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I read Atlas Shrugged and immediately followed it by (re)reading The Grapes of Wrath. Both are horribly doctrinaire (with opposing viewpoints), so it made for a

by ojbyrne 16y ago

I read Atlas Shrugged and immediately followed it by (re)reading The Grapes of Wrath. Both are horribly doctrinaire (with opposing viewpoints), so it made for an interesting contrast. Steinbeck can at least put a sentence together.

grandalf 16y ago
Example of a particularly bad sentence? I'm curious b/c although I'm a native English speaker I was not put off by Rand's prose.
- ojbyrne 16y ago
  Nice placement of a semicolon: "That's not of any importance, even my life and work are not of any importance to me right now, nothing is of any importance; except I must find him." "The window frame trembled with the speed of the motion, the pane hung over empty darkness, and dots of light slashed across the glass as luminous streaks, once in a while." What? "What she felt in that moment contained, as one nameless part of it, the knowledge of the beauty in the posture of his body as he held her, as they stood in the middle of the room high above the lights of the city" Again, what? "This is the world and the core of it, this is what made the city – they go together, the angular shapes of the city and the angular shapes lines of a face stripped of everything but purpose – the rising steps of steel and the steps of being intent upon a goal – this is what they had been, all the men who lived to invent the lights, the steel, the furnaces, the motors – they were the world, they, not the men who crouched in dark corners, half-begging, half-threatening, boastfully displaying their open sores as their only claim on life and virtue – so long as he knew that there existed one man with the bright courage of a new thought, could be given up the world to those other? – so long as he could find a single sight to give him a life-restoring shot of admiration, could he believe that the world belonged to the sores, the moans and the guns? – the men who invented motors did exist, he would never doubt their reality, it was his vision of them that had made the contrast unbearable, so that even the loathing was the tribute of his loyalty to them and to that world which was theirs and his." Open sores? Why not just choose a suitably racist epithet. A 50 page speech? Would anyone listening to that (other than in the fake world that the book is set in) actually be awake? These I got from just googling around, I don't have the book handy. I'll leave you with a quote from an actual writer, Salman Rushdie: "No. I am not--and have never been--influenced by Ayn Rand. In fact, I pity anyone who is influenced by Ayn Rand. It's almost as bad as being influenced by Dan Brown." And finally you can go read George Orwell on why the kind of prose that Rand writes, isn't just bad, it's evil. The same way Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto are evil: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm "As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse."
  - lzw 16y ago
    Like I said, opponents turn out ot universally be people who haven't read the book and who only have insults to bring to better. Notice you ares attempting to argue against a philosophy by using cribbed quits of prose and making the claim that the prose is bad!
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Dude, the main premise of the book breaks down into a paragraph. "Producers, not paid enough, go galt, government can't replace them, society collapses." That's 12 words. We're all intelligent here and can follow that reasoning to it's implications for our world. Now you can argue that someone needs to read the full novel and all of the not-real-world alt-historic details in order to understand that, yes, in that world completely imagined by Ayn Rand, her philosophy would make sense. But that says nothing about the applicability of the main point to the world we actually live in. If this is a discussion about fan-fiction rather than political economy, I'll yield the floor.
      - yummyfajitas 16y ago
        The government offered Galt any amount of money he wished, and he refused to work for them. Pay was not the issue. Further, society was collapsing even before the strikers left, which was one of the major themes of the book - regardless of the strike, society was doomed. Step 1: read the book Step 2: summarize/criticize it
    - ojbyrne 16y ago
      I read the stupid book cover to cover, except for Galt's speech (because it was completely pointless). That was my original post. I didn't have it handy to quote from.
  - grandalf 16y ago
    Surely some of Rand's language use is a biproduct of her not being a native English speaker. A rough sentence here or there, or a somewhat wayward clause, is not (in my opinion) reason enough to dismiss an author. My guess is that the editor left those paragraphs alone because he/she understood that they don't detract at all. In fact, if you read them aloud they sound perfect to the ear. If you're looking for delicious, eloquent prose, try Fitzgerald or Joyce. Rand's feat with Atlas Shrugged was different -- not just literary. She wrote a tremendous novel of ideas. As I mentioned in one of the other threads, imagine if all of the world's philosophers wrote significant works of fiction to help explain their ideas to the general public! Also, I don't think that the existence of authors whose strength is the beauty of their prose diminishes Rand's accomplishment in the least. Hers is a different accomplishment and there is room on the book shelf for both.

by ojbyrne 16y ago

grandalf 16y ago

Example of a particularly bad sentence? I'm curious b/c although I'm a native English speaker I was not put off by Rand's prose.

ojbyrne 16y ago
Nice placement of a semicolon: "That's not of any importance, even my life and work are not of any importance to me right now, nothing is of any importance; except I must find him." "The window frame trembled with the speed of the motion, the pane hung over empty darkness, and dots of light slashed across the glass as luminous streaks, once in a while." What? "What she felt in that moment contained, as one nameless part of it, the knowledge of the beauty in the posture of his body as he held her, as they stood in the middle of the room high above the lights of the city" Again, what? "This is the world and the core of it, this is what made the city – they go together, the angular shapes of the city and the angular shapes lines of a face stripped of everything but purpose – the rising steps of steel and the steps of being intent upon a goal – this is what they had been, all the men who lived to invent the lights, the steel, the furnaces, the motors – they were the world, they, not the men who crouched in dark corners, half-begging, half-threatening, boastfully displaying their open sores as their only claim on life and virtue – so long as he knew that there existed one man with the bright courage of a new thought, could be given up the world to those other? – so long as he could find a single sight to give him a life-restoring shot of admiration, could he believe that the world belonged to the sores, the moans and the guns? – the men who invented motors did exist, he would never doubt their reality, it was his vision of them that had made the contrast unbearable, so that even the loathing was the tribute of his loyalty to them and to that world which was theirs and his." Open sores? Why not just choose a suitably racist epithet. A 50 page speech? Would anyone listening to that (other than in the fake world that the book is set in) actually be awake? These I got from just googling around, I don't have the book handy. I'll leave you with a quote from an actual writer, Salman Rushdie: "No. I am not--and have never been--influenced by Ayn Rand. In fact, I pity anyone who is influenced by Ayn Rand. It's almost as bad as being influenced by Dan Brown." And finally you can go read George Orwell on why the kind of prose that Rand writes, isn't just bad, it's evil. The same way Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto are evil: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm "As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse."
- lzw 16y ago
  Like I said, opponents turn out ot universally be people who haven't read the book and who only have insults to bring to better. Notice you ares attempting to argue against a philosophy by using cribbed quits of prose and making the claim that the prose is bad!
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Dude, the main premise of the book breaks down into a paragraph. "Producers, not paid enough, go galt, government can't replace them, society collapses." That's 12 words. We're all intelligent here and can follow that reasoning to it's implications for our world. Now you can argue that someone needs to read the full novel and all of the not-real-world alt-historic details in order to understand that, yes, in that world completely imagined by Ayn Rand, her philosophy would make sense. But that says nothing about the applicability of the main point to the world we actually live in. If this is a discussion about fan-fiction rather than political economy, I'll yield the floor.
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      The government offered Galt any amount of money he wished, and he refused to work for them. Pay was not the issue. Further, society was collapsing even before the strikers left, which was one of the major themes of the book - regardless of the strike, society was doomed. Step 1: read the book Step 2: summarize/criticize it
  - ojbyrne 16y ago
    I read the stupid book cover to cover, except for Galt's speech (because it was completely pointless). That was my original post. I didn't have it handy to quote from.
- grandalf 16y ago
  Surely some of Rand's language use is a biproduct of her not being a native English speaker. A rough sentence here or there, or a somewhat wayward clause, is not (in my opinion) reason enough to dismiss an author. My guess is that the editor left those paragraphs alone because he/she understood that they don't detract at all. In fact, if you read them aloud they sound perfect to the ear. If you're looking for delicious, eloquent prose, try Fitzgerald or Joyce. Rand's feat with Atlas Shrugged was different -- not just literary. She wrote a tremendous novel of ideas. As I mentioned in one of the other threads, imagine if all of the world's philosophers wrote significant works of fiction to help explain their ideas to the general public! Also, I don't think that the existence of authors whose strength is the beauty of their prose diminishes Rand's accomplishment in the least. Hers is a different accomplishment and there is room on the book shelf for both.