So does reading Ayn Rand automatically turn you into a dick?

[Wetzelbill]

Or does it just seem that way. I always want to check out some of the classics, but I don't need any help becoming a bigger jerk than I already am.

Although, I have read most of "Dutch" the official bio of Ronald Reagan, and it hasn't made me a bigger ass than I already was. Still.... I maybe shouldn't play with fire. :)

[BlueEyedSon]

1. I read The Fountainhead, I'd like to think im not more dickish for it.

[Radio_Lady]

62. Turned my stepson into a "dickhead" for couple of decades --

He decided he wanted to be like the protagonist -- stepping all over other people on his way to the "top."

Of course, the protagonist in the story didn't have parents (I believe they were both dead).

Ayn Rand was a total loser in my book.

Good night, and good luck.

Radio_Lady

[enlightenment]

2. If you're reading for message you might be in danger

of ultimate dick-dom. If you're just reading, I suspect you'll be safe.
:evilgrin:

[Wetzelbill]

5. now that sounds like a plan

:)

[NYC]

3. Who is John Galt?

I will go to my grave with that sentence still in my head.

I read one book by Ayn Rand, and will never read another. I'm sure you can find a shorter, less painful way to read Ayn Rand's philosophy.

[Radio_Lady]

63. Her philosophy was objectivism. I've always thought at best --

it is very simplistic.

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro

[RagingInMiami]

4. You might as well be shopping at Wal-Mart

and giving people titty twisters.

[Wetzelbill]

8. don't worry, I doubt I'll ever get around to her

I have books on my list from 5 years ago that I haven't gotten to yet. :)

Nothing like a good titty twister to start the morning. :)

[RagingInMiami]

21. All joking aside, a person should read as much as they can

Including those "forbidden" books. Turning those books into your personal bible, now that's another thing altogether.

[Wetzelbill]

22. oh no doubt

I read everything I can get around to, plus lots of current events stuff, articles on DU, stuff from mags and papers etc. Reading a lot of philosophy and foreign policy stuff lately as I have classes with those. And, American Indian stuff as well.

[Tempest]

6. Only if you start to believe the crap she writes

I doubt she even believes it.

Rand is the Coulter of the literary world.

[havocmom]

27. BINGO!

Reading her can help forewarn about how some minds work

[benburch]

7. Doesn't "take" with some people.

But often, yes.

[Drum]

9. No, it doesn't.

It makes you a better-read person than you were before. Take her or leave her, and she does go on (Atlas Shrugged,) it is an interesting point of view she has, and above all she advocates thinking for yourself.
That you ask this question indicates that you should give Rand a try....

[npincus]

what did you think of "'Dutch"?

I bought it way back when it was first published, but found the author's inserting himself as a character disconcerting, and got disgusted with it. I think he should have done a pure-(non fiction) biography.

[Wetzelbill]

18. I liked that he did that

I just found the concept fascinating. I thought, other than the style with the made up character being inserted, that it was really intelligently written. His prose is fantastic. Although, I found it wasn't big on details. Very abstract in certain ways. It wasn't straight forward as in, "Reagan signed this bill on such and such date" or "Reagan gave a speech about blah blah blah." I like a little more historical facts and just overall meat in a bio. It seemed like a great artistic exercise, but it sort of failed as a concrete piece of history.

[gkhouston]

53. hmm, but wouldn't it be appropriate

that a biography of Reagan would be found wanting when it comes to concrete details? :evilgrin:

[XemaSab]

10. According to the back of "America the Book" it does

:P

[Wetzelbill]

12. I know!

that's what got me thinking about this question. I figured I'd see what everybody else has to say. Plus, I like stirring up trouble. :evilgrin: But you already knew that. :silly:

[porphyrian]

11. Here, I'll save you the time:

Free will is a threat to totatlitarian society, but it does nothing to maintain public roads.

[Turbineguy]

13. I believe I've read everything she wrote

It's interesting but her economic theories won't work any better than communism does.

I liked some of the characters, Howard Roark, Dagny Taggert, Hank Reardon, and my favorate pirate, Ragnar Danneskjold.

And as a person of Dutch background, I wish they'd chosen another nickname for Reagan

[The Magistrate]

14. Just Reading It Does Not, Sir

Taking it to heart or finding yourself in agreement with it are more problematic....

[TahitiNut]

44. ... and an indication of a weakness in critical reasoning skills.

Objectivism. :puke:

Ay Rand and L. Ron Hubbard. :puke:

[Warpy]

15. No, it dissolved me into gales of silly giggles

I was sixteen and kept trying to envision those hard, uncompromising, unaltruistic heroes of hers trying to deal with whiny toddlers clinging to them. It was also a load of fun imagining how they'd deal with a bad case of the flu, too.

One thing I envied Rand's characters was their birth control method, never specified. Her awful novels are jam packed with sex, yet there's nary a pregnancy, baby or young child to be found among any of the oversexed characters.

[sarge43]

30. GMTA, Warpy

I had the same thought when I read The Fountainhead back when dinosaurs ruled. This woman was humping like a bunny and never once considered the possibility of a little oooops. Keep in mind this was in the days when birth control was, shall we say, chancey.

[Generic Brad]

16. It Does Not

I read "Atlas Shrugged" and even enjoyed the story. But I did not buy into the philosophy. Just keep repeating to yourself "It's just a novel. It's just a novel".

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. No. Just a reader of poorly written pseudo-philosophy.

By a writer whose dream was to be abducted by a "real" man who would rip bodice and give her lotsa money. Someone, like say, a hairy and muscular Donald Trump.

[Wetzelbill]

20. could've done without that image

scorched into my mind now. :)

[Swamp Rat]

31. LOL!

:rofl:

[KyuzoGator]

19. I read "Atlas Shrugged" last year and was overwhelmed with boredom.

The simple fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the voting power (left, right or center) doesn't read.

[Plaid Adder]

23. No, it just brings out the dickiness already within the reader.

_The Fountainhead_ is the only novel I've ever actually thrown across a room. Course I was 14 at the time and much less cynical than I am now.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[mike_c]

24. lots of people go thru an Ayn Rand "stage...."

I did, back in my twenties-- I've read all of her published fiction, but I never had much success with her non-fiction polemics. Ideas about the supremacy of the individual, becoming a self-made man, and so on held a certain appeal then.

Coincidentally, I WAS quite a dick, but there were so many confounding factors, like being young and male with a real snootful of myself, that it's hard to ascribe any of that to Ayn Rand. It MIGHT explain why her objectivist philosphy appealed to me.

I'd like to point out that I outgrew my fascination with objectivism, and (probably equally coincidentally) I've become a real nice fellow.

[BeTheChange]

25. Ill say it.. I like Ayn Rand

I like that she was an author that came out of Communism and wrote through her lense of the pitfalls of the extreme opposite of our capitalistic society.

Unfortunately, Rand was an eternal optimist, in my opinion. She believed that some are better then others, they prop up society..Truly Lockian.

Anyway, she was a woman putting some wild ideas out there, good or ill, when other women were consulting Betty Crocker.. that is fascinating in itself. Her books were the trashy romance novels of my teenage years.

[cali]

33. "When other women were consulting Betty Crocker?

I call baloney on that statement. There were many women doing far more than Ayn Rand. Certainly there were many better women authors who were her contemporaries.

[BeTheChange]

35. There were also alot that were not

You have got to admit that Ayn Rand made bold statements about the equality of women way before it was safe and cool.

[cali]

37. WHAAT???

Hardly. She created this faux strong women who swooned and turned to mush the moment they were "taken" by the strong he man hero.

Lots of other women had been writing for quite a long time about the equality and strength of women, real strength.

[Deja Q]

34. Some people ARE better than others.

What are the qualifications again? :think:

[Kurovski]

47. Reading Ayn Rand, of course!

*Kidding, kidding!*

[mitchum]

39. Oh, really? So Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy were consulting...

Betty Crocker while Alice Rosenbaum was spewing out her drivel? Interesting...I never knew that.

[w8liftinglady]

45. OK..I guess I'm the only duer who liked "atlas shrugged"

I liked it because it praised people who were independent and motivated,it featured a woman as a protagonist,and it showed the failure of bureacracy.I am a reformed libertarian,but some of the messages that were put out by the story were very applicable.

[Lexingtonian]

26. More or less

All you really need to know is that Alissa Rosenblum fled Stalin's Soviet Union (Odessa, iirc) in the mid-Twenties, around the time of the bloody purge of the major landholders in Ukraine, as a child with her family, which came from the Jewish merchant class of the town they left. "Objectivism" is really all just silly exagerration into "philosophy" of her absolutist reaction to Stalinist ideology and a championing of the political attitude/station of the merchant class she came from as superior to it.

It plays nicely into that Galbraith observation about conservative intellectual efforts, that they essentially consist of coming up with new-sounding moral justifications for selfishness. Aka, It's Good To Be Me, And Fuck You.

[TreasonousBastard]

28. She's not a good enough writer to...

turn you into a dick if you aren't already one. Her bullshit philosophy isn't enough to stir the blood, and her stories don't make the bullshit smell any better.

But, why not read her and see if you get some teensy insight into what her fans like about her. Makes 'em look even dumber.

[LizMoonstar]

29. Jon and I are reading her - he's writing an anti-Atlas Shrugged novel.

We agreed that Objectivism is a neat idea of reality is reality and your job is to see it, but how she gets from that to the selfishness that's the end result defies logic.

Also, he bought Rand and Nietzche at the same time last night, and joked that he was afraid to leave the books in the car alone together, for fear that Nietzche would rape Ayn and she'd like it...

(we always talk about our books fighting; Jon keeps his copy of Rick Santorum's book surrounded by Joseph Wilson and George Lakoff, and Ann Coulter's parked in between Shakespeare and Shel Silverstein - it's kind of like toxic waste containment!)

[Wetzelbill]

42. I think Dutch cowers next to the rest of my books

:)

[Swamp Rat]

32. I read "Anthem" and "Atlas Shrugged" when I was 11,

and "Fountainhead" when I was in college in Austria. I was tired of reading in German and took a break to read anything in English. I found "Fountainhead" on a bookshelf in the dorm and read it within 2 days. I sorta liked "Anthem" when I was a kid, so I thought I might enjoy a novel about an architect... WRONG! It was:

B O R I N G!!!

I went back to Goethe and Mann with renewed enthusiasm! :D

[hfojvt]

65. You went to college in Oesterreich?

That is so cool. I wish I had had time to visit Wien. But Goethe and Mann? :scared:

[Terran1212]

36. I know someone who has very much proved your question to be answered...

Y-E-S

It's all about the individual, yes, me! Self, self, self. Taxes and subsidies are against nature and tyrannical! Blah, blah, blah...

[Montauk6]

38. Reading doesn't, but the consequences of your impressionability might.

[NashVegas]

40. No. If You're Curious, Read It and Take What You Can

As an independent-minded talented sort, I find it hard to not sympathize with the likes of Howard Roarke. Galt strikes me as a long-winded bore, OTOH.

It's also good to read Rand if only to run through the monster-sized plot-holes her proponents like to ignore when they try to impose her fantasy world - and it is a fantasy - on our reality.

For examples: Hank Reardon - swell guy but in reality land, he'd be the largest polluter in Pennsyvania. Francisco what's-his-name - probably had peasants dying daily by the dozens in those nasty mines.

[Neil Lisst]

41. only if you LIKE it!!

if so, YES, otherwise, NO

[radio4progressives]

43. it's a cult...

[Kurovski]

46. Hey Bill! Here is a somewhat instructive observation on Ayn:

In one of her novels she writes a little love note to cigarettes. She waxes high-and-mighty about how "man" has harnessed the power of fire at the end of a butt's hot little burning ember.

Fire-tamer Ayn got bit on the ass with that one, it's what killed her.

I enjoyed many things about her books, but the main memory I have is that she chiefly wrote porn for folks who like to fuck other folks over and feel good about it. it stoked and justified the libidos of the ruthlessly ambitious.

A simplistic account of her work perhaps, but then, many of her own good ideas suffered from the same.

You could never be anything but a honey-pie no matter what you read, WB. Why, you even mourn the loss of imaginary dogs! :-)

[Wetzelbill]

48. Honey-Pie?

Dude, I'm bad to the bone! Mourning imaginary dogs, notwithstanding. :)

[Kurovski]

60. Your response reminds me of another classic:

"Winnie-the-Pooh and the Blustery Day".

You foofy-woofy, you. :loveya:

Edit: And you thought I'd focus on the "bone" part, didn't you?

[Wetzelbill]

66. I am floored that you didn't!

Who are you and what did you do to the real Kurovski? :)

[More Than A Feeling]

49. delete

you already knew what I was going to say.

[Wetzelbill]

52. uh, yes it does?

My mind reading skills are not that good nowadays. :)

[ProfessorGAC]

50. No, But Liking It Is A Clue That One Always Was!

Well, liking it might be evidence of low expectations, but embracing the philosophy is probably just evidence that one was always a jerk.
The Professor

[Neil Lisst]

51. well said

It would be in the top ten books loved by selfish, rationalizing persons.

[JHB]

54. No, you have to be a dick before you read it (though you may be closeted)

Rand's "objectivism" just lets you pretend you're being obnoxious, narcissistic, and amoral as a matter of highest principle.

[Squeech]

55. No, I think this is how it works

IF you're young and impressionable, and IF you have tendencies to be a dick already, it could happen.

In this way it's like the Bible. Many people have read the Bible over the years and come away with the idea that the way to live a moral life is to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit prisoners, etc. But lately a bunch of wackos reading the same book have apparently come to the conclusion that Jesus really wants us to murder gays and abortionists. Is this an inherent problem with the Bible?

I want to defend, not Rand herself or Objectivism, but readers who might be seduced by some of the ideas in the books. I think Rand has actually done a very good job of highlighting a certain class of criminals, and I do mean the people she singles out as bad guys. Look at the characters of Jim Taggart, Peter Keating, Orren Boyle. Don't they look *exactly* like Dubya? Look at Wesley Mouch, Ellsworth Toohey, Floyd Ferris-- they're the very image of Karl Rove and/or Dick Cheney.

The basic problem with Rand has something to do with the idea that there is such a thing as a "commons" and such a thing as "social costs" (most obviously in the environment but applicable elsewhere as well), and Rand doesn't know how to analyze that and therefore won't acknowledge it.

[triguy46]

56. Nah, you should get a ribbon for being able to wade through...

the heavy handed, sappy, writing. She is overated by a magnitude. She will be remembered as a curiosity, and as a cult figure, but not for her literature. Atlas shrugged is a 50 page story told in 900. Not content with making a point, she proceeds to hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer. So it does create a mind numbing bit of propaganda, but it didn't change me, just made me tired, it was a real load.

[Cleita]

57. No but I think it will destroy brains cells if you buy into

the ideology.

[ComerPerro]

58. If you consider any Ayn Rand works to be "classics", that's a bad sign

But, as long as you don't take any of it to heart

The think about Ayn Rand books:

They are self-serving, pompous drivel written by a stuipd asshole who was trying to sound smart by using long sentences and big words. Its the height of arrogance, you can see it in the style of prose.

Most of Ayn Rand's works actually embrace the same type of blind arrogance and stubbornness that continue to fuel the Republican party to this very days.

Lies about the glories of capitalism, the plight of the millionare titan, the hard work and long hours put in by a CEO who barely makes enough to scrape by...

And don't forget my favorite myth: The lone, self-supporting, ever-vigilant hero, who doesn't need other people and doesn't need the government.

[MadHound]

59. No it doesn't, but you will be in some danger anyway

Danger of either being pissed or falling asleep. I read both the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in my youth, and found both to be bombastically boring. Rand's writing style left a lot to be desired. She alternates between either putting you to sleep, or beating you over the head with a particular point until you are cross eyed with a migraine.

I read her back when I was into one of my "classic literature" kicks. Never again.

[drmom]

61. Just like any other book, if you are a thinking person...

...you can view a work objectively, and decide for yourself what you think. For me it was good to get a view of why so many people I knew became so selfish after having read "Altas Shrugged".

Bottom line is that a huge portion of our society are sheep and easily follow anything without analysis. It's far more difficult to be a critical thinker.

[LostinVA]

64. I think if you read it, like it., and agree with it

I had to read some of her stuff in college -- HATED IT! OMG... she truly was whacked, and so unselfaware...