Mark Mills, makes some pretty outrageous comments about Ayn Rand in the course of how he prefers to defend free enterprise. I have often wondered what is worse: the cultish “official” Objectivists who cannot deal with the slightest criticism of the woman, or those who claim, with little plausibility or evidence, that she contributed nothing valuable apart from an assertion that it is fine and proper to be happy. I came across this piece of nonsense at a link mentioned at the Adam Smith Institute blog:
According to Rand morality is an illusion and truly great individuals act solely in their own interests without giving thought to their impact on others.
Nonsense. The fiction and non-fiction works of the late Miss Rand, which are widely available, such as Atlas Shrugged, are absolutely rammed with discussion – sometimes to the shrill point of tedium – about morality. One may demur about Rand’s version of said, but to claim she had nothing to say on morality is so jaw-droppingly wrong as to wonder what Mr Mills has been smoking. Her view of morality, a code of values, was that morality was essential to the pursuit of life and human flourishing. Her ethical egoism was a kind of progression from the views of Aristotle and an attack on the idea, which stems from the dualism of certain religions, for example, that happiness on this earth and goodness are at war with one another. Rand said this dualism was fatal to both happiness and morality. There is now a large and growing literature on Rand’s views on morality and the importance of it in all aspects of human life (an example is here).
As to the point that her morality gave no thought to the “impact on others” of certain actions, what on earth is he driving at? The pursuit of long-range self interest means that one does not aggress against others, hurt them, rob them, etc. Quite the opposite: as Adam Smith realised, it means serving the wants of others through voluntary exchange in the market makes sense because doing that makes you happier in the long run, gets you friends, riches, etc. Mills statement is bizarre. Of course, Rand was an early sceptic about the environmentalist movement and tended to dismiss worries about pollution, etc, but then there is nothing in her body of ideas as such that would mean that a supporter of her would be blind to the problems of pollution, which can be thought of as a property rights problem.
People will recall that when the USA was founded, the Founders spoke about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. It says something about the state of ideas when a so-called defender of liberal capitalism regards a woman who championed the pursuit of happiness and attacked statism as some sort of nutcase. Oh well.
Excellent question.
“impact on others” – rather vague, a bit like J.S. Mill’s “harm principle”.
Of course Ayn Rand stood of the nonaggression principle (although the lady did not use the word “libertarian” about herself politically) not some “impact on others” principle. But, yes, to say that morality was an “illusion” to Rand is a flat out lie (it is not a mistake – a few seconds reading any of Ayn Rand’s works would show her devotion to morality).
Also Ayn Rand thought that “benevolence” (helping others) was a good thing, her characters often help people who have no chance of paying them back. The lady rejected “altruism” not benevolence. This is because altruism holds that human beings can only find meaning and be happy by living for others – which is just flat out wrong.
People that Ayn Rand approves of do not help others out of desire to find meaning in their own lives that way – they can find meaning without doing any such thing.
They want to be happy and they ALSO want other people to be happy.
Happyness to Rand is achieved, in part, as a byproduct of doing work that one regards as of worth (this included bringing up children for many people – although Rand herself had none). It is partly the sense of achievement but also the actual work itself.
“If an thing is worth doing it is worth doing well” would be words the lady would have approved of.
But the question remains — exactly what did the woman contribute that was both original and correct?
It certainly appears that in matters of philosophy, economics, and psychology the answer would be “nothing at all. At best she was a popularizer, at worst, blatantly incorrect.”
Ms. Rand may have been invaluable as a popularizer. Other than that, well, she was pretty much a waste of space.
no hugs for thugs,
SHirley Knott
The one feeds the other. Statements like Mills’ justify the paranoia of Rand’s fanatical followers that she’s being deliberately misrepresented, and the existence and behavior of said fanatics goes a long way to convincing people like Mills that the strawman versions of Rand’s philosophy that they’ve heard are probably true, ergo no need to actually read her stuff before commenting on it, etc.
Rand has the pop star’s curse. Her chosen medium of expression (bestsellers) isn’t taken seriously enough to get much attention from academics, and yet she sort of has to use such a medium to attract as much attention as she needs to “change the world©.”
I think things would have been better if she hadn’t been so lazy as a philosophical writer/editor. Rather than more or less resting on her laurels after Atlas Shrugged, she should have put more time into the philosophical essays and journals that followed.
Although, I suppose no amount of traditional academic work would have completely kept the left from burning strawmen. They do love them so…
I’ve never read any of Miss Rand’s work. But I’ve been meaning to because you nuts seem to like the cut of her jib and you nuts seem ok to me. Which of her books would you recommend as a start?
Have you ever read Whittaker Chambers’ risible review of Atlas Shrugged from National Review. Some of the conservative criticism of Rand’s thought is more idiotic than what comes from the left.
Agree or disagree with Rand (and I do both), but she was quite clear that morality was intrinsic to human-ness and that morality, far from being an illusion, was objectively derivable. Mark’s representation of her views is simply wrong.
My advice is dive right in and start with Atlas Shrugged. The Fountainhead is flawed, in my opinion, and while We the Living is probably her best novel and certainly of more manageable length, it’s not as representative of Rand the political figure. Most discussions of Rand will revolve around either Atlas or Fountainhead, and of the two Atlas is the better read (and more complete besides).
Mr Mills appears to be confusing Rand with Nietche,
or perhaps The Pop Group.
She is beyond good and evil?
Reading Atlas Shrugged was quite literally a life changing experience for me. I had just quit a job in a third world relief and development company and was ‘on strike’ and didn’t know it.
The Randroids have indeed turned St. Ayn into a near deity (I wait in trepidation for the Randtoon riots should such sacrilege ever be perpetrated), but her detractors are equally demented.
Typical of her detractors is Shirley Knott, who tells us a lot more about her own intellect and character than about Ayn Rand.
WalterBoswell, try Atlas Shrugged.
My take on Rand-
1) She was a reflection of the times, when Communism and Fascism flourished, when both contrived to have the Ministry of ________ run every aspect of people’s lives; when even Art was supposed to be a State function to motivate the masses. Her counter-arguments then were just as rigid in response, and is framed out in the same manner. In trying to argue for freedom, she allowed herself to traverse too much onto their territory. Going on at length about the proper process to appreciate art was too much.
2) She and her followers became too demagogic and cloistered which certainly defeats them at the very outset in trying to create a widely circulated set of ideas.
3) She had some very good ideas, and her essays are much more useful than her fiction works which tended toward melodrama much of the time. In a thousand plus pages there was astounding espistles but it added up to maybe 150 pages, the rest was tedious to slog through.
So it’s hard to cut through precisely what use Rand had to libertarian thought when they became fairly clannish and exclusive. Not that I advocate bland populism either, but certainly they became more rarified and aloof than was useful in advancing libertarian thoughts widely.
What people miss most is that she not only demanded that government get out of the moral transfer business, but that individuals take a good long look at voluntary assistance as well. It’s been nearly fifteen years since I read Atlas, but I do recall an episode where there was a bum who the main character assisted. This would seem contrary to the notion of pure selfishness. It was being astute in judging when (seemingly) unilateral assistance was proper. Making an allocation of your equity to someone who will just continue to piss their life away is no virtue. And making even voluntary transfers to a double blind system of giving is virtueless as well. Only individuals (or very small organizations) should make transfers to others and likely demand behavioral changes in return. Simply, that coerced transfer is wrong ALL the time, and that very careful consideration needs to be given to voluntary transfers. It seems to me that much of the giving done by people today could just as easily be done by pulling the amount to transfer in cash and toss the bills out at random on the road way. her assertion to my mind is that misallocations will happen even in the voluntary sphere of giving. Her’s was an attempt to strike both at the State and at possibly harmful cultural paradigms that would lead to damaging misallocations of resources. And the better resources are allocated, the more over all SUSTAINED happiness will result.
I would offer up Anthem as a first read simply for its brevity and focus of plot.
Joshua, Midwesterner, Razerwolfe – thanks for the advice. I’ll put both of those titles on the Christmas list.
Yet for myself, and I’d bet many, many others, reading Atlas Shrugged (or Fountain Head) was one of my first peeks into the basics of libertarian thought, and was in fact “life changing” in so much as it started me down a path that has led to so much more than Ayn Rand or her books. I most likely owe the fact that I’m reading this site right now to Atlas Shrugged.
If she did nothing else, she created a entry way to libertarian thought that was accessible and powerful.
Cynic, absolutely dead-right.
A trite observation, nothing more than abuse. Her contributions to areas like epistemology, her theory of concepts, her debunking of the altruistic “ethic”, her fictional portrayal of business…pretty original stuff and mostly correct. She was a great and creative populariser; she reinvigorated Aristotelian philosophy. Originality for originality’s sake is a waste of time, what counts is making important arguments in fresh and effective ways.
No “hugs for thugs” – indeed. Know thyself!
No! Steer well clear of Atlas Shrugged until you’ve read just about everything else of hers – it’s deeply flawed as literature (despite some excellent writing in places). If an editor could excise the droning speeches (which go on and on and on) it would be a much better read.
If you’re interested in her philosophy, check out her non-fiction writing (romantic manifesto, virtue of selfishness etc).
If you’re interested in her ability as a writer, try We the living, a very good novel with better characterization than her later stuff (the exception of course being Leo, a giant blank slate, which makes Kira’s adoration of him …. puzzling). The Fountainhead is inbetween, some good characterization, some awful speeches and some plot devices that just. don’t. work.
As for Anthem, as a linguist the main plot point makes no sense whatsoever.
michael farris –
I completely agree with you – but I think the point is that people don’t read Rand as a traditional novelist. She is, by her own admission, a writer of propaganda literature, and Atlas Shrugged is a masterpiece of the genre. It is my absolute favorite “novel,” but the trick is that I read it as science fiction rather than as I would a traditional classic. We the Living is indeed better as a “novel” (though I completely agree about Leo). but then, Rand is not a great “novelist” in the traditional sense, so there isn’t much point in reading We the Living unless you happen to have the spare time. It certainly isn’t what Walter Boswell is asking for. He wants to know what all the Rand hype is about – and the hype doesn’t come from We the Living. It comes from Atlas and Fountainhead, and Fountainhead is the lesser of the two.
WalterBoswell-
Would just like to second what michael farris says about Anthem. It’s short and an easy read, but it’s also deeply silly and best avoided for that reason. Save your cash.
michael farris – Thanks, I’ll take your advise into consideration.
Joshua, I’ll steal a copy instead, it’s the only compromise available for now.
Walter: don’t do it. Don’t start with “Atlas”.
Start with the non-fiction. “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” will clarify one of the enormous and terrible misapprehensions of the twentieth century, which is that capitalism is all about money. It’s not. The economic aspects of capitalism are only consequential to the moral system. “The Virtue of Selfishness” can, if you take it honestly and think about it, teach you that you are not evil just because you exist.
These two books are article anthologies completely exemplary of Rand’s ability to distill fact and truth to essentials with amazing intellectual horsepower. They’re the short-course, in which essentials are rendered without the very large-scale integrations presented in the two big novels.
Right said. I can’t abide either the doctrinaire Randians for whom Atlas Srugged is holy scripture, OR those who just completely misinterpret or ignore Rand’s actual work in favor of some socially acceptable caricature (you listening, Matt Groening?).
When all is said and done, I think we’ll look back on Rand as an important philosophical agitator, who gave many a young reader permission to joyfully exist for their own sake.
Thanks Billy. Noted and appreciated.
Brad: “It’s been nearly fifteen years since I read Atlas, but I do recall an episode where there was a bum who the main character assisted.”
Chapter X of Part II, “The Sign Of The Dollar”. Dagny Taggart discovers The Train Tramp on the third page of the chapter.
“This would seem contrary to the notion of pure selfishness.”
{sigh} It routinely amazes me how people completely goof what this selfishness thing is all about. I’m not going to go all the way through it right now, but I will only say that regardless of what “seems”, what Dagny did for that Tramp was a profoundly selfish thing. It was a response to her own values that saved that man from being sent to his death.
Alllow me the sacrilege of blaming Rand herself for that. Titling books things like The Virtue of Selfishness is bound to cause confusion since “selfishness” is not a virtue. That she herself says this in the aforementioned book helps a bit – but it also makes me frustrated that she wasn’t as careful as she probably should have been sometimes. What she means, of course, is “rational self-interest,” which isn’t the same thing as “selfishness” at all. Anyone who has been a teacher (which she was early in life) will know that students fix on the flashy things (jokes, contradictions, clever turns of phrase and the like) and often skip the longer elaborations – so you have to be careful that your “hooks” are accurate. In this case she wasn’t, and it’s therefore not surprising that there is confusion on the “selfishness” point (though of course anyone who reads her works – especially Atlas, in which the character of James Taggart is meant to represent the “degraded” kind of selfishness most people mean when they use the word – should know better).
“Titling books things like The Virtue of Selfishness is bound to cause confusion since ‘selfishness’ is not a virtue. That she herself says this in the aforementioned book helps a bit…”
I think I’d like to see you cite that.
If this is going where I think it’s going, then this will be a discussion of context, which I know can bore the shit out of most people, but which is a fact that makes no difference to its crucial importance at all times.
I’ll be happy to cite it, but my copy of the book is at home, so it will be at least 6 more hours till I get to it.
If memory serves, however, she clears up the point in the introduction.
If memory doesn’t serve (which has been known to happen), I may simply be misquoting her. Stay tuned.
…”so it will be at least 6 more hours till I get to it.”
Nothin’ to it. I could be wrong, but I imagine that we’ll all be able to keep going at least that long.
No sweat. Definitely don’t break your neck over it.
“She is, by her own admission, a writer of propaganda literature”
The weird thing is, I_love_ propaganda literature, even (especially?) when I hate the philosophy behind it, but I don’t love Rand’s novels, despite a large natural sympathy for a lot of her ideas.
I think I was lucky in that I backed into Rand non-fiction first, the Romantic manifesto, followed by the rest and it was only after I’d read most of the non-fiction that I tackled the fiction (the big three in chronological order, I forget where the smaller works fit in). The non-fiction books laid out her ideas in their most appealing form, straight and unadulterated, written with verve and humor and fire (when needed). Freed of the burden of creating ‘dramatic’ situations where her mouthpiece characters could make their speeches her non-fiction can be a rollicking good read.
If I had started with the Fountainhead (most famous) I don’t think I’d have made it past the scene when Roark breaks into Dagny’s house and … yech!. Had I started with Atlas Shrugged I don’t know how far I’d have gotten. The relationship between Francisco and Rearden creeped me out when I was a lot younger and more innocent and didn’t even know the words ‘homo-erotic subtext’…
Alright – I am wrong. I’ve just reread the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness and there is no specific place where she clearly says that “selfishness” is not a virtue.
Now let me explain, for the few who are interested, where I got that impression and why I still think she could and should have expressed herself better on this point. Quotes are from Rand, all of them come from the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness (1970 edition) and any emphasis is in the original.
Leaving aside the prescriptivist sloppiness of citing any dictionary as the final authority on how a word should be used (and not bothering to mention which one, no less!), it’s clear that two definitions are in operation here: the “popular” one and the “proper” one. Having made clear this distinction, she goes on to say that
And then finally
What I gather from all of this is that Rand recognizes as semantically useful the distinction between “selfishness” in the popular sense and “selfishness” in the “proper” sense. What she objects to is the application of the label “selfishness” to the former meaning. She would prefer to reserve the string of syllables in question for what she elsewhere terms (for clarification) “rational self-interest.”
Sorry – but I’m a linguist by profession and that really bothers me. Etymology merely traces the evolution of current usage; there is no science that discerns from a particular arrangement of syllables what it should mean. Words mean what they are generally used to mean, full stop. If there is a useful semantic concept behind “selfishness” and the public generally uses it to express that concept – then that it what it means. So for me, the popular use of the word “selfish” is “correct” (which is to say, I am content to use it that way), and I will say “rational self-interest” to mean what Rand means when she says it.
That said – the fact that Rand (oh, sorry, I mean her uncited dictionary) defines “selfishness” as “concern with one’s own interest” and then goes on to identify a virtuous application of this (“rational self-interest”) and an opposing virtue-LESS application of it (the “evil of a robber” who has self-interested values that happen to be wrong), signals to me that she herself doesn’t really think of “selfishness” as a virtue. The virtue – as my second selected quote makes clear – for her is in being concerned with one’s own interests in the right way. Clearly a robber is concerned with his own interests, he’s just irrational about what those interests are and how to go about securing them. So if we have an example of someone who is “selfish” by Rand(‘s dictionary)’s definition who is nevertheless not “virtuous” (and it should be clear that we do), then “concern with one’s interests” cannot itself be the virtue. There’s another crucial ingredient to virtue – in her system – over and above mere “selfishness.”
I think this whole bit is semantically sloppy in the way I indicated earlier. I am an admirer of Rand, and as I said in an earlier comment Atlas Shrugged is my favorite novel – but I do think she gets carried away sometimes trying to make her ideas “flashy” for the public, and the whole mess with the concept of “selfishness” is a case in point.
I was wrong about the specifics that I gave earlier. She does not herself say – as I said she had – that “selfishness” is not a virtue – quite the contrary. However, I think I was right to lay the blame for most people’s confusion about what she means by “selfishness” at her own feet for using a common word with an established definition in an obscure way. She could, and should, have expressed herself more clearly on this point.
HA! Fair enough. I’m the opposite – I love propaganda literature generally only when I strongly agree with it, as I do with Rand’s stuff.
The speeches don’t get in the way for me – I LOVE the speeches in Atlas Shrugged. The only one that really bothers me in that book is, unfortunately, the biggie. John Galt’s radio address is just. too. long. Even in a book I read as science fiction, I am unable to suspend my disbelief long enough to buy that anyone would still be tuned into the radio after whatever the equivalent in hours of 60 pages in text is – though I guess there are Cubans who do it for Fidel, so maybe I should be more open-minded.
Aside from that one, that book is pure gold.
WalterBoswell:
For the love of all that is holy, don’t start with the Fountainhead. That was the worst unreadable piece of crap since, well, try to imagine reading Joyce’ Ulysses while stone cold sober.
I’ve only read two of Rand’s books, that and Anthem. I’ll be in a minority here: I think she was just a lousy writer. I had a hell of a time trying to piece together her ‘message’ from her writing.
Maybe Atlas Shrugged was better, but it’ll be a long time before I commit to that long a book from her again.
Well I should not like Ayn Rand.
I am a Christian, and Rand was an athiest.
I am a libertarian in politics – and Rand, although the lady accepted the nonaggression principle, did not like the word “libertarian” in politics.
I am a cultural conservative (although I am NOT a cultured man myself) and a traditionalist in such things as architecture – and Rand stood for cutting edge indivdual genius.
And so on, and so on.
However, Ayn Rand was both a good writer and an interesting thinker. There is much to think about in any work of Rand – and much to learn from.
I would suggest reading not just the fictional work – but the essays on both politics and the arts (the essays are both short and clearly written).
Lastly when should also remember that Ayn Rand was not a native English speaker – the lady was Russian (a language very different from English) and only came to the United States when she was already an adult. In view of this, the quality of her work is astonishing.
Ayn Rand represents the following:
Courage, honesty and a desire that both herself and other people be happy.
I’m with Sunfish. The Fountainhead is the most appallingly bad book I have ever read. As for English not being her first language, well it wasn’t Conrad’s either and I know which I would choose – first last and always!
True, but maybe less so than you think. It is not unusual for nonnative speakers to be much better writers than they are talkers in their second language. Rand spoke with a thick accent right up to her death and had all the standard grammar and word-choice issues in conversation. See for yourself in this inteview series, filmed only a couple of years before her death.
It is true that she did not like the word “libertarian” in politics, but I think it was only the word. She was strongly opposed to the Libertarian Party from its founding, but it’s not hard to understand why and to sympathize a bit. On founding, the LP was heavily influenced by left-libertarian goofs like Murray Rothbard – the “blame America” crowd in general. Lots of them were, frankly, socialists who were on board only because they couldn’t get an audience at the normal New Left rallies – that having been a crowded venue in the early 70s. In addition, there was probably a dose of vanity involved: she would rather the libertarians have annointed her as spiritual/ethical leader, something that obviously wasn’t going to happen given the cultishness of her “Collective” at the time.
I think I would have had trouble voting for the LP in 1976 and 1980 as well (I would have voted for them in 1972 as an anti-Nixon vote). They have been steadily improving since about 1980, and have been acceptable the entire time I’ve been qualified to vote. But I am not unsympathetic to Rand’s view. There are a lot of truly annoying ex-hippie types at the local party meetings, for example – hangers-on only because they oppose the Iraq War (and possibly homeschool their kids), not because they love individualism, self-reliance and capitalism.
She knew exactly what she was doing, Joshua. She set out to reclaim the word with precise explication of its conceptual referent.
If you ask me for a citation on this, I’ll be in trouble because I can’t begin to recall where I read it, but she was once asked in an interview why she had named that book that way, and her answered was something very close to, “For the reason that makes you afraid of it.”
She was explicitly challenging the senseless mush behind that word in popular consciousness, and at the time, it was about time that someone did that.
Paul: “Lastly when should also remember that Ayn Rand was not a native English speaker – the lady was Russian (a language very different from English) and only came to the United States when she was already an adult. In view of this, the quality of her work is astonishing.”
More: when I read the novels, I’m aware of a classically Russian strain of aesthetic in them, even rendered as they are in English. To my mind, it’s obvious to me not only in their scale and scope, but also tempo and myriad little elements of style. I’ve said it before: this only occurred to me after I’d gone through a great deal of Solzhenitsyn’s fiction. And I think that this accounts for a lot of the problem that some Westerners have with her fiction, even attenuated for general political hostility.
Joshua and Billy Beck (and others) make good points.
As for the Fountainhead – I like the book.
I can supply the citation: it’s also in the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness. (Of course, that doesn’t mean she didn’t also say it elsewhere in an interview.)
I do not doubt that that was her intention. My point was that she did it poorly and that this has greatly contributed to the confusion in the public mind over what Objectivists mean when they say “selfish.”
I agree – and this is the root of the problem. Challenging the underlying philosophy that causes people to use a particular word exclusively as an insult (when in fact other uses of it are available to them) is not the same thing as challenging the use of the word itself, but Miss Rand confounded this issue, and that is what causes confusion. It would have been better to have named her book “The Selfish Virtue,” even, since this acknowledges that the virtue is distinct from selfishness itself (more accurately, the virtue is in the set of selfish things, but the set of selfish things is not exclusively comprised of virtuous members – witness James Taggart, who is selfish but not virtuous).
By titling something “The Virtue of Selfishness” you imply that selfishness is itself the virtue. That’s a catchy thing to say, but it’s semantically silly when she herself provides an example in her introductory essay to the book in question of a type of person (a bank robber) who is selfish but not virtuous.
It is not surprising that this kind of talk confuses people. Insofar as a robber is selfish but not virtuous, if you go around saying that selfishness itself is virtuous, then you are responsible (at least in part) for people getting the impression that you think giving money to bums, to continue with the original example, is in all cases evil, or that you think people who behave like James Taggart are good. Rand herself causes this confusion among superficial readers or non-readers of her works by talking in the way that she did, and that’s because she sometimes speaks sloppily for the purpose of shock value.
The responsibility is at least partly hers.
That said, I agree that no one who has read her carefully can have come away with the impression that she advocates blind, emotion-based, childish selfishness of the kind that James Taggart represents, i.e. of the kind that most people associate with the word “selfish.” And I agree that a writer is not responsible for her readers’ willful inability to understand what she means (which is to a large degree what is going on with the abuse of the Objectivist position on rational self-interest). But a writer who wishes to communicate should also take care not to speak in ways that are easy to misunderstand, and in this case Miss Rand has failed to do so.
I would like to second Billy Beck’s comment on the “Russianness” of Rand’s novels. I didn’t notice this independently, but I did once have a girlfriend who referred to Rand’s works as “Russian literature” (maybe a bit further than Mr. Beck wants to take it, but the same sentiment), and I found a lot of truth in what she said.
“She set out to reclaim the word with precise explication of its conceptual referent.”
Which would be fine if she actually said that, reclaiming words can work (witness Chicano in America or Schwul in Germany, former insults robbed of their hurtful connotations. But she doesn’t claim to be doing that.
Specialist writers also use words in restricted or specialized ways, explaining what they’re doing without challenging the non-specialist meanings. But she doesn’t claim to be doing that either.
Her basic claim was that she was using the word correctly and everyone else was wrong, which is just not the way language works (as Joshua explained very well).
“If you ask me for a citation on this, I’ll be in trouble because I can’t begin to recall where I read it, but she was once asked in an interview why she had named that book that way, and her answered was something very close to, “For the reason that makes you afraid of it.”
Unless I’m mistaken that was in the foreword or introduction to the VoS. (at least the version I had, with the blue circle full of stars on the cover).
My own opinion is she was partly going for shock value and then didn’t want to back down (admitting error does not seem to have been one of her strengths).
I’ll third the basic Russianness of her works and even point out that I perceive a folk current echoing a lot of her general ideas in traditional Eastern European thought. It’s certainly not a dominant or easily observable current, but it’s there and I’ve come across it at the most unexpected times…
Joshua: “Aside from that one, that book is pure gold.”
I’m reading it again right now. A bit over two years since the last time, and historically, I’ve averaged it once about every three or five years since ’71 or ’72. (Don’t recall ‘zactly; I started with the non-fiction — “Capitalism” and “Selfishness” after my father did ’em in 1970 and I was thirteen years old.) This time, I’ve also done 550 pages of a whole biography of Orde Wingate, along with other bits & pieces, in the time it’s taken me to do a little over 900 pages of “Atlas”. (Up to Fransico’s destruction of d’Anconia Copper on the day of its nationalization by Chile.)
I’m annotating and indexing this read for literary style and flair, which I’ve never done before, and which occurred to me in all the 50th anniversary net.noise including the perennial howling about how shitty a writer she was. It occurred to me that I had always just about taken her ability for granted, suiting my taste as it had (…and I cannot emphasize enough how I believe I was conditioned by the precise elegance of her non-fiction), and it was time to go over it with an emphasized eye for the craft of it.
She just turns me green with envy and deep red admiring her touch on metaphor and simile. On page 99 of the 35th anniversary edition, she paints a picture of light in a forest that stopped me dead in my tracks — light is what I do for a living, you see — with sharp visual imagination. If it were an actual photograph, I could picture the lens throw. She did that in two sentences. There’s a scene in which Dagny is showing the Motor remnants (you know; the thing rescued from the ruins of the 20th Century Motor Company) to Dr. Stadler, and the whole two-sentence paragraph would work verbatim for set decoration and shot specification in motion picture film.
Here’s a line from dialog: “‘Have you ever thought of me?’ she screamed, her voice breaking against his face.” — the very image of indifference, and a lot more compelling than that single word, ya think?
I could do this all week long, and I just picked that stuff at random from my index; a great deal is much better.
Like I always say, “Everybody gets to go to hell in their own go-cart,” and some peoples’ tastes are inexplicable to me, as much as I’m sure it goes the other way, too. And I condition my estimation of others’ estimation of Rand’s fiction by the necessary element of whether they’ve actually bloody read it or not, which is unfortunately but obviously necessary in dealing with people who remark on it: there is always a certain percentage of them who haven’t, and are just bouncing-along what everybody else says like a crowd-surfer at a punk rock show.
I sometimes irrationally wish I could account for evidently honest and experienced readers who sneer at her style. That is: I wish they had enjoyed it. It mystifies me why anyone wouldn’t, who would take up a serious novel in the first place.
On Galt’s Speech: I’ve never read it, entirely. The first time, I saw early that it was essentially the comprehensive statement of the whole philosophy, in the novel, and the non-fiction had given me the jump on all that, so I blew right by it and always have ever since. I’ll do it this time. Do you ever think about a motion picture in terms of quality and depth like, “Don’t miss a single frame of this film from first to last”? That’s how I’m taking it this time, which is really due any great novel, perhaps an essential element of which is that it will pay-off on that kind of interest.
Somebody check me on this: I believe that thing is the only sixty-page soliloquy in English fiction. Could that be right?
The enormous richness of the book makes me despair of the prospects for film, though, really. The suggestion of an HBO-styled mini-series is sometimes beaten about, which I think would be the best way to go if it were going at all. Even so, I have a very hard time imagining anyone giving it what it deserves in the effort. With all that, I don’t have a very hard time imagining Galt’s Speech really working on film. Suspending disbelief is something that film can be very good at, to a purpose like this.
All in all, the book is huge. It really is one of the great treasures of the history of my time.
Walter Boswell asked which book/s to begin with when learning about Ayn Rand and Objectivism…
I think Atlas Shrugged is an excellent start, although it is very lengthy. I agree with Razerwolfe about Anthem to start as far as fiction by Ayn Rand, as well as We the Living.
As for non-fiction, in my studies I began with The Virtue of Selfishness which gives an excellent introduction to Objectivist Ethics. Then later for more information on the philosophy itself – Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff.
Best Wishes
Joshua: “I can supply the citation: it’s also in the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness.”
{bloodyhell} Well, there you go. I damned knew it was laying around damned somewhere around here.
“Challenging the underlying philosophy that causes people to use a particular word exclusively as an insult (when in fact other uses of it are available to them) is not the same thing as challenging the use of the word itself…”
That’s right, it’s not, but the two are necessarily logically connected. What she’s really doing is attacking all the irrational connotations of the word as taken for granted in 20th century culture.
“By titling something “The Virtue of Selfishness” you imply that selfishness is itself the virtue.”
No more than, say, a book entitled “The Pleasure of Danger” would imply that danger is itself pleasurable, per se. What that would be about is the fact that danger can carry an element “of” (quoted from the title) danger.
“Insofar as a robber is selfish but not virtuous, if you go around saying that selfishness itself is virtuous, then you are responsible (at least in part) for people getting the impression that you think giving money to bums, to continue with the original example, is in all cases evil, or that you think people who behave like James Taggart are good.”
Well, aside from the crucial fact that the book makes the case for the title so well that the only possible excuse for that sort of thing is held out for people who haven’t read it, I’d say that the damage done to countless generations taught that giving themselves away is good makes Rand’s responsibility fairly paltry, with the added bonus that she’s pointing out how wrong that is, and how the metaphysically extant rational element of selfishness is good for human life.
Moron: “What that would be about is the fact that danger can carry an element “of” (quoted from the title) danger.”
Pleasure. That’s supposed to read “…danger can carry an element “of” (quoted from the title) pleasure.”
Jeezis.
Michael Farris obviously is not a very effective abstract reader if he was bored by the speeches in Atlas Shrugged. Perhaps he should read them again with a little more care.
With each reading of the book, and especially the major speeches, the full meaning of certain words, phrases, sentences, and sometimes whole paragraphs, suddenly leap out as being vastly more profound than on previous passes. If he could not see any of that in his reading(s?) then he has either programmed himself to ignore ideas he dislikes, or he simply cannot read very well.
RnBram, oh come off it, it’s a novel, not a holy text (except to fanatics).
And (if you had read what I wrote) I got around to AS only _after_ reading almost all her published non-fiction (including the speeches from AS excerpted in FTNI). Actually most of them with a little pruning of novel-related events stand on their own as short interesting reads much better than as the word-arias they are in the novel, where I kept having the feeling of deja vu (even when a particular speech wasn’t already familiar to me)
Rand herself said that the most important thing in a novel is “plot, plot, plot” and most of the long speeches don’t help that along at all (there are exceptions – the hobo’s tale is a long speech but integral to the plot and cannot be shortened, Francisco droning on and on about the meaning of money or sex is not and could better be handled in a more pithy fashion in a fraction of the space.
One doesn’t discuss taste but I like to keep literature and overt philosophical messages separate.
I found the “speeches” gripping right for the time I first read them.
However, I was a younger (much younger) man then. My attention span is shorter today – if I was reading them for the first time now I do not what my reaction would be.
I am no longer the man who read the Lord of the Rings in three days (and did a lot other things in those three days), or Atlas Shrugged in a night (a 12 hour guard shift of an empty warehouse).
I don’t agree with this analysis for two reasons.
First – surely the phrase “the pleasure of danger” implies that there is a degree of pleasure associated with danger per se (contrary to what you say). At least, that’s how everyone I know uses it. What someone would typically mean talking about “the pleasure of danger” would be that danger itself has an element of pleasure associated with it – though of course any “enjoyment” of danger needs to be tempered by sober awareness of what one stands to lose. You’re right that it doesn’t equate danger with pleasure, but I think the association between the two is across-the-board, no? That is, all danger has some associated element of pleasure.
So – if we transpose this to Rand’s “virtue of selfishness,” it would mean that all selfishness had an element of virtue – which conflicts with what’s stated in the introduction to the book so titled. So already it is a poor (because it is misleading) title for the book.
But I think it’s even worse than that – because, secondly, “Virtue of X” (X a variable for the name of some virtue) is a fixed phrase in English. When we say “the virtue of diligence,” we are typically NOT talking about the associated virtuous qualities of diligence but are rather saying that diligence itself is a virtue. You’re right that the grammar of the phrase “the y of x” does not necessarily get this reading (cf. your example of “the pleasure of danger”), but I think in the case of virtues this stronger reading is nevertheless the default reading (though admittedly not the only one).
Regardless – either way, her title implies something that she doesn’t strictly mean and is therefore poorly chosen.
I completely agree that the bigger crime is at the feet of those who have foisted altruism as the default morality (when in fact it is only one possible system – and a deeply perverted one at that). However, that’s not what we’re discussing. We’re discussing whether Rand communicated effectively on the subject of selfishness, and there are good reasons to believe she didn’t. In any case, it isn’t very “objectivist” to lay the blame for one’s failure to communicate at the feet of the biases of the majority view. Rand had the tools available to her to communicate this point more clearly than she did. The fault is at least partly hers.