[ SECRET POST #3153 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3153 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 060 secrets from Secret Submission Post #451.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

09. http://i.imgur.com/E7qyAVE.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

Atlas Shrugged does suck. Ayn Rand needed an editor.

The Fountainhead isn't bad, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, The Fountainhead. Rand could bust out an evocative description now and then. Dominique Francon cools her temples with perfume, and the description of it nailed the sensation completely. It's a good passage.

Rand is one of the few authors where I'm like, "please, tell me MORE about what jewel this person's eyes resemble!"

[(Anonymous)]

It's legitimately terrible prose, so yes, that's the correct approach to take

(The same is not necessarily true for her other novels, but Atlas Shrugged is fantastically bad even approached purely in terms of literary quality)

[(Anonymous)]

...isn't this book just a thinly-veiled Author's Manifesto for Rand's crazy religion? Of course it's going to be awful prose; all so-called SF books that are like this are.

I only know this because I've read way too many of them. WHAT it was a boxful of them from a used bookstore okay!

[(Anonymous)]

Atlas Shrugged is not really usefully described as SF imo

Mere impossibility of events described does not in and of itself make something science fiction

[feotakahari]

I tried reading this with no context whatsoever. All I knew was that it was some kind of classic. I lasted about five pages.

[ketita]

I read about half of it. I didn't hate it? I mean I thought it was a lot of hooey, but I did kind of like the buildup of creeping tension and bleakness.

Don't remember the prose much, though, and I was relatively young. I mean that was before I realized just /how bad/ the Forgotten Realms books were, for example.

[dethtoll]

Fuck Ayn Rand. Fuck her writing. Fuck her philosophy. Fuck her ideals. Fuck her hypocrisy. Fuck everything about her. Fuck.

[(Anonymous)]

hahahahaha +1

[cakemage]

Yep, that sums up my feelings on her as well.

[(Anonymous)]

Frankly, I don't really trust anyone who claims to be a fan of hers, period. She was a vile, selfish woman with a vile, selfish philosophy.

[elaminator]

This is a bit sad, but I tried reading it because of BioShock. Wasn't well versed in the woman's writing or beliefs, but had still heard enough about it to know that I would call it bullshit. Still, I wanted to see for myself since it was considered a classic, and the world of BioShock fascinated me so I thought it might at least be a sort of horrifying if interesting read.

I didn't even make it halfway through.

[(Anonymous)]

I admit, I straight up loved this book. Except for the 60(?) page speech towards the end, which I flat out skipped. And yeah, there were places where Ayn Rand's raging boner for capitalism got in the way of enjoying the story. (The part where one of the dudes calls Robin Hood a crook was simultaneously hilarious and nauseating.)

I wouldn't call the writing good. Conceptually, it hinges too much on bizarre philosophical abstractions and black/white thinking for it to be good. On a technical level it badly needs an editor at the very least. And even with the benefit of an editor, I think Rand's writing would still be a bit too over the top and unsubtle to be genuinely good.

That said, I enjoyed the hell out of (most of) it. There's something I find tremendously intense and engrossing about Rand's writing. I like the scope and magnitude of her stories. I like the pace at which they move through time. I like her bold, vivid descriptions of characters. I love how self-possessed and self-determining her characters are. I think it makes them incredibly compelling (if rather larger than life). She's the only writer I can think of who, the way she describes things gives me an almost erotic thrill, even when what she's describing is not, objectively, the least bit erotic.

HOWEVER, I am also about as left-wing as you get, and I definitely have HUGE issues with the capitalist part of Ayn Rand's "philosophy." I think much of what she says is largely misunderstood, but I also think that it's her own fault she gets misunderstood because she attempts to redefine words entirely and she expects people to just follow along and agree with her. Like, in Rand-speak "capitalism" actually means "ingenuity and motivation." Similarly "greed" actually means "ambition" and "compassion" actually means "passive-aggressive self-entitlement."

Unfortunately for her, her understanding of capitalism was seriously flawed. I would say comically flawed, except that some people actually try to implement her capitalist philosophy and there's nothing funny about that because, in actual practice, it's super fucked up.

I do also have definite issues with the personal side of Rand's philosophy (which is more the focus of The Fountainhead, another novel I enjoyed immensely but with strong caveats). However, there's a lot more that I agree with in the personal side of her philosophy than there is in the political side.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

I would also like to specify that throughout my life I've always subsisted well below the poverty line. So I'm not some privileged upper-middle class lefty person who can love Atlas Shrugged with impunity because I'll never have to worry about a system with makes the rich people richer and blames the poor for their poverty. I know all about that. I just...enjoy the book anyway?

Yeah, I don't really get it myself. I think it comes back to the prose and the way it just grips me and doesn't let go. Also, I will love Dangy Taggart until the day I die. She's the reason that, even though Atlas Shrugged was way squickier than The Fountainhead, I liked it more. I liked Dominique Francon too, but she was not the protagonist, nor was she anywhere near as active or as much of a BAMF as Dagny was.

[(Anonymous)]

Essentially, there is some percentage of the nerd population that just wants to read about clever BAMFs being clever and BAMFy, and people munchkining, and outwitting rules systems, and building things and world-building and outsmarting everyone, and hacking the system, and that frankly doesn't give a shit about the quality of a work as long as it contains those things.

So, viewed in that light, it's not surprising that some people would like it, for the sam reason that nerds like all other kind of terrible shit.

[(Anonymous)]

NA

Eeee! Friends!

I, too, loved this book, and very much agree with what you say about people not understanding what Rand is trying to say. Honestly? I would LOVE it if capitalism worked like Rand thinks it should work. Then everyone gets paid fairly for the work they do, and everyone takes responsibility for their actions, with the higher up you go, the more responsibility you take on. You pay good labor good wages, and if people earn it, they receive it. And apparently there aren't issues like workers losing time for being injured on the job, ridiculous hospital costs if something goes wrong with your health, racism, sexism, or other prejudices that can seriously affect your salary, and a whole host of other real-world issues that come into play.

On the other hand, I read this at a time when I personally needed the bootstraps message. It did change my perspective on some things and got me less focused on some not-really-major problems and more focused on solving them, so I really appreciate the novel and her philosophy for that. But my problems were largely of my own making, so the bootstrap message was appropriate.

I still love the book and reread it once every few years. (Except, like the nonnie above, that awful 60-page speech.) But I certainly don't use it as a guide to voting or how people should live their lives in general. But I'm always happier and more focused on active solution after I read it, so it works well for me.

[quantumreality]

Objectivists who praise Ayn Rand make me wonder what their tastes in literature are. I read Anthem once and oh my fucking GOD. It literally felt like the turgid fucking sentences were bricks hitting my brain.

And for her to basically put a ~70 page author tract rant in one of her books just takes the cake.

[ninety6tears]

I'm still laughing about how my philosophy professor couldn't contain himself from a pretty biased teaching of Rand, like he was just like "Yeah, she sucks, but we have to devote at least half an hour to talking about this essay." Anyway, I've never been conviced her novels would appeal to me any more than her ethics.

Ditto, sort of.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't assume someone is an Objectivist if they like this book, but I do assume they're pretentious as fuck and probably lacking a sense of humour.

And really, that's what most Objectivists are like anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

I just can't see anything Ayn Rand without thinking about how the CEO of Sears/Kmart is a huge fanboy and tried to run his stores according to her philosophy and that's why they both went under so badly.

[cakemage]

I think that's a pretty fair assumption. I mean, I'm sure there are legitimate exceptions to that rule, but in general, yeah.

[(Anonymous)]

She's not a good writer.

[ceebeegee]

Seriously, people claim that? The Fountainhead is a better novel, on some levels (the sex scenes are hottt) but Atlas Shrugged works solely as a manifesto. The prose is pretty awful.

[sabotabby]

You would be correct.