3 ms·
Why throw a fit over somebody else's aversion to the novel? Because it's often assumed that anyone who complains about the writing actually dislikes the politi
by camccann 17y ago
Why throw a fit over somebody else's aversion to the novel?
Because it's often assumed that anyone who complains about the writing actually dislikes the politics and is bashing the writing as a disingenuous cover for that; and that anyone who claims to have enjoyed her novels for their own sake is actually promoting the politics and only talking the novels up to serve that end.
In short, debating the quality of Ayn Rand's writing as fiction is a proxy battle for the associated politics, and we all know how enlightening political debates on the internet can be.
- tptacek 17y agoRespond to what he wrote, not to what you've inferred him to have thought.
- camccann 17y agoTo read any text is to attempt to infer its meaning. This is English, not C. I was mostly trying to suggest that, just maybe, it'd be a good idea to not turn the whole conversation into one about politics, but apparently that's inevitable. There seem to be a lot of people on HN whose feelings about libertarianism (either for or against) are a core part of their self-image, and that makes discussing anything related perilous. See also: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html and http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ In the future I think I'll just flag any article that mentions Rand and I encourage others to do the same, regardless of what they think of her ideas.
- xenophanes 17y agoDo you also plan to flag every article mentioning Marx, socialism, Chomsky, environmentalism (for or against), etc, etc? I don't think flagging is the answer. Just don't read it.
- camccann 17y agoSure, thanks for the suggestions. I guess I might give Chomsky a pass if it was purely about linguistics and didn't involve his politics at all. Look, I'm not out to push my politics here, if that's what you're thinking. I read HN because of the high-quality discussions about technology and related matters. If I want to see flame wars over libertarianism, environmentalism, or whatever else there's an entire internet full of that dreck, and the amount of political content usually has a pretty direct negative correlation to the quality of discussion at a site.