often discussed books and read them at the same time. She LOVED her, loved her characters, her philosophy, and she was completely gaga about her. To me, it was more than a difference of opinion, which could be stimulating. I argued about her philosophy of self-absorbed, selfishness at all costs, and she raved about individualism. I pointed out, even if you agree with her basic philosophy, she is preachy and shallow. It highlighted a division of values and the loss of closeness in a friendship, that was already becoming apparent.

We are both Dems, though very different in our thinking. She was a Hillary Hater and a Bernie hater. She reluctantly voted for the Dem, while carrying on about Bengazi. We are not close anymore, but we keep in touch...did the Women's March. Each time I have been around her since, I see how much we have diverged in our thinking, values and experiences.

I feel like I have moved on, and she is still raging with Ayn Rand, without mentioning her, coupled with a lot of alcohol, and telling me I am a leftist.She probably thinks I'm a knee jerk leftist, without giving the Repubs a fair shot. I've thought about writing her, as she is difficult to talk to. She said she was going to be near my city this summer, and I insincerely said, well, call me. Change subject. To a real friend, I would have said, when, stay with us....

She rages, and doesn't listen, though she has become wealthy, with the Ayn Rand philosophy. We argued, mostly politely, when we were last together about politics, but then, when she had no information to support her arguments, she got nasty. One of the arguments was over Hillary of all things, Whitewater, which she espoused old Repub garbage about. Then, she resorted to lying about some things about me of long ago, HS, knowing I would not betray her confidences of decades, and even recently, to our mutual friends. It just felt like Repub made up stuff and backstabbing, when nothing else is working.

I'm not sure why it feels important for me to tell her. I probably won't. Who would have ever known that this insiped writer would become the backbone of Republican philosophy. Who would have known that she, who I didn't like so long ago, would so negatively impact our country. I would have never expected she would even be read so many years later. So, I've come far with this vapid "philosopher," all of the way from my sitting in my chair at my desk, with the green flowered wallpaper, on the second story of my house, in my 20s, realizing that a close friendship had diverged.

[MountCleaners]

71. No.

I'm sure there are people I have read and enjoyed who held viewpoints I might find distasteful, but Rand is just plain tedious. Everything in her books is manipulated to support her ideology and it is supposed to persuade the reader. As opposed to telling a good story or have complex characters. It's awful. The Fountainhead is more readable, if only to laugh at it.

[sharedvalues]

73. NOOOOO. It is terrible

The Galt speech is perhaps the most boring, pointless, self-absorbed and frankly juvenile 70 pages that I have ever read.

People that like Atlas Shrugged are probably still reading the Hardy Boys. Similar levels of literature - exciting for young teens! but ignorant to anyone with an adult intellect.

[jzola]

76. No merit if you're a grownup.

It's a great book when you're between 14 and 17. Hopefully you've outgrown it after that.

[Yupster]

78. I really like the imagery near the beginning of the book

One of the characters (Eddie Willers?) talks about the first time he ever felt betrayed.

There was a giant tree in his neighborhood growing up and the kids climbed it and it was there forever and would be there forever. Then one day lightning struck the tree and when it fell, it was seen that the tree was mostly hollow and dead and had no strength at all, just a shell. It was the first time he was ever betrayed.

I still think of that little vignette as pretty powerful.

If you reead it there are 25 page speeches. You'll get the idea in the first two pages. Feel free to skip the next 23 pages.

[Adrahil]

79. Sweet Jeebus no!

You should probably force your way through it to see what the idiots on the other side think is deep thinking, but it is not good from a literary point of view. The characters are plastic stereotypes. The dialogue is artificial, and her characters are prone to monologues that go on for pages, with a healthy sprinkling of purple prose.

[Aristus]

81. It's the kind of thing Truman Capote used to call 'creative typing'.

The only creature that could spend more time at a typewriter with less to show for it would be a coked-up monkey.