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I also think the amount of hate Rand gets is interesting. I'd also be curious to to how many of those that hate her have actually read The Fountainhead or Atlas

I also think the amount of hate Rand gets is interesting. I'd also be curious to to how many of those that hate her have actually read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged? The books are long and unreasonably wordy. But the hate is mostly for the ideas, not the writing. The worlds are certainly fictional. Things are not as black and white as she paints them. The heroes are small minority of supremely talented, hard-working people battling bureaucracy and incompetence. Rand assumes everyone is born on a level playing field and the choices people may determine where they land. My advice is that anyone Atlas Shrugged is a must read for anyone with an ounce of entrepreneurial spirit. Take it with a grain of salt though.

andrepd 6y ago
I think that people bash the ideas and the writing. The writing is terrible: too wordy (too up-its-own-ass to put it rudely), and the characters too unbelievable: everyone she wants to be a hero is a shining paragon of virtue in all aspects without so much as a single flaw, and whomever she wants to be the bad guys are similarly extreme caricatures of lazy, cheating, and stealing bastards. I'll pass. Separate to that, her ideas are disliked with good reason.
- perilunar 6y ago
  Well her heroes are heroic and her bad guys are evil or weak — much like superhero films and comics, which are extremely popular and not criticised for the same thing. But there are interesting characters in her novels that are heroic but undone by their flaws. E.g. Leo Kovalensky and Andrei Taganov in We The Living, Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead, Dr. Robert Stadler and perhaps Eddie Willers in Atlas Shrugged.
LanceH 6y ago
The hate is generally thrown around by people who simultaneously think people should be good, but can't be trusted to be good. So we need a large government to enforce good behavior in all manner of activities. This government will, of course, be entirely benevolent. The members of government will all known better and act accordingly. The left may espouse noble causes, but it is authoritarian in its execution and intolerant of disagreement. Rand threatens that. The right is religious and more immediately rejects Rand at a surface level -- same thing, different authority.

andrepd 6y ago

I think that people bash the ideas and the writing. The writing is terrible: too wordy (too up-its-own-ass to put it rudely), and the characters too unbelievable: everyone she wants to be a hero is a shining paragon of virtue in all aspects without so much as a single flaw, and whomever she wants to be the bad guys are similarly extreme caricatures of lazy, cheating, and stealing bastards. I'll pass. Separate to that, her ideas are disliked with good reason.

perilunar 6y ago
Well her heroes are heroic and her bad guys are evil or weak — much like superhero films and comics, which are extremely popular and not criticised for the same thing. But there are interesting characters in her novels that are heroic but undone by their flaws. E.g. Leo Kovalensky and Andrei Taganov in We The Living, Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead, Dr. Robert Stadler and perhaps Eddie Willers in Atlas Shrugged.

LanceH 6y ago

The hate is generally thrown around by people who simultaneously think people should be good, but can't be trusted to be good. So we need a large government to enforce good behavior in all manner of activities. This government will, of course, be entirely benevolent. The members of government will all known better and act accordingly. The left may espouse noble causes, but it is authoritarian in its execution and intolerant of disagreement. Rand threatens that. The right is religious and more immediately rejects Rand at a surface level -- same thing, different authority.