4 ms·

I suppose you're being voted down because a lot of people don't like Atlas Shrugged. Personally, I think it's fair to say that if your aim is to be well-read,

I suppose you're being voted down because a lot of people don't like Atlas Shrugged. Personally, I think it's fair to say that if your aim is to be well-read, you should probably pick up Ayn Rand at some point just because her novels are likely to be common ground with other folks you're dealing with. That said, the actual quality of writing in Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead is frankly god-awful. If you're making a canon full of books that exemplify the craft of written storytelling, Atlas Shrugged would be sitting somewhere behind the Twilight novels.

maxharris 17y ago
Can you explain why you think the writing is "god-awful"? I've read both books, and I don't agree with this at all. (I'm not trying to be sarcastic. If you're correct, you should be able to make your case with more specific examples.)
- mquander 17y ago
  Well, her habit is that whenever she has a theme that she wants to emphasize, instead of demonstrating it, she just says it; either through the narrator's description of things, or through some huge silly speech like Galt's famous monologue at the end of Atlas Shrugged, Francisco talking about the beauty of money, or Dagny's dialogue with James Taggart's wife. That's ridiculous. Either Rand doesn't have the skill or inclination to demonstrate through story the philosophy that she foists upon us, or she doesn't trust her reader to be smart enough to figure it out. Besides that, generally purple prose, one-dimensional characterization, and way-too-exaggerated melodrama. I think I have a copy in the pile of books over there so I'll see if I can't find any passages that exemplify my complaints. Anyway, I think there's a lot of people besides me who feel the same way, so if you search around online you should be able to find plenty of folks bitching and moaning about Ayn Rand's fiction. EDIT: Atlas Shrugged, page 316 in my edition (I opened it randomly.) Dagny Taggart met Hugh Akston in the diner and is riding somewhere on a train. I did not italicize the following or quote it because it's quite ugly on HN, but it's verbatim. It was the chance conversation of two men somewhere behind her that came beating suddenly against her closed attention. "But laws shouldn't be passed that way, so quickly." "They're not laws, they're directives." "Then it's illegal." "It's not illegal, because the Legislature passed a law last month giving him the power to issue directives." "I don't think directives should be sprung on people that way, out of the blue, like a punch in the nose." "Well, there's no time to palaver when it's a national emergency." This impels Dagny to go grab a newspaper and read about the awful directives, and so on. How inartful. Good fiction does not spoonfeed arguments like this to the reader; it leaves the reader to argue it out himself, in his own head. It presents him with a story, not a conversation. And it doesn't present half of the story as an endless series of straw men waiting to be knocked down, as Rand treats all her "evil" characters. EDIT: Atlas Shrugged, page 567 in my edition. This is what Ayn Rand wrote about Counterfactual Rand's famous theatre production, Progressive Atlas Just Held It: The man in Roomette 3, Car No. 11, was a sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities to the effect that all businessmen were scoundrels. Oh dear!
  - maxharris 17y ago
    "Well, her habit is that whenever she has a theme that she wants to emphasize, instead of demonstrating it, she just says it" http://www.exploreaynrand.com/1957/ http://www.exploreaynrand.com/1957/ Have you seen Diana Hsieh's page and podcasts on this? If you don't have the time or interest in the podcasts themselves (I highly recommend them, however), the questions alone reveal depth that almost no one gets when they read her book the first time (this was certainly true for me!)
    - mquander 17y ago
      I haven't, and now that I'm all fired up about Ayn Rand, I suppose I'll listen to them this afternoon. Thank you!

maxharris 17y ago

Can you explain why you think the writing is "god-awful"? I've read both books, and I don't agree with this at all. (I'm not trying to be sarcastic. If you're correct, you should be able to make your case with more specific examples.)

mquander 17y ago
Well, her habit is that whenever she has a theme that she wants to emphasize, instead of demonstrating it, she just says it; either through the narrator's description of things, or through some huge silly speech like Galt's famous monologue at the end of Atlas Shrugged, Francisco talking about the beauty of money, or Dagny's dialogue with James Taggart's wife. That's ridiculous. Either Rand doesn't have the skill or inclination to demonstrate through story the philosophy that she foists upon us, or she doesn't trust her reader to be smart enough to figure it out. Besides that, generally purple prose, one-dimensional characterization, and way-too-exaggerated melodrama. I think I have a copy in the pile of books over there so I'll see if I can't find any passages that exemplify my complaints. Anyway, I think there's a lot of people besides me who feel the same way, so if you search around online you should be able to find plenty of folks bitching and moaning about Ayn Rand's fiction. EDIT: Atlas Shrugged, page 316 in my edition (I opened it randomly.) Dagny Taggart met Hugh Akston in the diner and is riding somewhere on a train. I did not italicize the following or quote it because it's quite ugly on HN, but it's verbatim. It was the chance conversation of two men somewhere behind her that came beating suddenly against her closed attention. "But laws shouldn't be passed that way, so quickly." "They're not laws, they're directives." "Then it's illegal." "It's not illegal, because the Legislature passed a law last month giving him the power to issue directives." "I don't think directives should be sprung on people that way, out of the blue, like a punch in the nose." "Well, there's no time to palaver when it's a national emergency." This impels Dagny to go grab a newspaper and read about the awful directives, and so on. How inartful. Good fiction does not spoonfeed arguments like this to the reader; it leaves the reader to argue it out himself, in his own head. It presents him with a story, not a conversation. And it doesn't present half of the story as an endless series of straw men waiting to be knocked down, as Rand treats all her "evil" characters. EDIT: Atlas Shrugged, page 567 in my edition. This is what Ayn Rand wrote about Counterfactual Rand's famous theatre production, Progressive Atlas Just Held It: The man in Roomette 3, Car No. 11, was a sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities to the effect that all businessmen were scoundrels. Oh dear!
- maxharris 17y ago
  "Well, her habit is that whenever she has a theme that she wants to emphasize, instead of demonstrating it, she just says it" http://www.exploreaynrand.com/1957/ http://www.exploreaynrand.com/1957/ Have you seen Diana Hsieh's page and podcasts on this? If you don't have the time or interest in the podcasts themselves (I highly recommend them, however), the questions alone reveal depth that almost no one gets when they read her book the first time (this was certainly true for me!)
  - mquander 17y ago
    I haven't, and now that I'm all fired up about Ayn Rand, I suppose I'll listen to them this afternoon. Thank you!