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Something that I don’t think gets talked about enough with AR is just how bad her writing is. It’s both overly descriptive and yet clumsy. The John Galt monolog

Something that I don’t think gets talked about enough with AR is just how bad her writing is. It’s both overly descriptive and yet clumsy. The John Galt monologue at the end of Atlas Shrugged alone bored me to friggin tears.

hirundo 7y ago
I was told that cheese and fish don't go together. I think the fact that McDonald's has sold a gazillion filet of fish sandwiches with cheese demonstrates that this is questionable. I was told that Ayn Rand was a bad writer. I think the fact that people have bought around 29 million copies of her books demonstrates that this is questionable. But I'm perfectly willing to believe that you found her writing bad and boring. I find it engrossing and boring in different places, and skip the famously tedious monologue too.
- manifestsilence 7y ago
  Ayn rand herself actually had a pretty good explanation of why this may be. She differentiated between a writer's technical skill and their "sense of life", and said that one could appreciate a writer's skill but hate what their writing revealed about their unconscious attitudes about the universe, or conversely think a writer is trash but love what they have to say. I found the Fountainhead incredibly appealing when I first read it; you're right that it strikes a strong chord in people. But she breaks a lot of rules of what is by modern standards considered to be good writing. Her literary influences, though, were Victor Hugo and Ian Fleming (the James Bond author). So that's interesting company to keep. They both have that same vice, the love of the monologue. Fleming calls himself out on it in an essay that's been circling round lately.
Terr_ 7y ago
I read Atlas Shrugged "cold" -- never having even heard of the author before. When I got to that chapter it was just infuriating, because it underscored how all the rest of the novel was really just a kind of drawn-out "Mary Sue" setup for delivering a manifesto. Not only that, but it was massively hypocritical, because all the villains were people who were overly swayed by appeals to others' neediness and emotion, yet the book itself is a message of "pity the poor billionaires as they suffer these fictional hardships."

hirundo 7y ago

I was told that cheese and fish don't go together. I think the fact that McDonald's has sold a gazillion filet of fish sandwiches with cheese demonstrates that this is questionable. I was told that Ayn Rand was a bad writer. I think the fact that people have bought around 29 million copies of her books demonstrates that this is questionable. But I'm perfectly willing to believe that you found her writing bad and boring. I find it engrossing and boring in different places, and skip the famously tedious monologue too.

manifestsilence 7y ago
Ayn rand herself actually had a pretty good explanation of why this may be. She differentiated between a writer's technical skill and their "sense of life", and said that one could appreciate a writer's skill but hate what their writing revealed about their unconscious attitudes about the universe, or conversely think a writer is trash but love what they have to say. I found the Fountainhead incredibly appealing when I first read it; you're right that it strikes a strong chord in people. But she breaks a lot of rules of what is by modern standards considered to be good writing. Her literary influences, though, were Victor Hugo and Ian Fleming (the James Bond author). So that's interesting company to keep. They both have that same vice, the love of the monologue. Fleming calls himself out on it in an essay that's been circling round lately.

Terr_ 7y ago

I read Atlas Shrugged "cold" -- never having even heard of the author before. When I got to that chapter it was just infuriating, because it underscored how all the rest of the novel was really just a kind of drawn-out "Mary Sue" setup for delivering a manifesto. Not only that, but it was massively hypocritical, because all the villains were people who were overly swayed by appeals to others' neediness and emotion, yet the book itself is a message of "pity the poor billionaires as they suffer these fictional hardships."